Tom Could Never Kill

The alarm on his phone was fifteen minutes away from buzzing, but Tom was already wide awake. Sleep had become a luxury he couldn’t afford anymore, and when the alarm did finally chime from his phone, Tom sluggishly got up from his bed. Another long day ahead to wade through, he thought to himself.

Since Marla had broken up with him, Tom had become an empty shell of a man, it was as if Marla had reached into Tom and grabbed his soul and taken it along with her, leaving him as vacant as his apartment. His endless pleas did not bring her back, neither did the flowers, nor did the letters. When he had exhausted all options of bringing her back, Tom decided to put himself out of his misery, but the means to his end were either painful or needed a doctor’s prescription, or required the false bravado to run a blade through his veins. Why should he be the one to die? He asked himself one day. Shouldn’t it be Andrew? That smooth-talking son-of-a-bitch who had come out of nowhere and taken his Marla away from him?

His Marla, he missed the way she twirled the curls of her hair when she was lost in her thoughts, he missed the way she’d nuzzle her nose against his neck while he was watching the television, he missed the way she’d talk nineteen to the dozen a moment, and fall asleep the very next, he missed the way her hands ran over his hair while he was reading the morning daily, he missed the way they  lay in bed and made conversations out of nothing on a warm Sunday afternoon. And now, it will be Andrew who would have his fingers moving through the curves of her body, it would be Andrew who would listen to her breathe while she slept next to him, her face resting on the rise and fall of his chest. It would be all Andrew, Andrew had to go.

Tom was once a funny, generous and friendly man, today, the only remaining trait left in him was his generosity. Now, he drank generously and mingled selectively. It is perturbing how pointless life becomes when the only person around whom your life used to revolve, leaves you. Tom would only speak until he was spoken to, he wandered the corridors of his office aimlessly like the zombies from that TV show he used to watch along with Marla, curled up on their couch in the living room. During lunchtime his mind would wander to thoughts of torturing Andrew, hurting him while Marla watched, a satisfied smirk would sprout around the corner of his lips, one that would vanish as quickly as it had appeared once his mates prodded him. But that was all those would remain as, thoughts, Tom sighed. Tom wanted to kill, he wanted to make Marla pay for what she had done to him. She had turned him into a rabid dog that wouldn’t stop until it sank its teeth into the flesh of the one it had been faithful to. But, he knew he could never do that to her, he didn’t have the heart to pull the trigger even if he were given a chance to get away with it. His spirit may have been broken, his faith may have been lost, but Tom still had his conscience intact. The truth was simple, Tom could never kill, even if it gave him a sadistic pleasure to hurt the one who had betrayed him. Tom couldn’t kill even out of spite, for Marla’s absence had become too heavy a cross to bear. He couldn’t imagine a future without her, but he had to make her pay.

        ***********

Zeus was skimming through the classifieds section of The Tuesday Daily when he found what he had been looking for, another job that required his special set of skills. It had been a while since he had been employed in a job that had asked for his expertise, he fished for his phone out of his pocket and dialed Handler, as was the norm for jobs such as these. Handler would screen the advertisement, after which he would get in touch with the person who had posted the ad, checking for the veracity of the job and negotiating the payment. After the background check performed and the requirement deemed to be “genuine” the Handler and Zeus would meet in a dingy pub in the suburb to discuss over the when and the how of going about the job.

Zeus never met with his clients, if things went down the crapper the anonymity maintained between Zeus and his clients would make it harder for the law enforcement agencies to trace things back to him. The deal was always taken care of by Handler, who acted as a liaison between Zeus and his client, in this case it was Tom. They had met in a crowded mall-- a cloak and dagger affair--heavily dressed to maintain their anonymity with neither of them wanting to be recognized by the other. Tom had a cap on with shades covering his eyes, and a heavy overcoat covering his slim build. He had taken enough effort to make sure his movie star looks never stood out from the crowd. Handler had been a part of enough such meetings and had come out of them as incognito as he had gone in, yet, his years with the Secret Service had taught him to never be complacent with his appearance, he took pains to look ordinary.

On a cold Wednesday morning, when the only people in the mall were the employees of the stores it housed, they had met each other near the large fountain that lay right in the middle of the sprawling courtyard. Just two middle-aged men, probably unemployed, catching up for a drink too early in the day as they bitched about their wives, and lament on how unfair the world had been to them. But all that happened was a solemn exchange of the envelope which had the pictures of the mark in it, and a piece of paper with the number of a bank account to which the money for the job had to be transferred.

“His office is at the Millennium Towers, he works from Monday to Friday and gets off work at 5.30 in the evening. He carries a brown leather bag to work and has a black Saints cap on, it would be hard to miss. I will wire you half the amount now, the rest will be done once I read about it in the papers.” Tom whispered hoarsely, and then he added “I want it to be done in one clean shot through the head, he should never see it coming.”

“It will be done.” Was all Handler said.

              ***********

It was a Thursday, Zeus had chosen a building under construction as his vantage point. He had been studying his target for a week. His mark was slim-built, with a week’s growth of beard and unkempt hair that needed to be trimmed, he had a set routine, enter at 9 a.m. exit at 5.30 p.m. He would enter Millennium like a man walking his last mile taking each step in trepidation. He would walk in with his shirt tucked in, but it always found a way to sneak out of his waist by the time he got out of work. Zeus had taken pains to set the vantage point, to gauge the right distance from Millennium while aiming at his target, and the escape route through the fire escape. He took cover on the ninth floor of the building. Dressed in a plain sky-blue shirt and cream chinos, with a briefcase that could hold the blueprints to the building but had the unassembled parts of an M25 Sniper Rifle in it instead, Zeus very much looked the part of an architect. He waited patiently for his digital watch to dawdle past 5.30, and when it did, he craned his neck towards the entrance of Millennium as he saw the employees hurriedly file past the entrance.

He took a deep breath and wrapped his finger around the trigger and aimed the rifle toward the exit gate.  He spotted his mark lingering far away from the crowd savoring each step on his way out, like he was in no hurry to go home. Zeus squeezed the trigger when the target was in the center of the crosshairs, the barrel spit a muffled cough as the bullet zipped out and hit its mark.

***********

The Saints cap flew off his head from the impact the bullet had made on his forehead as he dropped his mobile phone and the briefcase. As promised to Tom, he never saw it coming. A moment ago he was trundling toward the parking lot thinking of reasons to go home to an empty apartment, he had nobody waiting for him, no more Marla. And in the very next he lay sprawled to the ground glad that the misery was finally over, as blood oozed from his forehead. The people around him thought the man had a heart attack, but when they saw a man next to the fallen shriek in horror at the bloody mist that had sprayed across his face, it then dawned on them of what had happen.

A phone rang next to the now dead body.

A dazed bystander picked up the phone and pressed the button and held it to his ear.

“It’s done” was all Handler said before he hung up.

This post is part of  A significant turn.. on WriteUpCafe.com<

This is the End.

I feel beginnings are always easy, yes, some amount of planning may go into starting something, but generally once the first step is taken the rest comes easy. One step leads to another, you begin to trundle, then you slowly walk, as you familiarize with the pace you begin to march, and then when you reach a stage where you can control it, you begin to run. But when do you stop? Or more importantly how do you stop? How do you end it?

Endings have always fascinated me, it takes the smallest of efforts to begin something. It takes a “Hello” to build a relationship, a hum to start a tune, a cold stare to instigate a fight, a simple sentence to write a story. But the million dollar question is: Where do you put the full stop? Every time I hear the news of a new big budget movie being released, or of a television series that I keenly follow entering its final season, it always makes me wonder how they are going to pull the plug off of its characters. I am never worried about how it will begin, all I think about is how all the pieces would come together to give it a fitting conclusion.

“Will Nolan kill off Batman in the end?”

“Will Dexter get caught by the police?”

“Will Lizbeth Salander finally get her vengeance in the third and final installment of the Millennium Trilogy?”

I was thinking over the same lines about a television series I had been hooked to over the past six months. HBO’s critically acclaimed Cops and Criminals drama “The Wire”. In an age where the narrative for many a one-hour television shows try to cram in so much of drama and events into its runtime, that it totally neglects any chance for building characters that the audience can get attached to , “The Wire” comes across as an epic novel where each page is filled with an amount of detail to munch on that you could never have your fill, an extensively crafted world of Baltimore where the characters reside, an intricate description of how the cops build a case against the criminals, the canny ways in which the criminals evade the cops, and to top it all some of the finest bunch of actors in any television drama. Ever. The events don’t unfurl at a cartoonish pace of a cat running behind a mouse, but instead it unveils methodically like a cheetah preying on a deer. From marking the target, to scoping its movements, to setting the trap and playing the waiting game, to finally catching it in the act, and in the end putting it down – The Wire is not a television show that is merely a passing of time, it is a hard-hitting depiction of police procedure that demands our investment of time.

As I chugged towards the Series Finale at a slow pace prolonging the end, saving it for a Friday night after a hard day’s work, I gave myself more time to be absorbed into the world of The Wire. I had been playing its title track, revisiting its finest scenes, mouthing off dialogues to myself, reading critiques and appreciations of it on the internet, and spreading the word about its brilliance to many who hadn’t heard of it like it were a Gospel from God. And at the same time, I managed to pretend to work at the office too.

 “I think I will cry once I am done with it.” I confessed to a friend over lunch at the office pantry.

Isn't that what all great pieces of art make you do? It enriches you by telling some amazing stories, it shows you a world you thought never existed, it introduces you to characters you get so attached to, that when one of them, a recovering alcoholic, goes back to his old ways, you shake your head tut-tutting in dismay as if he were your friend. And once it all ends, it leaves behind a gaping hole which you try to fill by reminiscing about the countless brilliant moments that you experienced while it lasted. Boy, I couldn't wait to see how it all would end. Would they tie the loose ends or leave some as open-ended? The whole series had been so perfect throughout that I hoped they wouldn't muck up the final episode.

The Ending is all that mattered to me that day.

Once the clock struck five, I grabbed my things and raced out of the building. I hoped there would be no power outage at home in the evening, that would be like throwing cold water on all my plans. I wished the cab I was in was any smaller in size so that it could navigate through the traffic quickly, it was around 7 p.m when I got dropped off at the bike stand. I now had a twenty minutes drive from the stand to my home. I could make it in ten if I drove fast enough.

I hurried to where my bike was parked, the helmet was under the seat, over-sized and red it seemed more appropriate on someone who was flying a Sukhoi, not on some bespectacled geek who drove an Activa. And besides, I would reach home in another ten minutes anyway. I turned the ignition on and push started the Activa as it purred to life, I gave the accelerator full throttle as the engine woke up from its sleep. I sped my way out of the entrance of the parking stand and into the street as if I were Batman on his Batmobile on the streets of Gotham. With a wide grin on my face and the image of me curled up in front of the sofa sipping on apple juice while watching the final episode, I maneuvered my way through the hordes of two-wheelers that were on the street.  Maybe I should stop by at a bakery and get something to munch on. The viewing experience for me has to be perfect. A drink in one hand, and a packet of chips in another. Nice.

My train of thought was interrupted by the goddamn college bus behind me that was honking like there was no tomorrow, taking up most of the road he left me with no choice but to slow down and give him the way. The road was narrow as it is, if only the bloody road was wider. As the bus whizzed past me and moved to the left, it gave me enough space to sneak past it through the right, I can easily accelerate and leave the bus behind. I signaled my indicator to the right and raised my speed. Sometimes, when your adrenaline is high and the juices are pumping through your system, you feel that luck is on your side. I steadily moved ahead of the bus only to realize that he was taking the turn at a bend in the road. Never overtake while negotiating a turn, something I was taught by my father which I now conveniently forgot. Shit. And to make matters worse, there was another incoming bike from the other side of the road who had taken the turn. I tried to hit the brakes to avoid the collision, but either way I was sandwiched between the bus and the bike speeding towards me from the opposite direction.

The last thing I felt was the guy’s helmet hit my face, and then, everything went dark.

The cops told my parents that there was not a scratch on my body, despite the severity of the impact. It was later revealed that my heart had stopped functioning seconds before the collision.

So, this is how it all ended for me.

I wonder how the ending for The Wire was.

No Space in Heaven

It was a clear blue sky when the first one hit the ground with a thud, and then there was another.

Thud!

As the seconds passed the tick of the clock was punctuated with many more thuds, which were getting heavier by the minute. 

Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!

The bright skies were engulfed with dark raging clouds that were spitting thunder and spewing lightning, signaling that the deluge had begun.

Soon the streets were filled with what was falling from the sky, they were falling on the roof, on vehicles, it even fell on people walking down the street. It was not a heavy torrential rain, nor was it a hailstorm, it was not Mother Nature wreaking havoc, it was a more powerful force that was unleashing the terror. When it fell in front of Shankar, the local security guard of Jubilee Atrium who was ducking for cover, hardly could he believe his eyes. There lay in front of him the heavyset frame of Murthy, the recently deceased local MLA–a brute of a man who was notorious for conducting shady businesses that ranged from abduction to prostitution to smuggling, a man who ruled the town by instilling fear amongst its denizens through his henchmen.

Shankar looked around to see bodies falling from the sky, “Had a plane crashed in midair?” he wondered. It was like a hundred thousand people had decided to jump to their death at the same time from the stratosphere. A synchronized mass suicide. Shankar and the others were initially struck with curiosity as the cataclysm unfolded, and now as minutes passed they looked with their mouths agape and eyes wide open with fear at the horror that was playing in front of their eyes. Mothers covered the eyes of their young ones shielding them from the ghastly sight.

The thuds slowly stopped,  Shankar looked up to the sky to see the downpour had ceased, the Sun had emerged from the clouds burning bright at its full glory. He looked around to see the streets that wore the look of the aftermath of a genocide. Bodies were lying all around him, corpses that had plummeted from the sky lay motionless in open gutter, cramming the sidewalks like garbage.

“That was the last of them, Sire” said the Gatekeeper dusting his hands off the vermin he had disposed.

“Good” said the Man in White stroking his beard. “Now it feels like Heaven doesn’t it?”

“It certainly does my Lord.” the Gatekeeper replied.

“I wonder what these people down there think? That they could kill, rape, and loot from their people and get away with it at the end of the day by saying a prayer to me? That they could convert, exploit, and pillage places in the name of religion after which I will reward them with a place in heaven? That they could lie, cheat and steal the whole year to get what they want, after which they could fast for one month and visit my shrine, and that would absolve them of their sins?” the Man in White thundered.

“Humans they call themselves, my Lord” the Gatekeeper said in mock irony.

“I sometimes wonder if they are my creation, or I theirs?” the Man in White said whimsically. “Close the gates, we allow no more souls in here!”

The Gatekeeper obeyed his Master’s orders as he locked the gates, walked back to his post with a tune on his lips and slipped into his reverie.

Purani Jeans

“Hello there!”

“What do you want?”

“Wow, somebody seems to be in a bad mood”

“I lost a pair of jeans on the trip”

“Big deal, what’s the point of going on a trip if you haven’t lost anything during one? That way the trip becomes more memorable”

“These are very costly jeans I am talking about, they must have cost 1500/- each ! You cannot expect me to be cool about losing a pair of jeans.”

“When did you realize that you lost them?”

“On my way back, yesterday on the train when I was going through my bag.”

“So you have been pissed for a day then?”

“Yeah”

“To spend a whole day feeling sorry for a pair of jeans is a bit too much, people get over failed relationships within a day.”

“Nobody gets over failed relationships within a day, you’re just exaggerating!“

“All I am saying is that fretting over some jeans is not worth it. When did you buy it?”

“It’s been around for a little more than two years.”

“Any commodity that has been around for a longer time loses its value, it’s called depreciation. Look it’s pretty much like being in a marriage, the initial few weeks you would want to go home early and have those candle light dinners, cuddle up in the couch watching TV and have sex with music playing in the background, the novelty will be there. But after that everything becomes like a routine…. You would prefer staying at work, nothing excites you anymore, it all becomes just as mechanical as taking that jean from your cupboard and wearing it.”

“Where did you learn about defecation?”

“Its depreciation and I learned that in Economics….. or was it Accounts? I dunno, they all sounded the same to me back then.”

“Those jeans have been around for two years.”

 “Then assuming that you have worn it twice every week…. So for close to 96 weeks you might have worn it atleast uhhh two hundred times… and assuming that one jean costs 1500/- with each time you wear it, its value too slowly starts fading away like the jean, uhhh and then there are the occasional wear and tear, and with you not washing it frequently it might have lost some of its sheen…. So in a way you might have ended up using it for more than what it was worth! Its time was up anyway. So don’t bother and buy a new pair! Hell I will buy you a new pair of jeans. What are big brothers for!”

“Buying away a replacement is not a way of washing my hands of the guilt, what if Dad comes to know about it? If I can’t even keep my clothes safe how would I be entrusted with a Macbook?”

“Whoa! Dad is buying you a Macbook!?”

“That is not the point! I was being hypothetical. All I am saying is that I need to take up responsibility for the things I do.”

“You have a long time ahead of you to take responsibilities, mistakes happen, you need to learnt to let go of materials, invest more emotions in people, you need to–“

“They were your jeans…”

“What?”

“They were yours, it was lying around useless, and you weren’t using them so I had been using it.”

“How did you know that I was not using them? I could have been using them. For all you know I could have worn it tonight!”

“They were too tight for you after your waist size had increased by a few inches.”

“I did not get fat….”

“I am not saying that you got fat…. It’s just that as you grow older your appetite increases and all that you eat tends to get accumulated on your waist that’s all.”

“I still could have pulled off those jeans.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You were not supposed to take my jeans without my permission.”

“Look who is getting all wound up over a pair of jeans now. I thought I was supposed to 

“let go of materials and invest more emotions in people”.  Wasn’t that your mantra for life?”

“That was my mantra for getting through adolescence, people will disappoint you at some point of time, you will learn that sometime, it is then that you attach yourself to material pleasures!”

“Well, do you mind imparting your wisdom as we shop for a pair of jeans, what say?”

Pointless Conversations

“So did you call her up?”

“I did”

“What did she say?”

“It started off well, I apologized and she accepted it…”

“But…”

“How did you know there was a “but” in the conversation?”

“There is always a “but” in the conversation when a man tries to apologize to a woman.”

“But the conversation became a bit too violent in between.”

“Doesn’t matter as long as it ended amicably.”

“It didn’t.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“I started off saying that I shouldn’t have treated her the way I did when I was with her, and that I was an idiot for doing all that I did….”

“Can you just move away a bit…”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“I am not able to pee with you standing so close to me, it’s an empty restroom use the urinal at the far end, I am here in a dilemma whether to listen to you or to satisfy my urge to take a piss. I cannot pee with people standing next to me.”

“OK, so I call her up and apologize for everything, I take the whole blame on me and told her how seeing her everyday made me realize that I had thrown away all that I had with her and how it was eating me up on the inside… leaving me empty and soulless.”

“Poetic, that sure must have moved her to tears.”

“No, it didn’t.  She was glad that I was feeling miserable. She said that I was too good for her and it was after I had broken up with her that she realized that she was way too niche for a dumb guy like me.”

“She called you dumb? And is glad at your misery? That is so schadenfruede.”

“A schaden-what?”

“A schadenfruede, its German for someone who takes pleasure out of your misery. But it’s such a slap in your face that she even called you dumb.”

“She actually called me dumb and incompetent.”

“That is sad… I have been called a lot but atleast not dumb and incompetent, not yet though… what did you do?”

“I told her “You motherfucking girl you.…” “

“Wait, you called her a motherfucker?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong in that?”

“You cannot call her a “motherfucker”, girls technically cannot do that, it makes sense to call a guy that… but a girl…. I cannot imagine a girl doing their mother. You could call her a bitch or a whore or a cow…”

“We are drifting off the topic here, aren’t you gonna wash your hands?”

“No I just washed my hands thrice already today, moreover I did not hold it while pissing so it’s a waste of water.”

“Anyway, so I called her names and she called me names. She listed out everything about me that made her realize that she was way too good for me.”

“This is just sad…..”

“I know, I invested so much time and emotion into her and at that end of it all she calls me good for nothing and feels happy out of my misery.”

 “No, I meant it’s sad that they don’t have any tissue papers over here, and the bloody hand dryer doesn’t work either….”

“I thought you weren’t washing your hands”

“I wasn’t washing it, but I would love to have it blown dried with the hot air coming from the dryer. Heat kills germs and is more effective than water and hand sanitizer.”

“So I just told her to go to hell, and I won’t be giving a damn about her from now on. I deleted her from facebook too.”

“I thought you already had when you broke up with her the first time.”

“Oh that was from my real account, I have a fake account where I add a lot of random chicks. Friends and friends of friends, I chat with them and like their pics… flirt with them and stuff like that…”

“You added anybody from my friend’s list?”

“I added your cousin… she is very pretty.... she in college?”

“You seriously didn’t add her…”

“Oh no way, I was just joking.”

“Good, anyway now that your ex doesn’t want to get back to you I was meaning to ask if I could call her sometime…”

“Now you better be joking..”

“Ha! Yeah I was joking…”

“And you better not use this conversation as some kind of story for your blog either.”

“Trust me, I won’t … I am a man with principles.”  

The Juvenile - Part I

Today - Afternoon

It is unnerving how a shot from a gun can bring a sense of fear into people. You either cower down with fear or get frozen with fright, it brings a sense of foreboding as the heart skips a beat and the mind prepares for the worst - a death or an injury. The aftermath had left people reeling with shock over what had happened, it was supposed to be a normal afternoon on a weekday with teachers taking classes and students pretending to take down notes while they actually were whispering about the cricket match that happened the last night and other petty issues that kids of that age talk. It was supposed to be a normal afternoon on a weekday with kids in the schoolground arguing over a foul committed by a kid in a game of football. It was supposed to be a normal afternoon on a weekday with the principal of the school on his normal rounds, surveying his campus chasing away students into their respective classrooms who were planning to bunk the afternoon session.

But the gunshot changed it all. 

As seconds passed after the first gunshot was heard a few hoped that the victim would survive.

When the second shot was heard that hope withered away with the sound of the shot.

Teachers advised the kids to stay inside the class hidden under the desks as they tried to muster the courage to peek out of the doors and find what happened. Students who were a minute ago playing in the ground arguing with their mates over a foul committed stopped dead in their tracks with their mouths agape looking towards where the sound had come from. 

As the seconds passed Bedlam ensued in the school campus, kids shrieked with fright as teachers tried to calm them down, a few curious students ran towards the spot but were pulled by their collars by a teacher. A few teachers decided to take charge of the situation reluctantly and headed towards the site preparing themselves for the worst.

A few minutes ago...

When the boy saw the teacher walk into the restroom he realized it was time. Time to pay for all the humiliation, the punishments, the lack of faith, the umpteen beatings that had scarred his soul and his name among his peers. It was time to pay for all that with a heavy price.

The teacher had finished his lunch in a hurry, with classes back to back in the whole morning session he never had the time for a coffee break with his colleagues, "To hell with filling in as a substitute" he thought as he cursed the Social Science teacher who was on leave.

He just wanted to get through with the week and take a day off the next week. He went to the restroom to clean up his plate, he wanted to waste no time as he had a surprise test scheduled for the ninth grade. When he turned around, little did he expect the sight that he now witnessed.

"Roll No. 17?, what are you doing here? This washroom is reserved for teachers only." He said.

"I had a doubt sir" Roll No. 17 said as he revealed a gun tucked under his shirt.

"What are you doing?" he asked as his mouth went dry with the sight of the gun.

"If I shot a bullet from this distance x, at what speed would it travel to hit you in the chest?" he quizzed with the barrel aimed at his chest.

"Why are you doing this son?"

"....And if the bullet pierces your skull, what percentage would you give for your chances of survival sir?" he pondered whimsically.

"Son...." was all he could blurt as he was cut short by the sound of the gun. The next thing he felt was his head hitting the ground with a thud.

(To be continued)