Suspense Story – Nightmare on 18th June Road
Photo credit: wintersixfour from morguefile.com
It is a sunny morning; Robert Pereira, a retired Army Colonel enters the Bank of India to close his savings account and withdraw his entire deposits of 4,90,896.50 Rupees. He scribbles on the withdrawal slip; nervous and fidgety, he waits eagerly for his turn before he slides in the slip at the counter. The cashier click-clacks on the computer in front of him, looking at the Colonel with quizzical eyes.
“You want all of it, Sir?”
A dour faced Pereira replies, “Yes.”
The cashier hands him a round number of 4,90,896 Rupees, but Pereira insists on receiving the remaining 50 paisa and walks out once he gets the coin.
At home, Pereira shoves into his pocket, a hunting knife from the store room.
At approximately two o’clock in the afternoon, Pereira goes to the No.7, Ritinha Apartments building on 18th June Road. He enters apartment 404, where Ms. Nora Fernandes lived together with her fourteen year-old daughter Claudia whom he had given tuitions in Physics and Chemistry, as well as her eleven year-old son Julius, and a friend of the latter. Besides Nora and her daughter nobody was at home at that time. Pereira gags and handcuffs Nora and fatally stabs her four times with the knife on the couch in the living room. He also retches Claudia, binds her hands and feet, before stabbing her twenty-two times and leaving her dead on the bed.
At four o’clock Pereira returns home. The Colonel shared his apartment with his mother and wife on the same road. At about half past five, after a heated argument with his mother, he walks up behind his wife Rita and kills her with a single stab to the back of the neck with the knife, wraps her body in newspapers, sprinkling it with gasoline and sets it on fire.
Pereira then carries his gun; a 32-calibre revolver along with 100 rounds of ammunition which he owned and was intended for the officer’s self defense, along with his hunting knife in a briefcase. He runs through the apartment complex screaming “Fire… Fire!” He goes downstairs and rings the bell at apartment 301, where students Mona and Leena were living, saying that he needed to call the fire department. As soon as they opened the door he kills both the women with single shots to the head and then proceeds to apartment 302, where he does the same with Ms.Gloria, who had been alarmed by the shooting and had opened the door to investigate.
Pereira then heads down to the first floor where he rings at apartment 101, again pretending that he needed to call the fire department. The apartment was occupied by three women, Mrs.Ribeiro who saves her life by jumping out into the courtyard; and her daughters who were also his students, Ileana and Isabel. They are all shot. Ileana who had already picked up the telephone receiver to call the police and Isabel who tries to defend herself both die at the scene.
Outside the building he stares for a couple of minutes at a Hollywood movie poster; he notes the timings of the show in his phone. Meanwhile Mrs.Ribeiro stops a police patrol seeking help. Noticing the fire on the fourth floor, the officers respond that this is more a case for firefighters and therefore they do not intervene.
Pereira eventually leaves for flat number 201 at the Ritinha Apartments, where the D’souza family was living, with whom he is friends for five years. He arrives there about fifteen minutes later in a rather agitated state. Against his habit of being a man of rather few words, he talks incessantly, reiterates sentences several times and paces through the living room.
“Robert, make your-self comfortable, come sit down here, please,” asks a kind Mrs. D’Souza offering him a warm cup of tea.
He declines Mrs.D’Souza’s invitations to sit down. He tells her that he was there to bid farewell, as he had bought a one way ticket to Europe and that he would move to USA from there.
At 6 pm, he leaves the D’Souza’s assuring them that they would soon hear from him, and goes to the Little Italy Restaurant near the church; a little away from Ritinha apartments on the same road, where he ate frequently, discarding the hunting knife on his way in a garbage bin on the corner of the road. By this time police and journalists were searching for the murderer throughout the city.
He arrives at the restaurant at around 7.30 pm. Greets the waiters, and orders half a bottle of red wine and Spaghetti alla Bolognese The stewards notice that during his meal he goes to the restroom several times. After finishing his meal he starts reading a Fashion magazine, orders two screwdrivers, and pays his bill. After drinking a third vodka at around quarter past eight he sits down at the bar to have a fourth.
At about quarter past nine, Pereira opens fire on the diners. He shoots a total of thirty-two people, twenty of them fatally, before the police arrive ten minutes later. He uses the method of cornering his victim and shooting them at point-blank range in the forehead and then moving on to the next victim. Colonel promised himself not to kill any children, but he accidentally kills a six-year-old girl sitting at an adjacent table when his pistol misfires.
When police arrive at the scene Pereira turns his attention to them, holding them off for one minute before he gets behind the bar counter and the police officers start exchanging fire with him.. There are bullet shots all over. He ducks, bullets whiz past his face, he could now smell the gun powder. He has been triumphant so far, but just when he is about to reload his gun, thud! He gets one shot on his temple… His heart is pounding, he can’t breathe, he is turning blind, and he loses his sense of smell and sound… collapses off to the ground… before he hears a …
BEEP..BEEP..BEEP…BEEP..BEEP..BEEP…BEEP..BEEP..BEEP…!!!!!
The Alarm Clock goes off with a “Sencha” tone, loud enough to wake up the neighbors. Its 7 ‘o’ clock in the morning. Rita in her night robe asks her husband to wake up.
“Let’s go for a walk, you have been talking and twitching in your sleep all night!” she says.
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