With Love

23rd July 1994, Saturday

                                  The photo fell on the ground while I was shuffling through the pages of my age old, somewhat soiled diary. I wasn't expecting to come across any such thing that was linked with her and yet her photograph had emerged from the most unlikely place, that is the petite library of the apartment, I was residing in almost 25-26 years back and inside my personal diary which I had maintained when I was working in the army that time. It was her, my wife and the most unscrupulous lady that I had ever encountered in my entire life. Femme fatale that she was, she took away my day's sensibility and my night's slumber. It was same reason that had got me attracted to her and made her my wife as the one for which I had to finish off her and her antics. I knew that it was hard for a young and beautiful belle to accept someone who was 15 years older than her, as a husband. But I had loved her with the consistency of the sun showing up in the sky every morning. She had only said yes for the money I inherited and was paid,  and for the status of being an army General's wife. Not that her craving for my money bothered my feelings for her, cause I had tried to keep her happy in anyway she had wanted. But the news that she had another man in her life broke my heart. I refused to believe any of it, but my sources were reliable. They had proofs, photographs of her infidelity. Not only that, she had faked the news of miscarriage to me. I had got it confirmed from the physician who had diagnosed her. She didn't want the child at all, young and selfish she was, she didn't want a child to get her out of shape and her youth! She had been planning secretly to run away from the house and my life. That was too much for me to bear, she had already caused me enough grievances. I thwarted her plan in the most prudent way I could. I had hugged her affectionately, close to my heart that night and then had handed over the glass of poisoned fluid to her. She drank it of course, without any knowledge of what was going to come upon her in a few minutes. Within 20 minutes of pain and writhing, she was gone. I was seated on the bed as I saw the entire incident till she had started foaming, with horror mixed with guilty pleasure. My heart would stop aching now cause she was gone forever and would give me no more sorrow. But the fact that she was no more and that it was the last time I was seeing her made me weak. Committing murder was not a problem, having been used to seeing enough bloodshed at duty. The aftermath was as planned and devised, the entire blame had fallen on her lover. I had driven off with her body to her lover's house, broke in (thank god he was not there that time) and left the corpse with the glass of poison as evidence in his room. The operation took exactly 30mins and I was out of that area as fast as I could. I had myself called up the Police Station and filed a missing report in the name of my wife, they did the rest. That man was arrested with the murder of my wife, end of story. After that I had shifted my apartment, where we used to live and had also burned down every the document that had Her in it, including all the photographs. Her jewelry and clothes, I had given it all to charity. She was no more in my life now, not even her shadow or any possession. But how this photo had managed to get by and had made its appearance after 26 years of the incident, I simply can't fathom. There's this cliche that your past always follows you no matter how much u try to run away from it. It didn't seem so cliched to me at all at that time. It had made me break into cold sweat and had invited along with it the sensation of burning pain in my heart which I had extinguished long back. The photo had those expressions on her face which were as same as her traits, beautiful, young, lusty, greedy, fatal, dangerous, foolish....Now it would take another 1 or 2 years for me to completely dismiss the glint in her eyes, that had been immaculately captured in the photo.