The Stalker

         They broke up on a bitter note. I still love you but I am no longer in love with you, she said. He mutely nodded his head, barely able to follow her trail of logic. It was never meant to be, she explained. He didn’t understand. She got up and left.

         That was four years ago.

         Comprehension still eluded him. But he had long ceased trying to make sense of it all. It took far less effort to live mindlessly, he had realized, knowing little and understanding even less.

         And then he saw her. At Trafalgar Square. Standing at the foot of Nelson’s Column. Draped in a red overcoat, she basked in the mild afternoon sun, defying the icy February wind that splayed her auburn locks. She waved at him, and he thought she was quite pleased to see him after all these years. He mustered all his courage and moved closer to her. She was laughing, he could see, as though he reminded her of an old joke that never failed to amuse her.

         He would have gone up and greeted her but all his memories of her, even the ones that he had painstakingly tucked away in inaccessible recesses of his mind, took that inopportune moment to grab him by the throat and remind him of that evening, four years ago, when she had deserted him. And now when he saw her waving and laughing at him, as if there was nothing to feel bitter about, he was gripped with an overwhelming desire to walk up to her, slap her hard, and leave a nasty welt on her face as a reminder of the agony he had been enduring ever since she walked out of his life that evening, four years ago. Instead, he simply slunk away, muttering under his breath, cruel fucking bitch, and hoped he would never see her again.

         But she refused to let go of him. She turned up at London Bridge, at Tower Bridge, at St Paul’s Cathedral, at the Kensington Gardens, at pubs and coffee shops, even in the innumerable back alleys of London, always laughing and happy. Stop stalking me, he cried, but she paid no heed. He ran away each time, but she seemed to outpace him. Sometimes she wore her red overcoat, at other times she traded it for more formal colours like black and grey. Her hair was mostly unkempt, sexily though.

When spring arrived, she discarded her winter wear and showed up in floral summer prints. She seemed to fill drab, grey London with vibrant colours that played tricks with his mind. The cerulean skies blinded him; the flowering trees reminded him of a life that was no longer his.

London had long been the city of his dreams. The city where he hoped he would stage his life someday. And she had seized it and made it her home, even before he had set foot in the place. She had usurped all his ambitions, built her destiny upon his broken dreams, and arrogantly paraded her life, mocking him with her victories.

He no longer pined for London, not as long as she dwelled there. They were continents apart, but he knew he had to vanquish her and reclaim what was rightfully his. He had already gambled away everything. All he now had was a past ruined by unrequited love, a present scarred by the painful reminders of the past, a future that held little room for peace.

In a meticulously worded suicide note, he blamed her incontrovertibly for his miserable life and untimely death. When the authorities questioned her, she shrugged nonchalantly.  

What an idiot, she declared. All he needed to do was delete his Facebook account.