MEAT TIMMY

Kanika knew she was being followed. The brown dog wagged its tail and eyed the small bag of meat that Kanika held in her hand. The loose leash scraped the road as the dog walked, salivating heavily. 

She was walking on a small, dark alley. The place smelled rustic and all she could see were closed windows of almost-out-of-work warehouses. There weren’t many people and fewer would probably enter, considering the fact that there were no streetlights and the sun was setting faster, as if it had a bet that it would set before the moon showed up.

 She had chosen this route as it was a short-cut to her house and she was already late for her evening call with her friends. But she was already regretting this poor prioritizing of her call potentially over her life. She eyed a couple boxes lying astray on the side of the road. She thought she could see a pair of eyes looking at her from the box. 

Was there more than one person?

 Would she be attacked from more than one direction?

When the coffee brown cat decided to leave its comfortable refuge and come out of the box, Kanika almost leapt out of her skin. The frightened and completely confused cat fled. 

Kanika felt extremely stupid. She kept walking, doing her best to maintain a steady pace. She had clearly alerted her follower of her knowledge about their presence. 

She felt her feet move slower and her heartbeat quicken. The exact opposite combination of what she was trying to achieve, she tried to collect her thoughts.

What could they possibly want from her? 

Money? 

All she had were a few hundred rupees in her purse and her mobile. She knew that if the assailant was after her money and that only, she would be more than happy to oblige and throw the money at their face. Her life was worth a lot more than that. 

She was almost sure that her follower could hear her heart thumping too. Tears started to form on the corner of her eyes, she was too young to die. She did not want to turn around. Neither did she want to be face to face with her potential killer nor did she want to challenge them to do anything drastic. 

Her brain tried to go back to all those classes her school had forced on her about how to protect oneself while in a potentially unsafe situation. They had thought her about how to protect herself by using only her hands as her weapons. She tried hard to think of what the teacher had told them about being attacked from the back but all she could remember was the movement of the teacher’s lips. It was all on mute. 

She could see the end of the alley barely a few hundred meters away. After that, she would be on the main road with scores of other people. She would be safe. No sane person would want to attack a young girl with so many people as eyewitnesses, even if nothing else. 

She seriously considered sprinting, after all she had been in the athletic team in school. But her already terrified legs refused to take her at a pace that was considered anything but slow. The tears had made their way to her chin. A small drop fell to the ground. She was positive that her follower had heard the drop fall on the perfectly calm and silent night. 

She could hear the rhythmic step of her follower. Whoever they were, they were closing in on the steps. She thought she could hear more than one pair of feet. 

Two assailants?

She heard them panting, how long had they been following her for?

She felt slightly relieved at the fact that her follower was either tired or really old. Maybe she did have the upper hand. She could see herself closer to the end of the alley. She reprimanded herself for making the stupidest and possibly the last decision of her life. She saw the bag of meat in her hand. She felt tears again when she realised that she possibly wouldn’t live to cook it. 

She suddenly heard the sound of running feet, not in the alley but on the main road she had been on before entering the alley. How she wished she had stayed on that road. She heard the feet enter the alley.

A sudden burst of energy overpowered her melancholic brain which was being marinated in remorse and self-pity and she made a dash for it. 

She was no longer being followed by just a couple old men but by a pair of strong feet that had just decided, out of the blue, to enter the exact alley she was in. She covered more distance in the ten seconds she ran than she had in the past seven minutes of her walk in the alley. The tears were pouring down her face but she ignored it and ran like her life depended on it. The heck, it probably did.

A sudden booming voice made her stop in her tracks and drop all her belongings.

“Stop, that is enough following for one day.”

She cried to herself, the police were here. Her followers had been caught and would hopefully be put behind bars. She turned around and saw the still salivating dog, with its tail between its legs. It was staring at its master who was also sweating and breathing hard.

Kanika continued to cry and the master made her way to Kanika.

“Are you okay. You look scared. Did Timmy give you a tough time?” she asked. 

The dog had made its way to the bag of meat and was sniffing it.

“Bad doggy. Get away from the young lady.”

The dog obediently moved away.

The master helped Kanika up to her feet.

“I can’t believe I have been scared out of my wits by him,” said Kanika. 

She forced a little laugh and made her way to the dog and petted him.

“For all the trouble he’s been to, I think he should have my meat,” said Kanika and handed the dog the meat.