Retribution

“Ah…” I shot out of the bathroom half naked with a scream of terror.

My drenched legs couldn’t keep up with my pace. The luxurious marble floor in the bedroom made things doubly difficult. Before I knew it, my legs gave way. I was about to land on my back. Just in time, out of nowhere, a strong, sinewy arm came in between and blocked my fall.

He lifted me as if I was a 2-year-old and placed me on the tip of the bed.

“What happened dear?” he asked with concern.

I looked up at his long oval shaped face. His presence was enough for me to heave a sigh of relief. I pointed towards the bathroom. With great difficulty, I murmured: “Sppp…spider”

He rolled his eyes as if he could not believe all this ruckus was just because of a spider. “Oh come on, Meera, you can do better than that.”

His condescending tone didn’t amuse me. After all, this was not the tone for a 10 year old girl.

He took a towel from the hanger and gave it to me. But before I could towel myself, he motioned me to follow him to the bathroom. I wanted to refuse, but as always, I wasn’t able to do that. He had that knack of making people obey him. I followed him to the bathroom hesitantly.

Once both of us were inside, he asked: “Where is it?”

I pointed to the shower pipe. There was a huge hairy spider on the wall right next to the pipe. It was standing still, ready to pounce upon its victim.

He smiled and walked to the wall. Once near the pipe, he easily reached out to the spider. He knocked it down with a swift motion of his fingers. The spider landed on the drenched bathroom floor.

He kneeled down and took one of his slippers in his hand. He then turned towards me and extended the slipper.

He said: “Come on, kill it”

I was shocked. “No, Dad, I can’t. Please, you do it.”

 “No, you have to deal with it, come on”, he was adamant.

I hesitantly took the slipper from him but couldn’t make myself up to kill it.

“Come on, do it now”, he ordered.

As if in a trance, I hunched down and closed my eyes. My hands behaved as if they were obeying him directly and not me. The slipper landed right on top of the unfortunate spider with a thud. Before even realizing it, the spider became a black stain on the bathroom floor.

When I opened my eyes, he was near me. He threw his arms around me and whispered in my ear.

“That’s my toughie”

Water dripped down from the bathroom pipe as if in sync with the tears rolling down my cheeks.

All of a sudden, the bathroom pipe broke and a heavy stream of water shot out. The roof disappeared suddenly and rain came down in its full might. The water level went up in a jiffy and I found myself floating in damp dirty water, the water as black as the now visible sky above.

With a start, I open my eyes. I find myself lying on my back in a cold dark room. I try to get up, but the throbbing pain inside my head makes me scream and I fall back to my previous position. My entire body hurts, and I have no idea where I am.

Suddenly, there is a noise. A streak of light illuminates the room. I see that the light comes from a door behind me. I can see the silhouette of a man standing at the door. I turn around without trying to get up. My head hurts, but to hell with it. I want to know where I am.

As I turn around, I see a door about four feet away from me. The room that I am in, seem to be a workshop of some sort. There are many dark objects lying in various corners. They look like some machines that are now defunct.

The man at the door stands still. I can’t make out his face, but he seems to be a tall man with a chiseled body. Suddenly, I feel the presence of another one behind the man at the door. The new one stands behind the tall man.

“Who the hell are you? Why am I here? Just..just leave me”. I cried.

No response. This silence is deafening. Both of them just stand there staring at me.

I try to get up again. This time I almost make it, but as I stand on my legs, my head starts spinning and I lose balance. I land on the floor with a thud.

I scream in pain.

They close the door and sends the room into darkness yet again.

I can hear the sound of rain outside. It seems to be getting heavier.

“What do you want? Please come back, please” I wail trying to make myself heard above the din of rain, although I am sure it is pointless.

I realize with a shudder that this isn’t going to end soon. From the way they behave, they don’t seem to be in a hurry. Cold terror grips my entire body.

The rain is relentless. I hear it thrumming on the metal roof and running down the broken pipe into the mud, and I moisten my cracked lips with my tongue. I wonder if they’ll bring me food and water. I wonder if they’re coming at all.

What is this? A kidnap? How did I reach here? I don’t have answers. It’s way too foggy.

No, no, I have to think clearly. I need to keep my presence of mind.

With great difficulty, I get up and sit in a cross legged position. I close my eyes and then try to think.

The pain clouds my memory, but just like flashes of lightning, I can see what happened hours earlier, or was it days earlier?

I was in the bed but wide awake when the phone rang. I was expecting the calling bell to ring, but not the phone. It was almost midnight and Jay was nowhere to be seen. It was late enough to start getting worried.

It was not just that he was later than usual. His phone too hadn’t been reachable for the past two hours. That was never like Jay.

I tried to console myself by telling that it could be a phone disorder or some connectivity issue, but deep inside I was well aware that it was not the case.

May be because of my state of mind, I didn’t even look at the phone when I picked it up. I just murmured a hesitant “Hello”

A hoarse strange voice spoke from the other side. It was breaking and I wasn’t able to hear it clearly. All I could hear was some words. “your husband”, “accident”, “city hospital”, “soon”.

That throbbing pain comes back and my flow of thoughts suddenly gets interrupted. I press my head with both my hands.

I was on my scooter rushing to the hospital. Roads were mostly empty except for some stray dogs who threw a passive glance at the over speeding scooter. My scooter’s headlight struggled hard to pierce through the darkness of the moonless midnight. I took a turn and rode onto the ring road when it happened. A pair of powerful high beam lights blinded me for an instant. I heard the ominous growl of an engine and in a moment, I was up in the air. Then everything blacked out.

Was it an accident? If so, why am I not in a hospital now? What happened to Jay?

I can hear faint murmurs outside the room. Are they coming back?

What if everything was planned? Without second thought I had ventured out into the midnight believing the stranger on the call. What if they pulled off the same ruse with Jay as well?

“Meera, I don’t want you to spoil your life with a worthless piece of shit.” Dad fumed.

He had a really bad temper. None of his employees dared to go near him when he was in a fit of rage. But I was his daughter, the daughter whom he carefully groomed into a toughie. I never bogged down even in front of him. At the age of 23, I was a rebel. But that was no surprise, when someone is so adamant in dictating how you should live your life, you are bound to break free.

Mom left us when I was 10 years old. Not sure if she was already submissive or it was Dad who terrorized her into submission. He always wanted things to go his way.

But he was always nice and gentle to me as long as I obeyed him. He was rich, powerful and I was so proud of him. But ever since I turned 16, things started going downhill. He always treated me like a child. He had opinions about how I should behave, what kind of dresses I should wear, how I should cut my hair and what not.

It was no wonder that he went completely crazy when he knew about my affair with Jay. It was odd, no doubt about it. I, a premium B-School product who was bound to take over my Dad’s business and Jay, the struggling actor who was trying hard to make it big in the movies. Save for a bunch of side roles and some low budget ads, he wasn’t into anything much. Born as the youngest in a dysfunctional family from the outskirts of the city, his pedigree too wasn’t much to be bragged about.

I met him during one of the ads that we were doing for our company. As usual, he was playing a side role that hardly had one or two dialogues. I was in charge of the production but he mistook me for an actress playing the role of a business honcho.

It was fun. We hit off right away. He wasted no time in proposing me. The rebel side of me immediately accepted him as my ticket to freedom.

Dad was in murderous rage when he knew about us. We had fiery arguments, but both of us were not used to giving up.

“You will not even get a penny of mine if you go with that loser bastard”. Dad thundered.

I was nonchalant. After all, I didn’t want anything other than Jay.

Between Dad and me, things went from bad to worse. The final nail in the coffin was Dad’s decision to send his hitmen to muscle Jay out of our relationship.

We eloped two days after that.

A new place, a new beginning; all we wanted was to start afresh. I was confident and happy. Jay was scared of my Dad. But, I consoled him and we started step by step.

I thought it was all going to be good, but how wrong I was.

The door opens and the tall muscular figure walks in. He has a revolver in hand. This is getting dangerous. I need to handle this carefully.

I can’t believe Dad has gone to such lengths.

I stand up and lean on to the wall. As I manage to stand, I quickly get hold of a rusty nail that was lying on the floor and keep it covered inside my left palm.

“Please..let me go, don’t do anything to Jay. I will do what my Dad wants but just ..just don’t hurt Jay, please”

He doesn’t say anything but stands still staring at me with the gun in hand.

The rain too has become as silent as him.

“Don’t you hear me? Please, let me talk to Dad. He will understand.”

He seems to think for a while. With the gun still in hand he takes out a phone from his pocket. He throws it to me.

Oh God, how will I handle this? Will Dad give in if I talk to him? I think I should get out of here first and save Jay.

Once he is out of danger, I will make Dad regret what he has done. I will see to it. After all, I am still his toughie.

I punch in Dad’s number when I suddenly feel the cold barrel of the gun on my forehead. I am shocked to see that the man is holding me at point blank.

He reeks of cheap liquor. He whispers in a hoarse voice: “Ten million is your price, get it from him or you die”

Oh, again I was so wrong. This is a kidnap and they want ransom. Where is Jay?

I gather a bit of courage and say: “I won’t call till I know what happened to Jay”

Irritated, he opens my mouth forcefully and thrusts the gun into it.

“Get it, whore, or you both will die. He is barely alive, it’s just a matter of time. Do it now. Ask for the money and give the phone back to me. I know how to make the douche bag bleed money.”

I nod my head, my eyes bulge out in terror.

Satisfied, he takes the gun out of my mouth and keeps it pointing towards my forehead again.

As I punch in the numbers, I slip the phone deliberately out of my hand. It falls down with a thud. I lean down suddenly to take it. He is surprised and tries to point the gun again at me. In a flash, the rusted nail in my left hand pierces his left leg through his shoe. He moans in pain. With his aim gone, he fires the gun once but it falls down in recoil. I grab it in a flash. In my kneeling position, I aim at his crotch and fire. Blood spurts out and he crashes down with a howl of agony.

He writhes in pain as I hide behind a huge machine kept near the wall. I keep an aim at the open door. As expected, the short man runs into the door and in no time gets a bullet on his chest.

“Clean shot, that’s my toughie”, Dad would have said had he been here as he used to do for my shooting practice sessions.

I wait for some time. The tall one is quite unfortunate, takes his time to bleed himself to death.  The short man takes hardly two minutes. I have always been good at my targets provided I get my position right.

I venture out of the room. It looks like a dilapidated warehouse of some sort with two adjacent rooms. The room I was in is the bigger one. The other room has its lights switched on. It has some chairs, a shelf and a table at one corner of the room. The table has couple of half eaten food packets. There was also a third unopened packet of food. I think they bought it for me.

There is an almost empty liquor bottle at the center of the table and three glasses next to it. Only the third glass is full. Unopened packet of food, a glass of liquor; were they waiting for someone? Is there a third one?

I should be careful. I take a quick look at the shelf. Other than some old newspapers, I don’t see anything significant.

The windows are shuttered and the door is locked from inside. I don’t dare to open the door unless I get a clear idea of what is happening. There is silence outside. I walk back to the dark room.

I walk past the dead bodies and take the mobile from the floor- the same one the tall man gave to me. I open it up. There is no password.

Whom should I call? Dad or Jay? He said Jay was barely alive, where is he? He is not in this building. Is there another place?

I walk back to the shorter one’s body. A thorough search of his body gives me another revolver and a mobile phone. This one has a finger print lock.

His dead finger obeys my command and the mobile is unlocked. I look at the last dialed numbers and then the messages and finally the gallery.

“Oh God, Meera you…are you okay? Thank God”

Jay runs in and puts his arms around me. He is so relieved. He hugs me so tight that I find it hard to breathe.

He keeps blabbering: “I don’t know, oh God, I am so scared, thank God…”

His touch is magical. When he hugs me, I feel I am floating in the air like a feather. I don’t seem to have any control over my body.

This time too, my body goes into submission except for my right hand. Staying in his embrace, my hand snakes up with the revolver firm in its grip. It is as if my hand is not obeying me but my Dad directly. The finger coolly reaches the trigger. The trigger gives in to the pressure and the bullet pierces Jay’s body in a jiffy.

As Jay falls on his back, a look of shock engulfs his handsome face.

You are a good actor Jay. You planned it very well.

You have been doing it for a long time, your extortion racket targeting girls from rich households.

With me, you played the love game. You took me with you and then you wanted ransom from my Dad.

After that..what was your plan Jay? Would you have killed me? I guess yes, because you are a coward, you are afraid of comebacks.

Everything was perfect Jay, except that your latest target was me.

My Dad’s toughie, that’s what I have always been.

Good bye Jay.