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charpayi.

The darkness dissolved inside her as she stumbled forward. There was no moon today. Not even a speck of light that could guide her. She had no idea where she was heading to in this obsidian night. Her eyes welled up with thick sheen of glass fighting to let the emotions out but she was more stubborn.

"He's my cousin."

Oh, just how naïve she was! Her lips pressed into a thin line as the aching words kept on reverberating in her ears. She let her feet take her onwards unbeknownst of the destination until she came to a halt in front of a small building. It was a mosque for women. As if in trance, she took the shoes off and trudged inside the Holy place. The only sanctuary she needed, right now. The only place she could lose herself in.

She gawked around the premises to make sure there was no one inside. No one to intrude between her and her Rab. It was her time to question. To unleash. To lash out. To ask why her?

With short and heavy strides, she strolled towards the middle of the secluded place as her hands fell loosely on either side of hers, her drape swaying half way through her messy hair.

"Why me?" Finally, she whispered into oblivion. A question she had never asked before because she was just not ready to come face to face with her Rab. Her Rab who did her wrong. She was angry with Him. But, today she was angrier, and she knew the only way to vanquish that anger was to let it all out.

"WHY ME?"

This time her voice was louder. Louder than her strength as it soared above and vanished into nothingness, leaving behind the echoes – the remnants of her anguish, her anger, her cries.

Her knees crashed down on the pristine floor as her face faced upwards, unleashing the fragile Hafsa that she had so protectively buried inside of herself that no one could suspect a slightest inch of her impersonating someone she wasn't. But she was, now. Changed for better. The strongest version of her.

"What did I ever do to deserve this?" Her lips wobbled as tears scratched her parched throat and she screamed. Her voice was sore akin to her heart, drowning in the toxins of her past, her present, this moment.

Everyone she had ever loved either betrayed her or left her. First, her mother, then her father, then Saqib, then Ayyan, and now him. Everyone. And her anger? Well, it was very much justified. This world did her wrong, so wrong, she wanted to ruin everything; to burn it in the fire raging inside of her. If she didn't get the happiness she deserved, why should everyone else? Why should they get to enjoy their lives? It was wrong to think like that, she knew that, but it was only human.

She was filled with vengeance. But her heart? Oh, it only knew how to give love!

******

A bile rose up her throat as the memory of the events marked its territory back on her mind. Covering her tears stained face with her trembling hands, she let out a coarse scream. Too loud to soar above the skies. Too painful to slit her throat.

It had taken every ounce of strength in her to finally put a constraint on that memory but Azlan Shehryar had lifted that cover and God knows how much she hated him for that. That man had killed her so brutally she didn't know if she could ever recover from this.

"There are two of us tonight." Shit!

"Go to Neelum Vaelley, or wherever you want, but just go from here."

A/N

The stuff mentioned in this chapter is not fictitious but real. Saqib's traits have been taken from real life serial killers. I know he wasn't a serial killer but he was a rapist, a man who liked torturing people. The scientific facts mentioned are also true. And the burning dog example is one of the three factors of Macdonald triad. These factors are associated with the serial offences which a person, if found in him while he was a child, might commit as he grows up. The child ought to be treated as soon as possible or he turns out to be a criminal in future.

What happened to Safa isn't a work of fiction as well. This has happened in real life as well. For further information, search on Ariel Castro who abducted three girls and imprisoned them in a bolted room until one of them gave birth and when the child turned six year old, she escaped with her help.