(Photo Credit: Anurag Bakhshi)

She wistfully looked up at the clear blue sky punctuated with wisps of cloud. Taking a deep drag on her cigarette, she released shapeless tendrils of smoke as though sending a message to the Lords above. Bringing her free hand to her face she gently stroked her cheek, feeling the taut coarseness and uneven contours. The roughness of a skin that was burnt; the instinctive feel of a skin reconstructed. It was also a skin that had experienced the savagery and sadism of unrequited love. A skin that had an angry bottle of acid splashed upon it. It was also the same skin over which he used to run his palms compassionately.

“Scarecrow!”, a group of kids propelling an abandoned tire with a stick yelled out as she made her way home after undergoing harrowing moments of hell in the hospital. The burns treatment ward was Dante’s Inferno on earth. That very evening he built a scarecrow in the garden with her bag slung over its shoulder.

“Scarecrows can be most beautiful” he exclaimed as tears of unfettered gratitude and joy streamed down her eyes. It was a year since he was gone. Yet he remains.

(Word Count – 196)

Written as part of Sunday Photo Fiction. Write a story of around 200 words based on the photo prompt given (above). Hosted by Susan Spaulding. For more details visit HERE.

To read more of the stories based on this week’s prompt, visit HERE.

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