In Conversation with Secrets

If Secrets was a human, walk next to her for a mile or walk in her shoes, it won’t matter unless you’re able to decipher her twisted words.

Just as she walked down the red carpet laid in front of her, the gatherers lost their interest in inflicting unkindness on each other and waved optimistically at the infamous queen. She’s the one with a tongue covertly colored in rogue. She owned their undivided attention and desires to be released from their clenches. Her power does not lie at the apex of her crown but rather shines on the tip of her skyscraper heels. The on-lookers are not her ardent fans as you may assume but are the commoners who are yet to achieve revelation about their true feelings towards the Queen — Her Holy Highness The Queen Secrets.

Nobody knows her exact age, she has kept her beauty intact with the wrinkles concealed under several layers of hideously expensive make-up and cosmetic surgeries, who is to tell? The historians have also officially confirmed that she never laughs — laughing lines are her biggest pet-peeves.

On TV, her interviews ooze with plenty of charm and provide material for local gossips. She is known to provoke media with curt responses and rhetorical questions. For example, once she was asked about how she managed to sustain her empire during the uncertain times and to everybody’s horror, her answer to this simple question is still good enough to cause a hernia to the royal family– “I have bathed in the pool of sinners and gambled in the institutions of monks. Do you have the heart to know the gory details?”

These interviews not only reveal the Queen’s character but also her intent for the empire. To her dismay, the bureaucrats sooner ceased the trade relations with The Queen on account of rising cynicism and brusqueness with her ethics for the business matters. She was often found missing from the official trips to other nations, her refusal to deliver speeches to a large audience particularly vexed everybody. “If I’m not allowed to speak my mind, then I would forbid myself to speak at all. It’s not an act of obstinacy, it’s tact and in the interest of the empire.”

She was once caught strutting in her costliest pair of shoes in the garden alone at night, unescorted. When the guards requested her to go to her room, she only sighed and smiled. Not a tinge of revolt or the royal drama. She probably just craved some me-time to shrug responsibilities and protocols off her shoulder.

Dear Reader,

This is the moment where I would like you to consider Secrets as a real person (If you hadn’t been doing so already) and absorb the twisted sentences seriously. Be grateful for the literary spoon-feeding.

Now, if you look past the gloss in her gait, she is an ordinary person. Not ‘Her Holy Highness The Queen Secrets’, but just — Secrets. Secrets, nobody else will ever believe your story but we know what horrors you must have faced having transformed into a shiny porcelain doll from a country girl with twigs in her hair.

Secrets, why do you keep people’s consciousness under your skyscraper heels?

“I, Secrets, once played in the fields with my frock yellow and my hair tangled. Somehow, distant from my relatives who wore white pantsuits and blew away the dirt before resting their asses on the merciful ground. They never looked after me, never found me worthy of acknowledging perhaps — maybe because I was a love child — everybody secretly adored me, smiled at me, perhaps even pitied my helplessness but out in the open I was a bad influence and a result of nothing less than the plot of ‘The scarlet letter’. "

My mother had taught me, “You can garnish your mind with herbs but always wash your heart with vinegar.” And so I did, without ever failing her or questioning her methods. Mother, if only you knew that it would cost your daughter much more than you had pre-calculated.”

“What doesn’t kill you, doesn’t make you stronger. It only makes you a stone.”

“Once, during one of my nights with my lover, I spoke about my first intimate encounter with an Adam I befriended at that time and how graciously we had dissolved ourselves into each other’s eyes with a sea of floating nothingness. Baffled and dishonored, how arrogant of my lover to reject my love for him based on past adultery. And I became myself again.”

“Yes, I was once a little Secrets who protected their ego from falling down their hats decorated with faux feathers of dead birds.”

“He once told me, Secrets, you do not have to hide under shabby roofs. Let yourself out, be heard — people are accommodative. Motivated by such enthusiasm and kind affirmations, I told him about an outrageous episode of mine that had me naked in my most vulnerable state, hugging my fears and saving the tears from drowning in the pond of their expectations. And then he accused me of causing him emotional-vandalism. Of course, I double-locked the doors. I never heard from him again.”

“If you ask me what is it that I’m afraid of losing, I’d bluntly say that I am afraid of only one — the fear of the unknown. I do not know how people will react if I do not speak their language or wear the colors that they want to me see in.”

“My father had never let me vanish out of his sight, he stealthily suspected acts of treachery from me. I’m happy that he did so because I learned the greatest lessons of finding a middle ground — a barren land where consequences and desires do not talk to each other.”

“Oh, this is interesting. I bought my title of ‘Her Holy Highness The Queen’ in exchange for my virginity. Oh! This must be the words of immortality for you. I apologize to you, on behalf of you. It must be difficult to not have an unprejudiced mind.”

“What do I have against Honesty? Let me just frame it in an ornamental definition for you– honesty is a crippled soldier from a war he lost. He needs my support even if he never openly asks for it. Would you want me to be friends with somebody who wears double standard on his chest?”

“Why do I never laugh? To retain my power over others. If I lose control through humor and reveal the real side of me, I’d be fettered until death releases the sweet stints of repentances from my chest. Because people have poor metabolism and I refuse to be their victim.”

“Well, I’m not sure what is it that you’re trying to get out of me. Are you looking for the dirty side of Secrets? Darling, you’re just being naïve. I, Secrets, have always been pure; who has her yellow frock and tangled hair etched in her heart till eternity. It’s only your deceptive and weak mind that forced her to slide her feet into the skyscrapers and tip-toe in her castle of mind.”

So, are you still stuck on the thought of her buying the title in exchange of her virginity?

Psst! It has nothing to do with sex.