Adultery Priya Didi

[shailu4ever]

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Ravi swallowed hard. His throat was suddenly dry, his palms slick with sweat. He wanted to retreat, to run down the stairs and pretend he hadn’t noticed anything. But a stronger part of him, a curious, insistent part, kept him rooted. He had to know.

 
He cleared his throat softly.
“Excuse me… is Vamsi garu home?”
 
The murmuring ceased abruptly. A man, wearing a white shirt and holding a notepad, turned toward him. His face was neutral, unreadable, but his eyes flicked over Ravi with a subtle intensity that made Ravi uneasy. The man exchanged a glance with the woman sitting on the couch. She was older, perhaps in her forties, her posture stiff, her hand pressed against her chest as though trying to hold herself together.
 
The woman rose slowly, cautiously. Her movements were deliberate, almost mechanical.
“Who are you?” she asked, her voice low, measured, guarded.
 
“I’m Ravi,” he said, his words careful, cautious. “I live in 205… I’ve known them for some time.”
 
A long, suffocating silence followed. The woman’s eyes were moist, but distant, not quite focused on him. She seemed to be seeing something far away, something he could not. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words came.
 
The man stepped slightly forward, placing himself between Ravi and the doorway. His voice was soft but firm.
“Can you wait a moment?”
 
Ravi nodded, stepping back as instructed. His heart raced. The corridor suddenly felt colder, the morning sun filtering in weakly through the stairwell window doing nothing to warm the chill settling into his chest. He leaned against the wall across from the half-open door, trying to steady himself.
 
Inside, the voices resumed. Ravi caught fragments now, just enough to stir the unease into something darker:
 
“The accident happened around 8:15 PM…”
“A truck… highway bypass… the driver didn’t even stop.”
“We tried calling their phones all night… nothing… only this morning… the security officer…”
 
Ravi’s stomach turned. His legs felt weak. His mind tried to process, to rationalize. Perhaps these were relatives, people who lived nearby and had been contacted by the security officer overnight, arriving early in the morning to check on the family. It would make sense, logically. Yet, even as he tried to anchor himself in reason, his chest tightened, and a hollow ache began to spread.
 
He forced himself to stay still. His gaze fell to the photo frame lying near the entrance. A recent photograph of Vamsi, Neetu, and Sirisha, laughing on the balcony just a few days ago. The frame had been upright yesterday. Now, it lay fallen, glass edge scbanging the floor.
 
Ravi’s breath caught in his throat. His fingers clenched against the wall, damp with nervous sweat. His mind refused to accept the logic of the moment.
 
Inside, the murmuring continued, and the fragments of words began to take shape, each one striking him like a blow:
 
“All three… died at the scene.”
 
Time seemed to freeze. The hallway, the stairwell, the sunlight on the floor, it all vanished from his perception. His heart thundered in his chest, but no sound came from him. The reality of those words, the absolute finality, pressed down like an iron weight.
 
He could feel the absence, of laughter, of footsteps, of playful teasing, stretching out from Flat 401 and consuming the space around him. The corridor felt impossibly long, impossibly silent. Sirisha’s bubbly voice, Neetu’s laughter, Vamsi’s chatter, erased in a single moment.
 
Ravi’s legs shook, but he didn’t move. Not forward. Not back. He stayed leaning against the wall, staring at the ajar door, the voices inside now muffled by distance and the half-closed threshold. Each word he caught, each fragment, pressed into him, layering shock over confusion over disbelief.
 
The man in the white shirt moved slightly, flipping pages in his notepad, but did not acknowledge him. The woman sat quietly, her hands folded, her eyes wet. Their presence was a silent confirmation of something Ravi could hardly face yet.
 
He closed his eyes briefly, trying to steady his breath, to contain the swirl of panic, grief, and disbelief. The apartment, once a space of comfort and laughter, now felt like a hollow shell. The stillness was a physical weight pressing against him, an invisible hand squeezing tight around his chest.
 
Ravi’s gaze returned to the photo frame, now more painfully vivid than before, three faces alive, smiling, frozen in joy. He had laughed at that moment just days ago. And now… gone.
 
He didn’t step forward. He didn’t cry. He just stood there, frozen, suspended between disbelief and reality, listening to the voices inside, voices explaining, confirming, and yet somehow distant, muffled, unreal.
 
The corridor echoed with emptiness. Every detail he had taken for granted, the creak of the staircase, the hum of the morning, the distant chatter of neighbors, was gone. There was only the weight of the unknown, the silence of tragedy, and the unbearable stillness pressing down around him.
 
Ravi’s breath came shallow, ragged. His body felt heavy, his mind numb. And in that moment, he understood, nothing would ever be the same.
 
 

-- oOo --

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