They are laughing.
They are laughing incessantly, in every excuse and in every topic they talk about. Their eyebrows are curled and tongues are lust wet with fresh saliva. Their ears are pointed and sharp noses are proving their roughness. The sharp and rude canines they possess are glistening from the light of the ceiling lamp. The khaki uniform they are wearing is instilling an increasing deathly fear in my heart. They are taking frequent looks at me, in turns, as I shiver inside the eight-by-eight cell of the police station; arrested, humiliated, bathed and naked, four hours after I was discovered murdering my own wife.
Naked, I shiver in futility, as I keep thinking of the creature I have killed a few hours ago. Her eyes were round. Eyebrows were deep black. A few of her hair used to fall on her forehead. Her teeth were white, and the canines showed themselves whenever possible. She was my wife, had been married to me last week, wanted to make her husband happy- someone who was out from a strange home a few years ago…
The laughter stops abruptly, as a pair of firm footsteps enters the hall. The men are silent, watching the entrant. The owner of the firm footsteps – a tall, dark man distinctly manning a higher post from the rest of these men, calls one of the constables. They discuss something in the lowest pitch of their voice, frequently pointing towards me. The dark man, with his face hidden from the ceiling lamps’ light, somehow managing to hide his face in the shadow, brings out a register and starts writing something.
Two days ago, we had ordered chicken at dinner. She ate as if she had been kept without food for a whole week. She had asked me why I wasn’t eating anything, and I had lied, that I wasn’t hungry. My hatred for her had made me lie.
Immediately after we had come back from dinner, she pounced on me. I threw her away on the floor, making her gasp in pain. Nevertheless, we had sex, and after the peak, I threw up on her. Her body became wet with my smelly puke. And then I followed her to the bathroom and then we had sex on the wet floor, there.
The ceiling lamps of the hall are switched off, suddenly and all at once. The only light left switched on currently was inside my cell gleaming at its full, ten feet above my wet, naked body shivering from the late November chills. The floor of the cell is filled with rats’ faeces, half-smoked cigarettes, a piece of an age old newspaper, blood stains and at one corner something brownish that looked like human excrement – making the air of the cell smelly and the atmosphere filthy. My stomach started aching.
The locks of the cell opened, with a sudden click sound, and out of the massive darkness of the hall outside, entered the tall and dark figure of a ruthless human – jaws narrowed and with shrunk eyebrows and thick, tight lips. And then my blood froze to its very deep when I watched in his right hand a whip, swinging and dancing like a snake, five feet above the ground and still touching its tail on the floor.
“Why did you do it?” the voice echoed back within the small cell and kept echoing back and forth m while I sat still, contemplating on the day before when she and I were walking towards the mountain, passing by some of the world’s most beautiful trees and flowers. And then we had reached a valley at the lap of the mountain, where she deliberately tried to kiss me, bit my lips and drew blood out of it. I had pushed her away immediately and slapped her hard. One slap, full and passionate. She still stood there, saying nothing.
That night, we had sex. Twice. And then I killed her.
The whip speaks out now, making a sudden ‘swissh’ sound in the air. It pierces the soft skin of the inner thigh. It is lashed out again, twice more. Every time it cuts some part of the skin. The warmth of my body returns. And then I see blood, human blood… oozing out of my bare body and sprinkling the floor. I keep sitting at the corner holding my folded legs in my both hands as tears roll down my eyes and saliva keeps dropping from the corner of my half open mouth. I beg for death.
But it does not come. The tall, dark monster returns to the shadowy hall, locking back the cell, as a plate of food is sent for me. The unwashed plate carrying all the filthy looking food puts my hunger at rest. I puke on the food and fall asleep.
The next day all the laughters continue. The constables are busy with themselves. The tall, dark man is not present. I am given a soup at dinner which I throw up, immediately after having. And then I slept out of hunger.
At first, of course, I had to make sure that she was dead. I had taken the scrapper out of the bathroom and took the rod out of it. I had grabbed it strong and given a sudden thrash at the back of her head. Her legs had started trembling… in a violent way. I waited for a couple of minutes and then tied the legs with a rope to the dressing table. And then I had given a couple of more thrashing. Within a few minutes, the bedroom had fallen silent and she was covered in a pool of blood. Dead, indeed.
On the third day, and in the absence of all the other constables, the dark man comes back. He locks the cell from the inside and unbuttons his shirt. As his bare body is exposed, I try to hide in the shadowy corner of the eight-by-eight cell. The ceiling lamp glistens from his dark skin, on which several tattoos of golden colored snakes feature, and seem like slowly coming to life.
The whip is lashed violently. It cuts my body again, my face turns bloody. It cuts my genitals, my chest, and my back. The torture, the hunger, and blood, the golden snakes wriggling their way out of the man’s dark skin bring out the animal from inside me. I pounce on him.
As unexpectedly as possible, I leapt from the ground about six feet like a wounded leopard and clasped his throat in two hands. I open my mouth to the fullest to spread my canines as far as possible and bite hard on the jugular vein. The poor creature beneath my tight fangs throws his limbs, in futile. The firm bite on the jugular breaks the skin, the soft inner muscle of the throat and then crushes the windpipe, suffocating the man… like a zebra falling prey to a lion.
Death comes fast.
Outside in the shadowy hall, silence remains as eternity. Inside my eight by eight cell, just beside my fresh kill, I stay awake breathing heavily on a floor full of blood of my prey, again.
But this time, it is my teeth those are out, canines still visible and it's clear that I want to laugh out loud at the very minor happenings in life.
I am laughing.
