The Adventures of a Dumb Detective and his Wily Mate.

Untitled Part 2

Chapter 2

Safe

A weeping miserable face was looking up at him. His right hand was on top of this woman's head. Who was she? Why did she look so familiar? The woman cried out, 'promise me, you have to promise me that you'll stop this nonsense! You'll see my dying face if you ever do this again, so I swear !!'

Rudra woke up with a start and stared at the ceiling. He tried to capture the fast-receding threads of the dream ... or was it a memory ...? It receded into the attic of his mind, leaving blankness behind. He looked around.

Where the hell was this?

THIS wasn't his room!! Even the servants' quarters of his house were less miserable, he thought with an inward snort. Then blinked.

SERVANTS' quarters? Where did that come from?

The thread of elusive memory slipped out of his reach.

The more he tried to remember, the more he focused, the more jumbled his thoughts became.

He tried sitting up. The terrible jangling in his head started up once again.

No. Sitting up was bad, he thought with a grimace. So flat on his back again!

Slowly and carefully, without moving his head too much, he looked around. Trying hard to pick on some clue, some faint inkling of where he was and how he ended up there.

It was a small, dingy room. There wasn't much to see. Outside, it was dull and gray. He watched the steady rain through the partially opened window. Very little light came through it. He looked around himself. He was lying in a narrow cot. Near his feet, there was a rope tied across the width of the room. That, apparently served as a cupboard for the room's owner. There were some articles of clothing hanging from it. Gray and nondescript, just like the rest of the room.

An ancient metal trunk sat in one corner. That seemed to serve as a study table. There were some books and notebooks stacked neatly on top of it. There was a kerosene lantern next to it. He looked up. Nothing on the wall above his head. No picture, no painting, nothing to give the faintest clue.

Not a thing to see in that dull gray room. Apart from the exposed bricks on the wall and the huge cracks on the plaster, that is. Those seemed to house an interesting array of arachnids, big and small. He stared at the spiders as they went about their business and wondered at who could possibly be their human roommate. It was quite clear that whoever lived here led a tough life.

He shook my head slightly. That's not important. He needed to remember who he was! How could he possibly forget that? So, was he a rich brat? Since this sad excuse of a room didn't feel like home in the slightest degree?

He racked his brain and came up with a blank. He closed his eyes and focused inwards. His head was throbbing steadily, beating like a gong. But that wasn't the only source of pain. His hip ached too. He turned to check his side and sure enough, there was a recently healed wound there. A bullet wound, he mused and then paused.

'Just a minute!! How do I know that it's a bullet wound?'

He nodded with a faint sigh of satisfaction. So, he knew of various kinds of wounds. A medical student maybe? But that still didn't satisfy the question of how he ended up without any memory, with multiple injuries, in this shabby little room!

**

With a squeak the door opened, a thin face peeked through. Then the rest of the person entered the room. It was a kid. A boy of about 12 or 13. He was wearing a half dhoti of vague gray, thick wavy hair framed his long face. His dark eyes were fringed with thick lashes which were curling upwards, almost reaching his eyebrows. His entire face was basically filled with massive almond eyes.