Polychromatic Whispers by Mihikaa Singh (13, India)

[Content warning: suicide]
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Whispers. Whispers of demise, distress and delusions enveloped me till I could barely breathe.  This time, it was different. It was not the voice in my head. Being cornered in the crumbling  parapets of my mind, I knew it was breaking me. ​

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I could see colours too, hues of red and mauve, dancing around and barricading my vision. They were her favourite, these shades. My sister’s,  who loved all things flamboyant. Perhaps that is what made her take her own life. Sooner or later, she had to realize that chasing perfection was ludicrous. Opulence is nearly outlandish for us  common people. People left with abandoned dreams.  

No, I shouldn’t think more about her. Her death, the evergreen monster in my life. Limb by limb  or thought by thought, it was destroying me. To me, life was indelible. I was too important in  many lives. I knew that I had to persevere, persist through the very room I had sworn to never  step in again. The room in my unearthly childhood home, which I had to get out of as soon as I  could. Unless I wanted be the next victim. A victim of desperation, just like my hapless sister,  who died in this very room twenty disdainful years ago.  

Hallucinations kept confining me to their shackles, seeming so real I could smell the agony.  There! I could see my sister cavorting about, down to the pretty pink lace in her dress. I must  snap out of it.  

And that’s when I heard it. The hair-raising, paralyzing scream of my sister. I ran, ran over the  jagged rubble, the freezing floor to see her again and I was taken aback. A blood-curling noose  hanging right in front of me. I reached out to touch it, but I knew I had invited the inevitable.  Because right then, everything went black.

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