Zoya

I wrote this one for the recruitments of cactus flower, the annual literary magazine in BITS.
We had to form a story with given ten words in it. The words in bold are those ten words.

Zoya

It was a sunny Sunday afternoon; winter was in its full swing. Zoya was in her room, smoking her worries away, resting on her easy chair and wondering why people considered girls to be innocent by default. There were no smoking checks in the girl’s hostel, ever. Sunday afternoons had always been a sedative for her, and the smoke-filled room merely added to the effect.  She was already half asleep when Chopin started playing in the background. Wow, she thought, this cigarette is really effective. Or is it?

“Fuck..!! The phone” she reached for her iPhone.

The screen read ‘Mom… Calling’, a reason enough to command the hand to extinguish the cigarette, it had to be a reflex.

“Err (koff), hi ma!”

“Were you smoking Zoya?”

If there is one thing which is freaky about mothers in general, then it has to be their amazing ability to catch you doing wrong, even from a 1000 miles away.  I don’t know how they manage it, but they always know it.

“Zoya, we already had a talk about it, didn’t we? Cigarettes burn your lungs, when will you understand child!?”

“Of course, I understand! I am fucken studying in the best tech school of the country, I understand everything. 

Let me explain it to you and for the last time, I love cigarettes. I love the way they smell, I love the way they taste, I love the way they feel. I know that they will kill me and I am fine with that. If you don't love them, don't smoke and shut the fuck up.” Would have had been her reply if it was someone else.

 But it was mom.

“I was not smoking ma, I am a bit sick, that’s it. It’s getting cold here day by day”.

“Ohh, you are sick again! How many times will I have to tell you to not roam about after sunset? And are you wearing that sweater I knitted for you…..”

...She knew it, her sickness was the red herring, and it always worked. Nothing was more important for her parents than she herself and understandably so. Zoya was the only child. Her life so far couldn’t have possibly been better. She always had the best dolls, the best clothes, the best parties and now, the best college.   But she was done with all of this.

“Ahh, yes mom, I am listening.”

...She returned to her musings. Was she finally doing it? She was scheduled to leave tomorrow. She thought about her only friend in college. How she got drunk last night, her so called boy friend dropping her back to the hostel and her “friends” helping her into her bed. Poor chap, that boy-friend, thought his girl-friend loved him. He was no more than an arboreal creature to her. But she wanted someone to take her to the pubs and drop her back after her daily dose of vodka shots, and to occasionally foot the bill. Why, even the bar-man had gotten so used to her drunken-stupors that he knew exactly when to signal her boy-friend to come pick her up.  Zoya’s thoughts however shifted to her own love life….

“No ma! I have no boyfriend! Don’t worry!”

...This time she wasn’t lying. She was indeed single. For her, every member of the male sex was a baggage, a thorn in the flesh. She dumped her last boyfriend after the first month of their effervescent relationship. He thought Zoya would realize that their relationship was indeed a victim of calumny and they would bury the hatchet eventually. It didn’t matter; she had her own plans, albeit quixotic, and a boyfriend did nothing but hinder them…

“You know what Zoya, the only thing that brings me peace is your college.  At least you will get a good job.”

...She sighed, taking her thoughts back to her early school days. She hated going to school. She couldn’t stand girls fighting with each other over toys, marks, clothes, looks… and finally, boys.  As she grew up, she was completely convinced; it was not just her classmates in particular but the world as a whole.  Everybody was fighting.  Fighting for money, fighting for love, fighting for power.  Zoya didn’t see herself fitting in the normal world and that realization came fast…

“I have planned it all mom, I have planned it all.”

…The epiphany back in school got her mind ticking and by the time college started, she knew how she wanted her life to be. Mid-summer sun, peaceful ocean and solitude.  Since then she had been planning it. Australia had a beautiful coastline and a lot of solitary beach houses for sale. A bit of freelance programming over the internet could easily pay for her daily expenses. One thing you may not know but your local drug peddler has amazing contacts in the “passport-counterfeiting-world” too.  A regular in his clientele, Zoya knew this. By the beginning of this term all the ends were tied up, save for two. One, she needed a large sum of money to buy that beach house and two, if she suddenly disappeared, her parents wouldn’t stop short of global man-hunt in order to trace her.  She had a solution for both of these, but she wasn’t sure of it. It had caused her considerable turmoil throughout the break, but finally she decided...

“I will miss you, Ma” and she hung up the phone, and almost without a second thought deleted her Mom from the contact’s list.

…Later in the evening she received two phone calls.  The first one was to inform her of the sad demise of her parents in a car accident and the second one was from the travel agency to confirm that her flight booking was done.

Life insurance, sweet.