🕯️ THE TEA AT NINE

I never used to fear silence.
But now, even the sound of boiling water makes my hands shake.

Since our mother died, it’s just been my brother Arjun and me, alone in the old ancestral house where we grew up — a large, echoing home on the outskirts of Jaipur, a place that always felt too big for only two people.

Arjun was the careful one — precise, protective, and impossibly calm.
I was the restless one — curious, distracted, always asking too many questions.

“Curiosity keeps you from healing,” he used to say.

And every night, since the funeral, he brought me a cup of tea at exactly nine o’clock.

“It’ll help you sleep,” he said.
“It’s the least I can do for my little sister.”

For a long time, I believed him.

---

THE TASTE OF TRUST

At first, the ritual felt comforting.
The warmth of the cup, the familiar scent of herbs and chamomile — it became our fragile routine after everything had fallen apart.

But after a few weeks, something changed.
The tea started to taste… different. Metallic. Bitter.

Then came the nights I couldn’t remember.

I’d wake up in my room with the lights off, the door shut, my head heavy and foggy.
Sometimes my clothes were wrinkled, as if I’d never changed before lying down.

I told myself it was grief. Exhaustion. Stress.

Anything but the growing fear that something was very wrong.

Until the night I found the bottle.

---

THE BOTTLE IN THE CABINET

Arjun was outside, watering the plants in the courtyard.
I went to the kitchen to make coffee.

While searching for sugar, I noticed a small brown bottle hidden behind the tea tins.

Diazepam – 10 mg.

Sleeping medication.

My hands froze.

I wasn’t prescribed anything like this.
Neither was Arjun.

For a moment, I wondered if I was imagining it — if I was losing my mind, just as he sometimes joked.

But something deep inside me — that instinct I used to call curiosity, and he called danger — told me I needed the truth.

So I made a plan.

---

THE NIGHT OF THE EXPERIMENT

That evening, I accepted the tea as usual.
I smiled. I thanked him.

But when he turned to leave, I quietly poured it into the potted plant beside my bed.

Then I slipped under the blanket and pretended to sleep.

Minutes passed.

I heard the wooden floorboards creak outside my door — a sound I knew by heart.
His footsteps stopped beside my bed.

Then his breathing.
Slow. Controlled. Watching.

I didn’t move.

A moment later, he whispered:

“Good girl.”

I felt his hand rest briefly on my forehead — not gentle, not loving, but measuring.

Then he left.

Instead of sleeping, I followed.

---

THE DOOR THAT NEVER OPENED

For months, Arjun had forbidden me from entering our mother’s old study — a small locked room at the end of the hallway.

“It’s too painful,” he’d said.
“I’ll take care of her things.”

That night, I saw light spilling from beneath that very door.

The key was already in the lock.

I pushed it open just enough to look inside.

What I saw didn’t make sense at first.

A chair in the center of the room.
An IV stand.
Dozens of empty medical bottles.

And on the desk — a thick file folder with my name written across it.

---

THE FILE

The folder was filled with notes — all in my brother’s handwriting.

Medical charts.
Heart-rate logs.
Blood test results.

They weren’t my mother’s.

They were mine.

Words jumped out at me:

“Stabilization incomplete.”
“Memory resistance increasing.”

Then I saw the photographs.

Pictures of me — asleep. Pale.
Tubes in my arms.

My chest tightened.

That’s when the floor creaked behind me.

---

CAUGHT

“Why are you in here?”

His voice was calm. Too calm.

Arjun stood in the doorway, holding the same cup of tea I hadn’t drunk.
His eyes weren’t angry.

They were sad.

“You weren’t supposed to see this,” he said quietly.

“What have you been doing to me?” I asked.

He sighed.

“You were getting worse after Ma died,” he said. “You wouldn’t eat. You wouldn’t sleep. I had to help you.”

“By drugging me?”

He didn’t answer.

---

THE LIES UNRAVEL

“You don’t remember everything,” he said slowly.
“The car accident. The hospital.”

“What diagnosis?” I demanded.

“You were in the car with her,” he said.
“You hit your head. You keep reliving it. Every time you remember… it breaks you.”

I shook my head.

“You’re lying.”

He looked at me with pity.

“You begged me to help you forget.”

---

THE RECORDINGS

He pressed play on an old recorder.

And I heard my own voice.

“Arjun… if you’re listening to this, it means I remembered again. Please help me forget. I can’t survive this.”

I collapsed to the floor.

I didn’t remember saying it.

---

THE TRUTH

He hadn’t been hurting me.

He’d been erasing me.

---

THE ESCAPE

When he reached for me, I ran.

Out of the house.
Into the night streets of Jaipur.
Barefoot. Shaking.

I didn’t stop until I saw headlights on the main road.

---

A YEAR LATER

I live in a small apartment now, far from that house.

I’m rebuilding my life — therapy, medication, friends who know me as I am now.

I keep the folder locked away.

Because forgetting, I’ve learned, is its own kind of death.

---

EPILOGUE: THE LAST CUP OF TEA

I can’t drink tea anymore.

Every sip feels like a memory trying to disappear.

And every night at nine, I still hear boiling water in my mind —
a reminder that not all monsters hide in the dark.

Some serve you tea.
And call it love.