Her whole body shivered seeing him sit on that couch and smile to her mom. She freaked out. She was standing there like a helpless child trying to escape from a kidnapper.

The man sitting there was her jeeju, her cousin’s husband. He was the one who made her life miserable. He was the one who pushed her into darkness. Because of him she started hating men and relationships.

It all started during her first year of college. He loved her as a jeeju or so she thought. They both had a very cute jeeju-saali relationship. But little did she know that this man only wanted her body and nothing else. They used to talk for hours together. They played games, teased each other and had fun. Initially everything was going good.

But as days passed, the animal inside him started peering out. He was trying to get close to her, physically. His hugs and touches started becoming awkward but she couldn’t ask him to stop because she thought that this is how a casual relationship with your brother-in-law is supposed to be.

Her mom never taught her to differentiate between a bad touch and a good touch.

Hugging turned to kissing (forced kisses). She never wanted it but didn’t get the courage to open up. She felt suffocated. Her life had become a dark room with a plastered mouth. She wanted to scream. She wanted to run away from him.

One day at a family get together, everyone gathered at her house. It was examination time so she slept early that day. While asleep she felt someone’s tongue on her thigh and she absolutely freaked out. She wasn’t able to grasp what had happened. She then saw that monster of a person standing near her bed and smiling. She couldn’t utter a single word by the shock she had received, but she gathered her courage and spat on his face, turned around and went to sleep again. After he realized that he could have been exposed, the brother-in-law called her up and apologized for his behavior. He affirmed that it was a mistake and he would never repeat anything like this ever again. Dogs remain dogs though. He did it again.

Every little touch was leaving a scar on her heart. One day while playing, he pushed her on the bed and jumped over her, trying to caress her growing young body, she couldn’t move. Her chest started paining badly. This was it, she couldn’t take it anymore, she slapped him and left. It had become so bad, that she was thinking of killing herself.

She was now in that state of fire she never wanted to be in, she wanted to be burnt. She wanted to share this with someone, someone she could trust.

There was only one such person in her world and that was her mom. She tried explaining it to her mom but her mother’s reply broke her heart into little pieces.

“Look, it was you who got so close to him. Did I ask you to go talk to him? Nothing can be done now. I can’t go ask him about this and create a problem in our family. It’s over now. Don’t talk to him again and please don’t tell this to any of your cousins. Don’t forget that he is family.”

These words killed her. It hurt her more than his touch. Days passed, she stopped talking to him. But she could feel the pain in her heart every second. Her nights were incomplete without a nightmare. She was afraid to go in front of any man. She locked herself inside a circle. She started hating every man.

She was dangerously addicted to loneliness; she started feeling at peace in it. She never wanted to deal with people again.

And today he is sitting in her house talking to her mom casually. She wants to shred him up into pieces. She wants to stab every inch of his body with a knife. She wants to throw him out in the river of his own blood. But the word "our family" stopped her. She pretended to be fine. She buried all her feelings inside her heart.

Solitude alone gave solace to her withering heart.

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