I am a failure.
I looked at the sun that was now setting, pulled into the depths of the unknown, each pull painting the sky in an explosion of yellows, reds and pinks, a sight that would usually have me looking at it open – mouthed. But today it looked as bland as the walls of my room.
I am a disaster.
The sight of panipuris, whose smell alone had the power to drag me towards the roadside stall to experience the taste of the succulent crisps, which the minute you put into your mouth exploded into sourness, sweetness and spiciness at once, creating a riot of flavors, with the melodious rhythmic sound of crunching adding to the pleasure. But today, the smell hardly pricked my senses.
I am a disappointment.
The bastards had fired me. For decades they had me live through sleepless nights, made me run behind criminals, stolen my credit, and yet they preferred a murderer’s statement above my own. Now I knew how used plastic cups of chai felt when they were disposed.
I had been a detective, and a very reputed one in our Department. So it was no surprise that they had recruited me to investigate a chain of murders that now haunted the town.
The first crime scene I had gone to was… grotesque. The victim was ripped apart, blood adorning every corner of the room. His head was ripped from the body, the chest torn open to show his heart and his trachea. The murderer felt hardly human, he was more like an animal, an animal who made sure to leave no prints. Hadn’t the victim been in his room, we weren’t sure if we could have identified him. Yet in spite of so much blood, the murderer had effortlessly entered and exited the scene.
The exercise of periodically entering and exiting the room seemed fruitless, because the killer had been very careful. It seemed that before he entered the room he was human, thinking logically, moving not like a savage attracted to blood, but as a criminal in whose every step he planned how to execute his devious plan. But the minute he closed that door behind him, he had let free a chthonian monster from the darkness and unleashed it onto the unsuspecting tenant. A Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll scenario.
The sole case alone had no clues, and I needed a second case of similar atrocities to detect the pattern. After all you need two points to know where a line is headed, and with respect to the man’s lust for blood, I knew that the second point would soon materialize. And I was right.
The murderer had struck another man in his apartment. A businessman again, the room devoid of any evidence. And I certainly saw a pattern here. The killer, whoever he was, had an insatiable lust to blood. The room had no evidence left by the killer, hinting that he wasn’t amusing the public with his displays of violence, but instead he came here to rid his thirst of blood. But before the murderer had another bout of thirst haunting him, I would have him behind bars.
I did my research, and at first it was vague, more blurred than a politician’s agenda. But clarity came with time, and though the killer was not known in the actual world, it was clear he controlled an empire in the underworld, and was known as Mr. Murderer, though most of his men admitted not having seen him, even after being beaten hanging upside down and undergoing periodic sessions of waterboarding. Either they are speaking the truth, or they do fear him a lot.
The sudden breakthrough came with a price. I knew my boring and lonely life would be disturbed soon by a person, the same person who hid in him a chthonian monster. Even when I tucked myself into bed, a Glock would rest under the pillow. I don’t know when or where he would make his appearance, but I knew that by progressing in this case I had done one thing.
Scheduled an early meeting with Death.
It must have been midnight, when I woke up feeling there was someone else in my room. More specifically on my bed. Though I pretended to sleep, my blood raced through the veins, my breathing catching up with it. He could be holding a knife right now, or a gun, or some weapon. My hands slowly reached for my own gun, making it look like the movements of a man lost deeply in slumber. From whatever I had gathered, I never thought the killer could have such control over his inner monster, for he could have ripped me apart the minute he entered my room. Those thoughts blended into my blood more terror, and it flowed more vigorously through my body. My fingers soon felt that comforting ice cold metal under the pillow…
‘I know you are awake.’
Like a stretched spring, I unwounded myself, having the gun pointed to the murderer. But he was calm, for he never even blinked throughout the whole action. Wait a minute.
It is a she.
Perhaps she could read my thoughts, because at that instant her calm lips widened into a grin, elevating horror in the already horrific atmosphere. Her voice, a gentle whisper, broke through the tension. ‘First of all this is no way to greet a guest. Secondly an unloaded gun is useless.’
A quick check proved she was right. She must have read my thoughts, for she said ‘I had hired a pickpocket to do that.’
‘Why do you want to kill me?’
‘Kill you? I would have done that the minute I had walked in through that door. I just want you to clear off the case. I have connections, and I can make sure your decision would never affect your job.’
‘I don’t negotiate with criminals.’
‘You call me a criminal!’ her once gentle appearance began to lose its cool. ‘Those bastards I had ripped, those were criminals. They were worth together thousand years of imprisonment, but their crimes were shaded by their wealth. And I brought justice, justice that your government could never offer. And now I am the criminal?’
Her face was fuming, and I felt the urge to distract her, lest I wished to fall as her next victim.
‘How do you do it?’
Her once frustrated face morphed into a sly grin. ‘I make sure I disable the security system. I attack him on weekend nights, when he is drunk…’ as she was lost in the description of her cruelty, my hands slowly fumbled for the voice recorder in the phone. ‘And then I creep upon him, close the door behind me’ the grin slowly grew wider and wider as she stepped into the gruesome details ‘and then I go for his neck, and when he is almost breathless, I tear him apart with my nails’
Is the recorder switched on, my mind asked me, and I didn’t think it was good idea to take a glance and break the eye contact. ‘Then I rip him inside out, I scourge through his guts, I rip his blooded heart out, separate the arteries and veins…’
Is the recorder switched on? My eyes broke the contact.
‘then I scratch his throat, and… are you recording me?’
‘No, I was…’ before I had finished, she had flung herself upon me, and we crashed onto the table before falling on the floor. Her hands clutched at my throat, my hands and legs flailing as I tried to remove her iron like hands.
You are dying…
She might be a woman, but the strength with which she gripped me was unexpected for a woman her stature. My hands struggled to remove the grip off my neck. A vague darkness stung from the corner of my eyes, and the grip continued to bury me into it.
You are dying…
I could hear my heartbeats, feel the blood course down my veins. My hands struggled with hers, and for a second, my eyes met hers. Those eyes… they never were human, they belonged to a monster, and in those eyes were lifeless, merciless, as if it could only see and spread evil. My blood dropped, heartbeats growing slower and slower, while the dark cloud in my eye diffused into my vision.
You are dying…
No I am not.
A sudden surge of energy itself into my blood, and threw her off me. My lungs embraced the fresh air like an old friend, the dark cloud subsided back into its corner, the blood ran free through the alleys and nooks of my veins. For the first time in my life, I had finally appreciated living.
But before I could shower life with compliments, she had jumped on me again.
Do I look like a fricking trampoline dude?
Her hands found its former position in my neck, and she choked me again.
Think.
Instead of absentmindedly beating my limbs around, I looked around, and my favorite tea cup caught my eye. Through the bouts of gargle and groans I made to satisfy the monster, my hands slowly crept to the mug. I swung it on her head. A melodious shatter was heard after which shards of glasses rained on top of us. Leaping up to my feet, I dragged the beast out of my room before it could wake up from its daze. I hardly reached the door when her monster rose again, but before she hurled herself at me, I summoned all my strength and pushed the beast out the door and slammed it shut.
The beast banged at the door with tremendous strength that the ground beneath me quivered, the locks and me almost failing to block her entry.
But with time the blows grew weak, and soon subsided into nothing. She was gone. But my mind didn’t say the same.
She shall return. And she shall succeed then.
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