🖤 The Monster Inside Me 🖤 - Chapter 3 [“He thought he was a monster—until she looked into his darkness and chose to stay.”]
Chapter 3: Scars and Shadows
There are some wounds you can’t stitch.
The kind that lives under the skin, that ache when the weather changes or when a name is spoken too softly. Aditi knew all about those. So did Aditya.
But tonight, they weren’t talking about pain.
They were living in it.
It was a quiet Sunday evening. The manuscript lay between them — printed pages, scribbled notes, coffee stains, and highlighted traumas. They’d rewritten and reshaped so much of it, but the last chapter still sat empty.
“What’s missing?” Aditya asked, more to himself than to her.
“You,” Aditi replied gently. “The part you still won’t talk about.”
He looked at her, gaze sharp. “I’ve told you everything.”
“No, Aditya,” she said, voice steady. “You’ve told me what happened to you. Not how it changed you.”
He looked away. The monster stirred.
She didn’t push.
Instead, she stood up, walked to the tiny balcony, and lit a candle she always kept for blackouts. The soft flicker painted her face in gold and shadow. He followed her, standing in the doorway.
“I used to be fearless,” she said suddenly. “I wanted to study trauma because I thought understanding it would keep me safe from it.”
He tilted his head. “And?”
“And then my dad left. One day, he just… didn’t come home. No note. No explanation. Just silence.”
Aditya’s lips parted slightly, surprised. She’d never spoken about her family before.
“Everyone said he’d come back. That he must have had a reason. But I stopped waiting after six months. People don't just disappear when they love you.”
He stepped forward. “I’m sorry.”
She looked up at him, eyes glassy but unbroken. “I’m not. His leaving made me… this. The girl who doesn’t cry. The girl who makes rules, so she doesn’t get hurt. The girl who sees monsters and still stays.”
Aditya swallowed hard.
He sat down on the floor beside her, legs crossed. There was a silence — dense, humming. Then, slowly, with trembling fingers, he rolled up the sleeve of his right arm.
And there they were.
Scars.
Thin. Faint. Old. But real.
Aditi didn’t gasp.
She didn’t pity.
She placed her hand gently on his arm — not to stop, not to shame — just to be there.
“I don’t want to be him,” he whispered. “The person who hides behind pain. Who lets it control everything.”
“Then don’t,” she replied. “But don’t lie and say he’s not a part of you either. We don’t get to erase our monsters, Aditya. We learn to live with them.”
He looked at her like she was something he didn’t believe in until now — like home, like hope.
That night, he didn’t leave.
He slept on the floor of her room while she typed beside him. His breathing was uneven but not tortured. The usual muttering stopped. His fists didn’t clench.
And just before drifting off, he whispered —
“You make the shadows quieter.”
The next morning:
Aditi found a sticky note on her desk in Aditya’s handwriting:
“Let’s write the last chapter today. Not about pain. But about survival.”
Chapter 6 - https://kvs302.blogspot.com/2025/07/monster-inside-me-chapter-6-last.html
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