The Peculiar Case of Aunt Petunia

                

                No one ever sees the big picture; because the big picture is a puzzle that needs reason and patience. Everyone is looking at some part of the puzzle. Desperately trying to fit an unmatched piece into the colossal mosaic. So ostentatious are their beliefs, that they cut rebellious sides of the piece - until it fits perfectly into place. They fill a temporary vacancy, but give rise to a permanent hole, an indelible damage to the puzzle. Do not be like everyone else. Do not force things to fall into place. Remember, the puzzle is ambiguous, only until it is solved.

                That is what Aunt Petunia told me, when she found me struggling, forcing delicate pieces into a puzzle. ‘The piece with two straight edges always belongs to the corner. Be careful, one mistake, and you’ll never see the big picture’ she smiled and ambled away. ‘It’s your puzzle, not mine to solve.’

                The puzzle was a gift from her on my ten birthday as I recall. A giant 16X12, with at least five hundred pieces – I never counted. I struggled the entire day to pull together the mysterious photograph. It was an art gallery with many bright and vivid paintings, taken from the eyes of a short child, more inclined towards the exit gate than the paintings themselves. I was disappointed at ten, but was overjoyed at twenty. Sadly, Aunt Petunia took it away on the dusk of my twentieth birthday.

                Why she did that was a palpable mystery. People nattered about how she was slowing losing her mind, but I never believed them - for she was the only one I had.

The world is in impairment. You see, but you don’t act to change it. Everyone protecting themselves from everyone they know and they don’t; the world is rotting. Too baffled are these mongrels to review their morals on which they’ve built industrious luxury. Killing someone else is a heinous crime, but killing oneself and walking around in a breathing sarcophagus is peccadillo – necessity even. Would it not be nice to help your loved ones – to end this perpetual hysteria?

Sadly, no one but me understood her. Valiantly, she’d think, but poorly she’d overthink. Overshooting your limits, knowing not where to stop is a sin beyond reckoning. Aunt Petunia was charged against murder; I was outraged, but I could do nothing; nothing with all the understanding of the world, nothing with all the moral lessons she had flooded my conscience with. I felt helpless, but not sad. Something was wrong with me.

When you are dying, you are transferred to the most quiet and peaceful place that you’ve ever known. It calms down even the most treacherous of beasts, and all you want to do is lie down and gaze at the magnificent sky, glistening in sapphire, with a tinge of scarlet at the horizon. If you wish to live, you must do the impossible. Discover rubatosis! Enrage yourself at a place as soothing as that. If you can do that, you’re thrown back to the foul world that you were to leave behind.

I never understood what that meant. On the evening of my twentieth birthday, she took away my puzzle, and told me she had a better gift for me. She shared her anecdotes as we sat on the sofa. Her philosophies pertaining to the world. How desperate it was in need of healing. ‘So, if good people cannot heal the world, they mustn’t be punished either. In this foul, treacherous world, a soft heart receives only pain.’ I couldn’t agree more, like every other time. Once she had me intoxicated with her words, she went out to her room and returned with a delicately packed box. It was my gift.

She opened it for me as she sat down, and there it was. A thin, shiny medieval stiletto. I liked collecting antiques. ‘Thanks aunt’ I said in excitement. ‘But this is not your gift’ she said looking at it. Then she looked into my eyes, put the stiletto against my chest and pushed it into my heart. ‘You have a soft heart. This pain will ease you of all the rest’ she said as she did it.

There was nothing to hide, she was charged of murder the same night. The neighbours had complained of something suspicious. I was not dropped into a soothing place with birds flying and clouds rolling by; I did not see sunset, nor mountain, nor rivers cutting down the valley. It was just nothingness. Had I been there, I would have torn the world apart to return and tell her there’s still hope. To tell her that she was wrong. But today as I look down, I only see paintings, millions of paintings; some dull, some coloured; some rotten, some fresh, some valued, some forgotten; but all are in motion, all are beautiful, but I only stand, staring at the exit door.