Is it the End Today?     

Flash Fiction by Anjana Krishnan

She stood there with absolutely no movement. She couldn’t move. It felt like her whole body had paralysed. She hoped someone would see her standing like that, so that they could call her and she could wake up from what seemed like a dream. But no one did. She was all alone. It was utter chaos around her. She was standing beneath the streetlight opposite to the place where her house should have been. Now there were only bricks and debris. It was a wasteland, and not her home. She wanted to cry, because everyone had moved on.

 But not her…

 She could not.

 The house stood at the left end of the street. It was different from the other twelve houses in the colony. It had been the oldest one. It was where her grandparents and later her parents had lived. She grew up in that house. When, one by one, her parents and grandparents surrendered to death, the memories and the house were the only things that remained. And when the currents of life made her move to other parts of the world, her heart still longed to return.

What makes every journey unique is having a place to come back to, a final destination: HOME.

Time passed by. The house stayed empty and other members of the family treated it as an asset to sell at the highest price.

After six years, she had finally come back home. In the glory of the setting sun, she saw, to her terror that the colony did not exist anymore. It was just thirteen demolished houses.

The workers had left. The street lights came to life. It was all ruins she could see. Nothing else was left. She stood there, below the street light, opposite the ruins of her home or what was supposed to be her home.

She thought, “It is the end, isn’t it…?”

Anjana Krishnan was born and brought up in Ernakulam, Kerala, and is currently pursuing her undergraduate degree in B.A.(Hons)English from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi.

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