RELING THE VOID
In a quiet countryside town, surrounded by mesmerising waterfalls and endless skies, lived a girl named Moaa. She led an average life of contentment, unaware of the storm that fate was quietly brewing.
From a young age, she believed in the magic of love, in the stories of that spoke of happily ever afters, and the warmth of true love's embrace. But as she grew, Moaa's beliefs were tested.
The first time she fell in love, she believed she had found her soul mate. His name was Eros, a boy with a smile in his dark brown eyes, and laughter so soft, it makes her day bright. She concluded that as the hopeless romantic that she was, God had deemed it fit to send her a personal Greek God of Love. She was completely joyous, soaring over the moon. They spent summers between the orchid trees whispering dreams of future togetherness and promising each other forever.
Their forever was unreal because one day and without warning, her perfect fairytale love life came crashing down. Eros's affection towards her turned cold. He drifted away, leaving Moaa with a shattered heart and a mind full of unanswered questions. She cried endlessly, her tears soaking the pillow that had once cradled her happiness. She stared at the bed that had witnessed their passionate lovemaking and sank further into the abyss of sorrow. She had thought he was her soul mate, and now she was left to question everything she once believed in. But time passed, as it always does, and she found a way to pick up the broken pieces of her life.
Years later, she found love again. This time, it was someone who seemed to understand her and the scars that she carried. Believe it or not, his name was Cupid. He was a man of protective strength who made her feel safe again in a world that had been so cruel to her. For a while, Moaa believed that she had found the one who could heal her broken heart. She imagined that God had intervened once more and blessed her with her Roman Cupid to mend her soul, an embodiment of the love she needed. But it turned out God knew nothing about it. Cupid betrayed her in the most painful way, and at the point when she needed him the most. She wondered yet again about love. Was it just a figment of her imagination? An elaborate lie? Her heart already fragile, broke beyond repair.
Devastated and disappointed, Moaa swore off love. She built a solid brick wall around her heart, taller and stronger than before. Time passed, and she found herself alone, which was exactly what she wanted—or so she told herself. The nights were long, cold, and the resounding silence was deafening. Deep down, the ache and sourness of feeling lonely scratched at her soul.
Then, one day, she met Asclepius. He was kind, patient, and always gentle with her. He treated Moaa with a tenderness she never thought she would experience again. But Moaa couldn't believe it. She was in denial, convinced that this was yet another illusion, another joke that life was playing on her. How could he be so good to her? It felt so unreal.
Even as she grew to like Asclepius, fear took hold. She had vowed never to fall in love again to protect her heart. So, Moaa made up her mind and prepared to disappear from his life before it was too late. But Asclepius wouldn't let her go easily. He fought for her, showing and proving that his love was real and that she deserved to he cherished and cared for. Slowly, Moaa began to believe him. The walls she had painstakingly built around her heart melted away with ease, and for the first time in years, she allowed herself to love again.
But it seemed that fate often turned its back on those who have already suffered so much. Just as Moaa was beginning to feel whole, Asclepius fell ill. The doctors said it was his heart and that there was little they could do at this stage. Moaa watched in horror and despair as the man who had brought light back into her life slowly faded away. She held his hand until the very end, tears falling on the hospital sheets as she whispered words of love and farewell. Those were the last words Asclepius ever heard.
After Asclepius' death, something inside Moaa died too. She cursed her own existence and blamed God, who had given her love only to snatch it away. She became a shell of her former self, consumed by grief. Her mind collapsed under the weight of her pain and sorrow, and she was eventually committed to a mental institution. But even there, peace eluded her. A week later, she took her own life, believing it was the only way to escape the torment and pain that had become her existence.
Suddenly, Moaa awoke with a jolt, her body drenched in sweat and shaking with fear. The dream had been so vivid, so painfully real that she could still feel the after ache in her chest. She tried to brush off the lingering dread as she got ready for work, but the memory of the nightmarish dream clung to her like a shadow.
At the train station that morning, someone bumped into her, and she fell down, snapping her out of her thoughts. When she got up and looked at the person, she froze in terror. Standing before her was a reflection of herself - Moaa from the life she had just relived in her dream. Confusion and fear flodded her mind as she realised the horrifying truth: her nightmare had been real. She had lived that life. Now, she was trapped in the void of the cruel punishment of her own design, forced to relive the most painful moments of her life over, and over again.
This was her hell, the punisher's sentence for her last sin. There would be no escape, no solace, only the endless repetition of the love lost, heartbreak, and despair of her past life. As her new reality settled in, Moaa knew she was doomed to suffer for eternity, the echo of her broken heart reverberating in the darkness of her soul as she was once again plunged into the beginning of her everlasting nightmare.
