Stripes In The Dark..

The phone rings and her mom rushes towards the phone. She keeps playing with her colors, drawing perfect scribbles. She’s an innocent child of five, naive and fearful; the reason behind completion of her family, a blessing splendid in herself. She hears her mother conclude the phone call and put the phone on a table that is near. She continues making the final strokes on her artwork and starts putting back her color pencils into their box, one by one, neatly. Her mother gives her a smile and she smiles back. As she gathers her things and prepares to pick them up, the door bell rings. Her mother goes to see who has arrived and comes back with a person, a face she was familiar with. It was her neighbor.
She goes to her room and puts all her things rightly on their place. She is an organized kid and knows how to clear the mess one creates. She hears her mom calling her name so she runs towards the drawing room where her mother and the guest are sitting. She’s wearing a black frock just like the color of her shiny black eyes, and hair all combed and set with a hair band. Her mother asks her to put the phone back on its place. She stands there, not having a clue what to do. Her mother repeats her command and asks her to go into her mother’s room and put the cordless back at its place. She takes the cordless in her little hands and looks at the dark room. A wave of terrible horror crosses her heart. She looks back at her mom who is busy talking to her guest. After a while she decides not to move since she doesn’t know how to reach the switch board. The guest leaves. Her mother notices her standing there, comes up to her and asks her what’s wrong. She tells her that she can’t and that she’s afraid. Her mother asks her what is it that she is afraid of. She doesn’t know how to describe darkness and something she thought of as a monster, so she stays quiet. Her mother is unable to believe that her daughter refused to do something while she’s an obedient kid. She insists again. The little girl tells her that there’s a joker in the bathroom in her mum’s room. She has recently seen a movie where the villain was a clown and murdered everyone he didn’t like. She fears clowns since that day. Her mother gets furious and takes her into the bathroom, locks herself and her daughter in the dark bathroom and does not switch on the light on purpose. Her mother asks her where is that joker, and show her where she has seen it. It is just her fear, and not an actual thing. She starts crying since she does’t know what to do, all she can see is darkness and nothing else. A moment later her mother comes out of the bathroom with her after washing her face. Her mother tells her that there’s nothing like that in real life, and she doesn’t need to be afraid of such illogical things which are not even themselves but a pile of costumes. Her mother switches on the light of her room and tells her how she can reach the switch board, by placing her toy chair.
That day, today, that little girl is a fearless, confident lion. She fears nothing. For her, now, monsters don’t reside under beds, but in heads. And darkness goes away as soon as there comes light, for darkness can not live in light, but light can live in the darkness.