Arranged Marriage to Kill Him

Chapter 34 : Penetrating into the Darkness

Priya paced on the dark street, her feet bouncing and hair swaying as if she was walking on a trampoline. The lurid lights of cheap motels and shady stores vomited onto the street, reflecting dirty poverty everywhere. She caught her own reflection in one of the brown puddles, a white, angelic face unmarred by her surroundings. She came here to track Ohas down, to show him her power after he kept stalking her on his motorbike for days. She was even familiar with his shadow, tall and dark leaning forward on the motorbike, lurking after wherever she went. No longer could she live in fear of him, she needed to find some weakness so she could shoot him down. Perhaps, coming here to his home, she would discover an ailing mother or a lot of debt, something to ridicule and bully him about till she hit his ultimate weakness, Naina.

It was eight thirty in the night and Priya was starting to regret coming here, but she couldn't afford to hire a full-time detective to tail him. The one-hour detective (or rather her car washer whom she had tipped to stalk Ohas) supplied her with valuable information about his residency. Beyond that, she was on her own. God, she hated bankruptcy and more so her parents for leading them down to soon-to-be Buzzfeed's top bankruptcy cases. If her mother knew that she was not spending every waking moment trying to seduce Ahanay and instead was stumbling through this dingy road on a full moon night to take revenge on a local goon for her hurt ego, then . . . That "then" was one of the heaviest words in the dictionary, its heaviness underestimated by anyone who could casually toss an "If" before and suffer the burdened consequences. So she decided to not dwell on it and instead focus on the present where there was a lot of darkness ahead anyway.

As she neared his society, some shops were already closing their shutters while children played the last few games of hide and seek, their mothers passionately yelling at them to return home from kitchens that smelled of dinners and resounded with pressure cookers. Children ran past her, so close that her skirt swished and her heart jumped to her throat. There was chaos everywhere, yet the chaos tied together beautifully into a community. Amidst this, Priya's searching eyes landed on a familiar brooding figure leaning against the wall and lighting a cigarette, a spark of light in the corner of darkness. Quickly, Priya hid behind the two-hundred-year-old tree, its truck fat and strong enough to hide her. Children hiding nearby giggled at her, thinking she had joined their game.

"Dhapa!" A child hit her bum and she flinched, her eyes zeroing in on a chubby little face of a boy smeared with mud and snot. "Didi, dhapa! Dhapa! Dhapa!"

"Hush! I'm not playing your game! Go away!" She hissed almost violently, trying to snatch her skirt back from the clutches of the boy.

"But bade bhaiya said you were---"

"Which bhaiya?"

"Hush! He's stupid," a little girl interrupted, grabbing the boy's ear, twisting it, and pulling him away. Priya was grateful for the little girl, she couldn't risk getting caught after all the efforts that she put in. She peeked from the tree and found that Ohas was no longer there, instead, he was disappearing into a narrow passage next to the filthy apartment building. Without a second thought, Priya followed him at a distance, observing as he went about his night routine, eating biryani at a local restaurant, buying a packet of cigarettes from the local paan shop, loosely shaking hands with some thug like creatures, scowling at innocent residents, the usual. Her favorite part was watching him heartily eat biryani through the oil-stained glass doors, she had never seen a man enjoy food as much as he did. He seemed to be the most relaxed then, off-guard, without a scowl or a wry smile, just ordinary. Human.

Till now, she had found no weakness in him, apart from maybe food.

Priya was growing irritated, restless, and desperate as time passed by. She needed to go home, but at the same time, she wanted to justify her time spent here as fruitful. She couldn't believe that all her efforts were being wasted to witness such ordinary moments of his life. She wanted more. As Priya kept following him with worried thoughts infiltrating her mind, she didn't realize when she had lost track of him and how she had ended up at the dead-end of a street. The minute she turned back, five shadows revealed, men of sizes from medium to extra large. Moles, crooked teeth, greasy hair, disfigured and, scarred faces were all thrown together to form the most monstrous creatures. Even if one or two of them appeared human, she knew it was a deception. Their cruel smiles sent chills down her spine and she stood, immobile.