The Window

The Fateful Night

Sometimes, in life, we land up in the most unlikely of places...places that we never imagined ourselves in...places that we are afraid of visiting...doing the most unexpectedly heinous things that we never thought possible...

One may argue, that Destiny has a role to play in what awaits us. But frankly speaking, in my opinion, that's a bunch of bullshit!

A series of bad decisions...that's all it takes to land up in a dangerous place. It's always the same story with everyone...and mine's no different...

I had dug my own grave and now all that was left, was for me to lie in it...

"Are you going to just stand there all petrified, or actually give me a hand?" He hissed in the darkness.

The grisly and silent surroundings made his voice seem louder than it actually was. After all, we were in the unmarked section of the cemetery smack in the middle of the night.

In the wan moonlight, his sharp facial attributes rose to prominence once again. His face glistened with sweat, as he continued to shovel out more mud from the ground.

I let out a sigh of frustration at his perennial ability to look delectably sexy, and picked up the other shovel myself.

We worked in silence...the only noises were pants of physical exertion.

I may have dug a figurative grave for myself, but the one him and I were digging at the moment was very real...

Five feet and six inches-the approximate height of the individual we were about to bury. It was his idea to make the grave a good seven feet, so that it would mislead people regarding the person buried there...

Where did he even get such ideas? I could hardly think straight, after what happened tonight...but he had a strange apathy to the whole thing...

To be fair, I hardly knew anything about him, except for the fact that he  was smart, had regular flings with several attractive women, and played the guitar reasonably well. The fact that he also owned a gun was something I came to know barely an hour ago...I had met him hardly once before, and it's not like we'd had an actual conversation...

In all probability, he could be a psychopath! A hell of a handsome one, but a psychopath all the same! He could be a serial killer of some sort...

No, that was unlikely...if he was a psychotic murderer, he'd have killed me as well. So that possibility was ruled out...

It was the mystery surrounding him that had drawn me to him in the first place...

No one knew where he'd come from or what he did for a living. All we had was a name, and nothing else...

A fat lot of good my curiosity had done me! If I'd just stopped myself earlier, I wouldn't be in this mess right now!

Finally, when a hole of satisfactory size had been dug, we paused to take a breather. He put the shovel down, and lifted up the sack containing the corpse with great ease. He placed the sack in the depression that we had dug up, with the utmost precision. A loud thud resonated as the sack made contact with the bottom of the grave.

As he started covering up the hole, with mud, suddenly, a pointed object on the ground caught my eye. I bent forward to examine it, only to realize that it was a single Louboutin heel that had fallen out of the sack. Well at least it meant that the deceased was an individual of good taste...

I quickly picked it up and chucked it in the grave, before he finished covering it entirely. He worked so swiftly and efficiently, that anyone would think he was just performing a regular errand.

"Have you done this before? You seem too adept at it..." I asked in a shaky voice.

"Save your questions for later...we have to get out of here as soon as possible." He said, in a slightly aggressive baritone.

I shut my mouth instantly, and proceeded to help him cover the grave up with mud.

Once we were done, he collected the shovels and said holding out his hand to me. "Let's go."

I placed my hand in his and immediately shivered at the contact. I wasn't sure if it was the chilly weather, or his touch, but my body was definitely responding to it peculiarly...

It was a short walk to his car, but I was happy that my hands were clasped in his. I could hardly see anything in the darkness, and I didn't want to stumble over any tombstones.

Once we got to the car, we took our seats, and soon enough we were on our way back. The car ride was one of total silence...

I was too much of a wimp to ask him anything...

Around thirty minutes later, we reached our destination. He parked the car on the main street itself, and both of us stepped out soon after.

When I started walking towards my apartment, expecting him to follow, he said. "I'll go back to my apartment in a while. You carry on..."

"Alright. Here..." I said, as I tugged on the sweatshirt he had loaned me, in order to return it to him.

He waved his hands and said. "Keep it. You can return it to me later...we'll have to meet up tomorrow, anyway...to...um...get our stories straight, I suppose."

I nodded at him, secretly elated that he had allowed me to keep his sweat shirt. It smelled of him, and I had to admit, it was quite intoxicating...

He nodded back and swiveled around to leave. I stopped him midway.

"Manik..." I said, softly.

He stopped short as I spoke his name.

"I'm Nandini." I said, extending a hand to him.

He looked at my face intensely, but his face held the slightest hint of incredulity.

He drew closer to me, ignoring my outstretched hand, and stood with his face just an inch or so from mine. In the cold weather, I could feel his heated breath on my cheeks...

"I know." He said simply, making me slightly alarmed at his words.

And before I knew it, he turned around and absconded into the darkness almost as if he were a mythical creature.

I turned around and walked back to the apartment, trying to wrap my head around the night's events.

The first thing I wanted to do after returning home was take a hot shower.

I took my clothes off and entered the bathroom. As soon as I turned the knob, the steaming hot water scalded my skin. I winced slightly, but continued to plunge myself under the jet of water.

The scent on his sweatshirt was so overpowering that I hadn't realised that I'd been stinking.

No matter how desperately and frantically I tried, I couldn't wash the odour off of me...

I'd just have to get through the entire night smelling like dead flesh...