Chapter 23 | Her
The paint from his face is draining in the rain, creating an abstract so beautiful, it’s almost impossible to see the monster beneath it anymore.
But the more the colors wash away, the faster his cover is falling. I feel like I’ll end up in a heart attack by tonight.
The sounds of a roaring thunder; the downpour sounding ominous, in the sinister darkness that surrounds this place. And the unholy man standing before me.
Time is almost absolutely still; while he transforms from the man I’ve hated for so long, to the man that I might end up hating more.
I slowly watch the most dreadful mystery of the decade unfurl; and frankly, it’s way too much for me to handle.
And then he drops the bomb, I have been cowering away from; snatching away the modulator distorting his real voice.
His real voice. Unfortunately...
Horror holding me in a death stare as he speaks, “I am Nakshatra. Your landlord... your stalker... your lover. And your Nakul.”
He walks towards me as he invades the deepest corners of my soul; places that used to feel safe. And brings me face to face with the fear I have been hiding within me for ten years.
My eyes are fixated on the paint ridden places on his face as he rubs a hand down the rest of it – revealing everything I shouldn’t have known; for the sake of my heart at the very least.
His face!Only with the crazy eyes; those unusually greyish white and the monster’s demeanor lurking behind them.
And I can’t look at him the way I ever did again. This changes everything; everything between us.
My breathing has paced at a deadly rate matching my heart, which is now on the verge of bursting its way out of my chest and falling to the ground; like a fish flapping its tail – craving to make its way back into the water.
Tears roll down my eyes as I take a few steps backwards, just to create some sense of safe distance with the psychopath, before making a run for it.
My mind is not being fueled by logic like it mostly is. The fright of getting lost or dying is not more than the fear of this beast trapped in the body of a man who has been chasing me through these years. I am no more running from him, I am running away from everything that he can say, everything that I don’t want to hear.
My mind is replaying every detail as I hurriedly make my way inside the thick vegetation, bombarding me with ugly dreadful memories from every corner of my mind.
The logical part of my brain is connecting the dots... how everything started after I first saw him through the window of my school bus. Yes, it all started only after that. I never had a problem before that.
But it never occurred to me that it could be the guy who followed me the next day to school. I had in fact assumed in the beginning that those gifts were not meant for me until I started receiving them customized to my name. In school... at the tuitions... and even in my home mail box.
There were gifts – sweet like a lover’s, and despicable like a lunatic’s, all throughout my last years of schooling. There were flowers and chocolates, valentine hampers, plush toys and what not. The more I dumped those, the weirder it got when they reappeared.
The silly ones were soon replaced with expensive ordeals to hide from my parents; especially since I had no way to return them back. Delicate pieces of jewelry to suggestive ones.
The night still gives me shivers, when I found another present in my mail box – containing a thigh chain. It was an embellished beautiful piece but boy – that was inappropriate. It was very late, but since my family was out of town and most of the neighbors were on a holiday, I was somewhat feeling more courageous than usual.
So, I went out in the open and voiced my opinion about the stupid gift. And my hate speech was heard by the targeted audience, because he was pissed; pissed enough to keep the landline ringing the entire night.
Pissed enough to leave a collar in my mailbox the next morning. The note beside it was more terrifying than the black leather or the golden chains. Be polite with that tongue next time, or I could find another use to it!
But that also opened a gate to our one-way conversation, and messages and notes started appearing everywhere. All of them clearly had my name on it.
The letters were nothing like sweet talks young boys would do at that time; as that was the most obvious when it came to my expectation of this lurker. The morbid imaginations of bondage and sodomy directed towards me were all inked, like this guy had poured all the malicious contents of his darkness on paper.
Even Apeksha was horrified at the degree of his descriptiveness; when she was way ahead of me when it came to relationships, whether emotional or physical.
But by that time, I had the option to run away from him. So, I left for college and went to an entirely new state, quite sure that the drama would soon cease.
But did that stop him from breaching my privacy or taking a hold of my decisions? No. Obviously, because he was practically everywhere I went.
He did stop the audacious notes but then photographs were my next worst things. Me having lunch at the canteen, me sipping coffee with a friend, that one time our friend group went camping to a nearby hillside. Even times when I sat in the balcony of my hostel room on a phone call with mom or reading a book.
I was receiving roses and cards every month making an impression within my gang that my long-distance boyfriend was a loving and caring one, and I had no option than to play along. If only they knew.
Even though I knew the right thing should be to contact the authorities, I never found the courage to risk my public image in front of our community. Plus, the guy never disclosed his identity or attacked me directly.
Apeksha suggested me to do the right thing. But the mental strain my parents were putting me through regarding my image and future marriage prospects was working; and that alone led me to never even considering reporting these which gave him an edge over me.
I was sort of convinced that a change in my relationship status would do the trick and scare him away. So, I said yes to the best option available to me during the sophomore year of college. But what happened next was bizarre.
This guy I started dating disappeared one night. People said he was expelled from college and was told to leave overnight. He was being rumored to have been caught with a substantial amount of dope material in his hostel room. Later, the guy was found dead after an overdose of a local synthetic drug, in his farmhouse at the outskirt of the city.
But that was enough to discourage me thoroughly about dating in general, especially because I felt that I somehow magically attract the worst of men.
Not that I did not try again, but I guess bad luck loves biting me in the ass; because they almost always ended up in the guy simply leaving college, disappearing from the history of earth eventually. It cannot be a coincidence I’ve never heard about them or saw them on any social media platform ever after college.
And now finally when I finally met the man of my dreams, the guy I hopelessly fell in love with, and who made me feel protected for the first time in my life; he ends up being the deranged psychopath himself. And that wrecks my world forever. Forever.
I have absolutely zero things to talk to him about. All I can think of right now is getting as far away from him as possible.
My feet are stepping on pools of mud and dirt on the ground, making them paint the exposed part of my legs, as I hurry into the forest to hide myself form the unusually calm ghost chasing behind me. Does he know where I am?
“You sure you want to run, sweetheart? Because I practically know every nook and corner in this area by heart,” He calls for me loudly before humming lowly, “Haven’t you learned; there’s no hiding from me.”
I muffle my sobs with the palm of my hands, as I run ahead feeling a gush of fresh air from the direction ahead. Meaning there should be a water body somewhere around. It also means that there could be a road beside it; because there has been a road beside every pond and lake, we crossed on our way here.
When I reach the end of the lush vegetation, my eyes widen at the view before me. Ahead, sits a lake not too big, but by the looks of it – it definitely must be really deep. It looks dangerous too, with the heavy rain and gloominess over it. But do I have another option!
I make my way through the end of the tree line and through the sandy shore, when something cracks beneath my feet. No time to look down, I need a way out of this hell. The sound churns my stomach but I continue moving when I feel another crack below my other feet. And then, another. I can’t help myself from looking at this point.
But the moment I look down, regret fills my throat instantly. Beneath my feet – are bones. Big ones; seemingly from an animal’s rib cage. But the look ahead is worse.
There are numerous bones scattered all over. And most of them don’t look different from what we normally see on an x-ray. They were humans... I might puke, now!
That’s when I hear him shout again, “Don’t go near the lake, babe. You don’t want to find out what Cookie and her family is having for dinner tonight.”
What the f kind of puzzles does he keep just casually tossing. And what makes him think I’ll be interested in solving them.
And who’s cookie? And why would it bother me what they’re having for dinner tonight? And why would she be living near this creepy lake?
But my instincts tell me to take his threat more logically than I want to; he, for a fact, knows this place way better than I do. There could be potential dangers lurking in this darkness; so, I stand very still behind a thick trunk hoping he does not find me.
Footsteps approach me from every direction as it is hard to tell because of the sound of heavy rainfall on the vegetation behind me. They die right before I could make out where the sounds came from.
Something falls on my right shoulder right then, and the fact that my mind is imagining horrible creatures at this point – is making it so much harder to contain the rising scream inside my throat. Then the worst possible thing happens; that thing suddenly comes to life and starts creeping down my body – ever so slowly; hissing – as I realize what it is. A SNAKE!
I scream in panic trying to lose it; making desperate attempts to somehow remove it from clinging to my body. That’s when my body hits something hard; like walking into the tree right behind me.
In that moment every single logic in my head is drowning in the fear of the unknown.
Is it cookie? Who is cookie? Is she the jungle monster and am I her dinner for tonight?
As if reading my thoughts – his voice answers, “Cookie is my pet crocodile – and she’ll have your friend for dinner tonight.”
My blood runs cold at the revelation.
Dipping his head to my ear he whispers behind me, “As for you, only I’m allowed to have you for dinner, muffin.”
I open my mouth to scream again, but he tackles my arms behind me with one strong muscular hand; shutting my screams with the other.
“No one is going to hear those screams, so you better shut up and I may end up with only an appetizer. And not a full-blown main course the way I imagined before.”
It’s sad how his threats seem to paralyze me now, when we are in a setting where there literally is no escaping from him. My muscles relax making him chuckle, “See, how easy it is to follow a simple instruction. It makes your life a lot easier.”
He picks me up on his shoulder as I hide my face with my hands, muffling the curses escaping my mouth. Tears of defeat run down invisible as raindrops wash my face. What breaks my heart is that he feels so unapologetic and harsh, as he walks with me victoriously back to his cabin.
He stops in front of the porch, and lowers me to my feet before grabbing me by the neck, “Next time when you run towards that lake, I’ll make sure to throw you in the water – so you can learn what to avoid when having a walk in the jungle.”
He only releases my throat when I start choking, but I return it with a slap, “I am not afraid of you, dickhead. It’s just that I’m ready to fall prey to any animal – other than you.”
The look on his face is unreadable before he smirks again, “See! That’s the thing... you never learn,” whispering in a deadly tone, “Only I get to prey on you, sweetheart.”
Pushing me to the muddy ground, he falls on his knees and snarls, “I was sorry for treating you the way I did before, but you just proved that you love getting brutalized by me.”
My efforts of getting back up are met with resistance as he pins my hands like every single time before.
“I want you to remember muffin, you asked for it,” as he crashes his lips on mine with such a force that it pushes my head further into the muddy ground.
The snake never left – it’s crawling beneath me... I need to get up! I need to get up fast!
I have no clue if I am experiencing the pain or is it all in my head; but the sensation of a moving crawling organism beneath me is over-shadowing every other thought in my mind.
There is no way I can control the speeding that my heart is going through.
Even the abuse on my lips is in no way threatening me compared to the swift movements I am feeling beneath me, wrapping around my hand, threading in my hair. Everywhere. They are creeping everywhere. And I may die drowning in this little puddle of mud, if I don’t get up.
I squirm and pant to release my lips and speak. But then he is pressing me further into it. His force on me is increasing with every struggle my body is making to free myself.
I can feel lightheadedness grow stronger, as the smell of sweat mixes with the fading petrichor; making their way down my cheek and ears, eventually falling in the swamp I am being buried alive in. The gasps are contracting my lungs to the point that I feel like losing every ounce of oxygen in my body until everything around me is dizzy.
Everything around me is fading into the dark when the pressure on my wrists is decreasing. The last thing I could process before my head starts spinning, is his eyes searching mine.
Questioning eyes; like he wants to know if this is just a trick to make him release me, or am I really in despair.
But I guess it’s too late for that, because as much as I want to see him worried just like he always did, my vision goes dark.
Mud everywhere.
Creeps all around me.