Misc. Erotica The Nine Nights

[shailu4ever]

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Naveen forced himself to stand. Pain shot through his shoulder like lightning. His white linen shirt, the one his wife had ironed that morning, was torn, stained with dirt and blood. His wristwatch had stopped at 9:12, frozen in that single, merciless minute when everything ended.
 
He looked around. The coastline curved gently, framed by fallen palms and dense, dripping greenery.
 
He was trained to stay calm, to think clearly when others panicked. Years of medicine had made him deliberate, rational. But none of that could prepare him for this.

This was not chaos to manage, it was the world, broke open.
 
He began to walk, slowly at first, calling names whenever he saw something that might belong to someone, a shoe, a shawl, a torn bag. Each step pressed deeper into the wet sand, and every breath tasted of disbelief.
 
The land narrowed, curving inward like a wound. Water glimmered on both sides. Palm trunks lay crisscrossed like fallen ladders, heavy with seaweed and debris. The air hung thick with humidity and silence. 

Beyond him, the backwater stretched out wide, dull with floating wreckage. There was no road now, only water holding the world hostage.
 
He stumbled upon a half-broken canoe wedged between two trees and sat beside it, his body trembling from exhaustion. He let the weight of the moment settle, his mind catching up with what his heart already knew. His family was gone. The realization didn’t come as a scream. It landed quietly, like a stone sinking into deep water.
 
A breeze stirred, faint, carrying the smell of wet earth and salt. Naveen tilted his head back and closed his eyes. For a brief second, he imagined hearing his daughters’ laughter echoing from behind the palms. But it was only the sound of the wind playing tricks.
 
He pushed himself up again, moving toward the wreckage at the waterline. Pieces of life lay scattered, an orange life jacket, a broken cooler, someone’s sandal, a soaked postcard with no address. He paused, bending to pick up a photograph floating face-down. 

It showed a family smiling in front of a boat, strangers, yet suddenly so familiar that it made his chest tighten.
 
He dropped it gently back into the water and stood still for a long moment. He was a doctor, he had seen death before, but not like this. Not in such terrible silence. Not when it had stolen his entire world.

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