"Prithviraj?" hisses Yashvi into the black.
She rises and reaches out. Her hands touch cold sticks—steel bars. She gropes about further, exploring the cage that surrounds her. How did she get here? She remembers the field and then . . . the gun and then . . .
A needle. Squirting out solution. Stabbing her neck. Pumping her full of toxins. Madam, bandaged about the face like a mummy, pushing down the plunger of the syringe and then blurring and then . . . then . . .
Darkness.
Yashvi lowers to where she slept, a hard surface, possibly wood. She leans against the bars behind her, and they indent her back. When she hears commotion below, she figures out where she is.
The ceiling. I'm in the ceiling.
What she would do for a light, a spark, anything to see. Smells cling to her lungs, scents of decay and putrefaction, something dead or spoiling.
I have to yell. I have to scream.
"Up here!" Her cries bubble in her throat, acidic and croaking. "Anybody! Help!"
"She's awake." A voice directly beneath her. "And she's making noise."
Some trapdoor whines then, its white blade of light slashing the darkness apart. When her vision adjusts to the sudden brilliance, she marvels at the shimmering steel bars encompassing her and the glitters of insulation furring crevices of the attic.
Prithviraj kneels outside her cage. "Don't worry. We haven't had you up here long. We just needed to hide you for a bit."
She sniffles, her nostrils unsealing from a cast of hardened mucus. "Okay."
"The Labyrinth will relocate, if you wish to know." He clacks at the dial of the cage's padlock. "We have packed our things. Our funds should secure transport to Nepal, where we'll find shelter with my cousin and work our way back to stability."
Her words drag due to the dryness of her throat. "All because . . . of me you . . . have to . . . move your . . . entire . . . base?"
"You betrayed us, Yashvi," says Prithviraj, "and now you can't have us anymore?"
Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth. "Ha . . . ve . . . have . . . y . . . you?"
"This was the best life you could have hoped for, kid." He extends his flask to her.
She snatches it. The alcohol doesn't do much for her thirst, but she welcomes its heat. It trickles down her chin and Prithviraj chuckles. "Can you honestly say it's horrendous living here compared to struggling each day in the slums with your family?" He finally undoes the lock and pulls her out of the cage, lifting her with his elbows under her back and her knees. "Would you rather be a street rat, indebted to society and always chucking your cents at a gullet of debt that gobbles and gobbles, never full."
Down the ladder he carries her. She takes another sip of booze before handing his flask back to him, as he sets her down in what appears to be the foyer where the customers pay.
Only the doors and windows have boards nailed over them now.
A goonda behind the front desk reads the New Delhi Times, his eyes pouchy and his hair a floating web of static, a pair of frameless spectacles perched on the bump of his long and hawkish nose. Madam strolls by, the gauze enwrapping her face patched with dried blood. She glances at Yashvi before continuing on into the storeroom.
I wonder if she started here as someone like me, Yashvi thinks. These alleys imprint their mazes into your mind and get you as lost on the inside as on the outside.
YOU ARE READING
Integers, Parabolas, and Jivika
General FictionA girl in Delhi has a brilliant mind and secrets darker than the nights that won't let her eyes close. She lives in the Labyrinth, a place that always seems dim, even in the middle of the day. There, customers flock in their dozens, and there, th...
