Chapter 2: Cracks in the Ceiling.

Chapter 2: Cracks in the Ceiling

At five years old, Aarya Khan already knew that silence was safer than words.

The walls of her house creaked like they were tired of holding in screams, and the ceiling above her bed had a long, jagged crack that split like a lightning scar across the plaster. Every night, she’d lie beneath it and imagine it widening, swallowing her whole, freeing her from the voices below.

Her stepmother’s voice was sharp tonight.

“You useless little brat!”

Aarya flinched at the sound of glass breaking in the kitchen. Her small hands trembled around the doll she’d sewn from old cloth—its button eye missing, its hair made of tangled black thread. She whispered to it softly, like a secret.

“Don’t cry. She’ll hear you.”

The doll never cried

But Aarya wanted to.

Her father’s footsteps came next—heavy, dragging, uneven. The smell of alcohol filled the narrow hallway before he did. Once upon a time, he’d been a man who hummed poetry while shaving, who’d kept notebooks filled with verses for his late wife. Now, his voice was nothing but a growl soaked in whiskey.

“Where’s my belt?” he barked.

Aarya’s stepmother appeared at the doorway, her bangles clinking like warning bells. “Your daughter broke the plate again. I told her not to touch the dishes, but she’s too stubborn to listen!”

Aarya pressed herself into the corner of the wall, her bare feet cold against the floor.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Shut up!” her stepmother hissed, grabbing her by the arm. “Always with your excuses! Do you think food grows on trees?”

“I—I’ll clean it. Please, Amma, don’t tell—”

Aarya didn’t finish. Her father’s shadow fell over her like a storm cloud. He raised his belt slowly, like a man preparing to silence a ghost.

“I work all day,” he said, voice thick and trembling, “and come home to this? A crying child and a broken plate?”

Aarya’s small fingers trembled. “I’m sorry, Baba. I’ll never do it again.”

The belt came down anyway.

The sound cracked through the air, sharp and final.

Once. Twice.

Until the doll slipped from her hand and hit the floor with a dull thud.

Her stepmother stood by, arms folded, lips curling with satisfaction. “She needs to learn,” she said simply.

When they were done, Aarya crawled back to her room, her breath shaking, her eyes stinging. She pressed the torn hem of her sleeve to her bleeding lip and stared at the ceiling crack again. It had grown a little wider.

“Maybe,” she whispered to the doll, “if it falls, it’ll take me with it.”

The next morning, she went to school with a long sleeve pulled down over her wrist and her hair hiding half her face. The teacher barely looked up as she entered. “Late again, Aarya?”

She nodded silently and took her seat at the back.

During lunch, two girls snickered at her cracked lunchbox and the cold rice inside.

“She probably eats garbage at home,” one said.

Aarya didn’t respond. She stared at her rice and counted her breaths—one, two, three—until the surrounding noise turned into static.

That evening, she returned home to find her father passed out on the couch, an empty bottle beside him. The radio played an old love song in the background, something her mother once liked.

Aarya paused, staring at his sleeping form. The light from the window fell across his face, and for a second—just a second—he looked like the man from her baby pictures. She tiptoed closer and placed the blanket over him.

“Good night, Baba,” she whispered.

He stirred but didn’t wake.

Upstairs, her stepmother’s voice echoed from the bathroom, gossiping loudly on the phone. Aarya slipped into her room, shut the door, and sat cross-legged on the bed. She picked up her doll again and brushed its tangled threads with her fingers.

“You’re lucky,” she murmured to it. “No one hits you when you drop something.”

Outside, thunder rumbled faintly. Raindrops began to fall, tapping against the windowpane like a thousand tiny footsteps. Aarya hugged the doll tightly and closed her eyes, listening to the storm.

For the first time that day, the house was quiet. Not peaceful—but quiet.

And beneath the cracked ceiling, Aarya whispered to herself again:

“I’ll be good tomorrow. I promise.”

Because in her small world, goodness was not about kindness or love.

It was about survival.

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