I Never Killed Him

Suspense Short Story – I Never Killed Him
Photo credit: lisasolonynko from morguefile.com

It is a story of 2 boys studying in the same college living in the hostel sharing the same room. One college day the teacher announces a tour to the forest for studying the wildlife over there. They both are quite excited and give their names for the excursion. They both are very close friends & know each other well.The tour is to inculcate team learning of a group of 2 or 3 members to help solve problems more effectively and build leadership. They both stay away from other group of boys because they are dedicated to their studies & mostly other boys are interested in girls. The same nature of both of them was a solid reason for their close friendship like 2 brothers.

The day comes when they are out for a trip to forest. They reach out there and start camping. The whole day moves out in clicking the photographs of the animals, trees, birds & all flora & fauna around. At the evening they lay out their tent and light bonfire enjoying the natural beauty around eating snacks which they have brought with themselves. The other colleagues choose a different area for laying out their tent but they remain in contact with their walky talky.

It’s now late at night. Praveen & Mukesh lie down in their tents and go to sleep. Praveen suddenly wakes up from his sleep on hearing the sound of moving water or river. He is quite inquisitive about it and he leaves Mukesh sleeping in his tent taking a torch & walky talky with him. He keeps on moving towards the sound in the dark. After walking for a kilometer he can see a waterfall in-front of him. He goes & drinks water from it & searches the nearby area.He can see a cave like structure with a big rock covering it. He marks that place by leaving his shirt over there & decides to come back tomorrow & invade that place with Mukesh. He then goes back to his tent & goes to sleep without disturbing his friend & his friend unknown of  his discovery.

The next morning as soon as he gets up, he tells all his story to his friend & they both get ready to invade that place. They take all necessary accessories with them. Praveen guides his friend to that place. They reach there & stand in-front of the rock bearing the shirt & covering the opening of a cave. They both remove the rock & enter into the cave finding pots of jewellery kept in-front of their eyes.They can see thousands of precious necklaces, rings, bangles & all other jewellery made of gold, silver & diamond. They cannot believe their eyes &  Mukesh suddenly gets attracted to a ring which was kept in the middle of the treasure but had a stone which was too beautiful to describe.

He cannot keep himself away from wearing it . As soon as he wears it negative thoughts surround him and gets entangled into them.  He starts thinking evil of  him. Greed for the whole treasure starts developing in his mind. Those feelings are so intense that he cannot stop himself and stabs his friend with his knife.  He strikes him 2 to 3 times. Praveen before falling on the ground takes that ring out of his finger. He lays down in a pool of blood taking his last breath.

Mukesh cannot believe himself. He cannot kill his brother like friend just for the greed of a treasure. He was speechless, full of repentance , guilt and has no words to say to his dying friend. Only his eyes full of tears speak and curse the moment he wore that ring.

All his friends & teachers are now searching for Mukesh & Praveen. Where are they?  After searching the whole day they reach that place where they see Mukesh covered with blood holding his friend’s corpse in his own hand & is unwilling to leave it. They call the forest officer & police to part him from his dead friend who will start decaying soon. They also find the knife & the ring near Praveen’s body but cannot chalk out anything .

Mukesh only saying ” I never killed him”.

That pain of his misdeed still haunts him even he did it ignorantly. He has now been sent to mental asylum and that treasure is under government’s custody. Still all people are living with a hope that one day they will get to know the reason behind Praveen’s murder and Mukesh will get well soon to narrate the whole incident in his own words. If he did not kill Praveen then who killed him?

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