The Third Dimension (2023) #Wattys2024

35- POST WAR RECESSION 1971

Hours after the blackout, Kashem was opening his eye pupils, and his iris was increasing with a familiar ground. He looked at the gallows, where people get hanged after the death sentence. Someone familiar was a lot of an exclamation. It was not fully a reveal but only Jawad knew what Kashem didn't-it was none other than Selim who was circling around with an iron rod. On his other hand was a butcher knife.

"Well, well, well, look who's here? The monster of the century? Are you expecting Madame Ruby's henchmen to be the butcher, huh?" said Selim with a grin.

In that dark, open field, surrounded by the prison walls and old fashioned British Era. Only the cold fog blurred a bit of it. No prisoners, only two of the might: a hero and an anti-hero but something wicked is about to come this way. Scary smell of human meat was coming from the body, with the psychotic measures.

"Maybe the world isn't so cruel but do you know, what you did to me?" said Selim.

"I gave you everything, right after the orphanage was burnt. I gave you home, food and even helped right after the war! Is that what you're payin' me for?" screamed Kashem.

"Do you think I care? No way! I only cared about someone who you call 'love'!"

"Nitra?"

"Absolutely!"

"Why?"

Selim begun to reveal, while Kashem was staggering around the ground, with his wound. It was a catastrophe amidst what Jawad cleverly found from Chikku and Gyankosh's plan to expose Selim on that. Was everything a part of a plan? Or is it co-incidence?

Under the fog, its dark atmosphere was about to freeze Kashem's blood-filled wound, as almost a cut of meat was about to be used. Cannibalistic features of Selim had a lot of things that never added up.

Selim said
"I understand the horror. You might be a monster but you're weak and frail as a person, craving for love, is it? You ruined my whole plans! The real Kashem...so naïve that he never knew my truest intentions. I'm highly obliged to see you, son of Rahat. You are just as reckless as your father and look. But if Kashem is around, let me tell you my story:

In the orphanage, I saw the kindest Nitra, cooks food every weekend and give us the delicious ones. But whenever I see her beauty, I just felt peaceful because as Kashem have seen me, by getting bullied by the others because of my dwarf stature. I remember to have this habit of reading strange or banned books from the orphanage library, where the investment goes into. Then I studied about cannibalism during the Mughal Period, especially the chieftain described upon.

By the time, a lot of children, especially you were adopted, I was craving to learn about my lineage. It was the family of Badats, while surprisingly, Sri Badat was my ancestor, which really made sense of my dwarfism. But love stopped me to kill people, but to save her was always my motive. When you went to the US, I've seen a lot of people from the neighborhood, especially soldiers from the war were trying to harass her beauty, and then I started to eat human meat while slicing them like a kosher meat.

I went to my forefather's grave, swore to restore the tradition. It was quite a success, because, reading about Jack The Ripper cases was fun.

To take revenge against the matron who discriminated my dwarfism with the 'perfectly shaped bodies', I burned down the orphanage just to get rid of the worst memories there. But everyone thought that it was only war, because in war, women were raped and children were slaughtered. While I'm bound to eat them, I even killed a lot of people who tried to rape Nitra, but I made them disappear. Mr. Jahirul and Salam (not knowing the real intentions), have given me a position as a secretary of the government job, only to serve tea, until Madame Ruby arrived at the stakes.