A dish served cold?

I stared at the funeral pyre.

Life sure is funny,I thought.

Just a few days ago,that corpse was a person like me. A living,breathing person. A person with aspirations and feelings. A person who had a family to feed. Probably daughters to marry.

I killed that person.

I am a killer.

People go to colleges,get degrees, then get a job. Then they work.

I kill.

He had begged for his life.

The words coming out of my mouth sound so ridiculous, I could not help but laugh out loud.

People stared at me.

I stared back.

I looked around. A woman,which I presume was his wife,was crying inconsolably.

It doesn’t matter, I thought. They will mourn for a few days, And that’s it. Life will continue as always. His family will continue to live.

Continue to have an insignificant, meaningless existence.

What was I doing here,of all places,you would ask,showing up at the funeral of the person I killed?

Well, I was here for my other half of the money.

I don’t know why, but I felt very weird. Was it guilt?

After all these years of killing without remorse, It seemed as if I had finally reached my limit.

I was very surprised.

Really,I was.

 

It all began 12 years ago.

My father was the village headman. He had sacrificed so much for the betterment of the village. At his level of education he could have easily been an officer in the municipality office.

But obviously, his meddling in the village affairs was not acceptable to a particular group of people.

It was a Thursday.

My brother and I had gone to the city to watch a movie.We were film fanatics.

When we came back we saw the villagers gathered near our house.

The courtyard was smeared with blood.

My entire family of 5, except for me and my brother, had been massacred.

My brother cried his heart out.

I did not shed a tear.

Instead, I was fascinated. Fascinated by the reddish hue of blood. The tingly smell of it.

Blood. Blood everywhere.

Of course,There was no evidence. None whatsoever.

But I knew. I knew exactly the people who were behind this.

And to me,That is all that mattered.

I swore to take revenge.

It seems fantastic, all this. Almost as if it were a script for a movie. See,when you see movies like this you wouldn’t really imagine that these things might actually happen to you.

But it did.It happened to me.

 

We got admitted into an orphanage.

The warden of the orphanage was an ex-convict.

I told him my story. I asked him to teach me how to fight and kill.

He agreed. He taught me everything he knew. The pressure points in the body, How to manipulate people, How to approach a person without alarming him. And how to be cold enough to stab a person looking him in the eye.

It took me 3 years.

During that time all I saw day, morning and night, was the death of the people responsible for my family’s death. I embraced the darkness in my heart. I couldn’t live with myself, knowing that these people were roaming around freely, unpunished for the dastardly deed they had committed.

I did not believe in God.Or Karma.I shall give them what they deserve. In this life itself.

And that fateful day finally arrived.

This was a Thursday too. I hadn’t planned for this to occur on a Thursday.

you would say that it was fate.

I smirked. I did not believe in fate either.

The three of them were eating dinner at a dhaba. I came in, wielding a big knife in my hand. In plain sight.

When the first one saw me coming,his eyes widened. I killed him first. I snapped the other guy’s neck. The third one tried to escape. I pinned him down and slashed his throat. People around me screamed.

I was covered in blood.

I had thought that this moment will be my redemption.I would be finally free of my burden.

But it didn’t happen.

Suddenly, I felt horrified. I was scared. Not at the blood. But at a simple fact.

It was at this moment that i realized that…

 

“Hey”,somebody whispered.

I looked to my left.The fact that somebody had snuck up on me infuriated me to no end.

“Here is the other half. As decided”.He handed over a small package.

“And this,is your next assignment”. He gave me a manila folder.

I took the folder.It was red in colour.

Blood  red.

That day, I realized that once you have killed,You never stop.

Maybe you don’t want to.

Maybe you never will.

–END–