Looping Rill of Blood (Episode-1)

Swine Caught In Woods

That cold winter evening, Ashish had just left me to join his other friends standing under a tree in our college premises. If he wasn’t my ride home I’d leave so I waited. I stood at distance by a car, watching them laugh looking at something in their smart phones. If I had one maybe they would buzz around me like they do, but I’d rather try and stay sober than hang out with plastic bees who had pushed me into drinking.

Then she came and stood in front of me, closest I ever got to a girl which was like…five feet. I kind of didn’t exist for girls or anyone then and a girl like Priya Rai chatting with me in person was something worth bragging to myself. When she accepted my friend request on Facebook a week ago, I thought this relationship would hit the highway until I realized that I was just another profile to her who liked whatever she posted, she was from different college and she was Ashish’s girlfriend.

She had that head turning looks, she wore a black sleeveless top, tight blue jeans and white sandals. She had pretty face, long dark hair and big eyes, her fairness had paled by the cold weather, too stupid to hook up with him though. Then she started talking trash.

“Hey, you are Rahul right? Ashish’s friend?”

“Yeah, hi”

“You said him that I am a whore?”

She said I talked rubbish about her to Ashish and blamed me for his evoked sensibility to dump her, at first I thought she’d be open to date and second…I didn’t say Ashish anything about her, I hardly knew her.

“No! I didn’t tell him anything”

“You didn’t? what about those things he said about you? you swine! because of you we argued and broke up!”

“What? why would I say anything like that?! you…you are a good girl, it could…must be some other Rahul”

“I know he was talking about you”

She confirmed that Ashish was talking about me…why would he do that? why would he lie to her?

“There is some kind of misunderstanding or something may be he’s…” I couldn’t say it.

“What? he’s lying?”

“To get rid of you?”

“You know what…I think you’re right, may be he just wanted to get rid of me. I thought why would anyone say things about me but then…you don’t hangout much…where’s he?”

“He? err…he was there but now he’s…not”

It appeared to me like I had missed my bus.

She wanted to break up too and then apologized for freaking out on me “what are you gonna do now?” I asked.

“I don’t know, just go back home and lock myself up I guess”

“You should call him”

“It’s useless, he never got me a gift, he’s useless!”

“Is there something I could do?” I tried my best.

“Are you serious?…there is a thing I’d like you to do, maybe we can hangout then?” At least she wanted to be friends, so I thought.

“We could? I mean yeah sure, why not?”

A thick breeze blew and spoiled her hair, she brushed her fingers over her ear setting them and she looked at me. Her eyes were moist, maybe it was dust or her hair but then she looked prettier. She didn’t smile, maybe I liked that dead expression which said nothing but looked at me for me to look back. She was something I want. I said I’d do what she asked me, then she left. Sometime later Ashish came.

“Where were you?” I asked but didn’t really care.

“Took a leak, come on lets go”

“Let me drive the scooter” he paused for a brief moment like he already knew it was a bad idea. Then he asked if I could ride “yes I know, you think I don’t know anything?”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Just give me the keys”

I rammed the keys in and started the scooter with press of a button. Starting isn’t the hardest part, driving is. I lied to him, I too was scared that we both might end up under a bus or on roof of a car but riding a scooter isn’t different from riding a bicycle, there’s no complication of changing gears every few times either. I sat in front and he sat behind, I put my bag under my legs. The scooter almost wobbled as I accelerated and we took off.

“Are you really sure?” he had to ask again.

“Believe me, starting is always the hardest part” I replied.

“Okay, you’ve got to write the record book for me as well, I am going out of state for a week and I don’t want books anywhere near me”

“Do your own record, I got mine to finish”

“At least you are halfway through, I still need to put the pen on the paper. Just finish how much you can till I get back alright”

“You have it with you now?”

“No I’ll give it to you later”

He didn’t even thank me, so much for friendship.

We were supposed turn left at that intersection but I cut right, few meters away there was a narrow path through dense trees behind our college which ends to a muddy rill from a has-been river. That was not where we were headed.

“Where are we going?”

“Wouldn’t I have told you earlier if wanted to?”

“The hell?”

“Just wait”

“Are we headed in the woods?”

“Yeah”

“For what?”

“Just wait man, its not gonna kill you or something”

It was getting darker and as we drove deeper in the woods, ambience got still and foggy. There wasn’t any chores of pretty birds or sound of water breaking into a water fall, just purring of the scooter. I stopped somewhere “what’s here?” he asked.

I turned the ignition off and got out and said “there’s something I want to ask you”

“What is this Rahul?” he asked getting out.

“Why did you tell Priya that I talked rubbish about her to you, why did you lie? you used me!”

“Priya? who is she?! what the hell are you talking about?”

“Now you want to pretend like you don’t know her”

“No! I don’t! damn you freak I am getting out of here!” he went fast to his scooter and Priya came running from behind me and hit his head with a rock in her right hand, she hit him real hard. He didn’t scream or fought back, he turned around to look at her and had a paused expression of a dog thrown off rooftop. He fell down as if his batteries had dried out. She twisted to look at me, her eyes were red, there was blood on her face but it wasn’t hers, she was breathing heavy and fast. She horrified my guts.

She ran to attack me, I grabbed her by forearms and kicked her stomach and pushed her away. She fell down, I dodged the rock which she threw being prone and kicked her again but the pretty face which knocked her out. So much for friendship.

I tried to wake Ashish up, he was bleeding in my hands. I felt his nerve on my fingers and it was still beating. I called cops from his phone and put it back in his bag before trying to cover his head with my handkerchief…just then my head started hurting, I felt like it was going to explode and to contain it I pressed my temples. I heard a deafening shrill and I popped.

I woke up on a hospital bed, there was an old man coughing pretty bad on a bed beside mine, the tube-light on the wall across was too bright in my eyes. That room stunk of faeces and blood. I tried to look at things and make out what they were, everything blurred and a white form walked past to the old man and gave him a tablet. I sat up, rubbed my eyes and looked at a watch on the wall, it was 3:03 am, roughly nine hours had past. The nurse asked me if I wanted anything, I didn’t tell her that I wanted to get out, she wouldn’t help. “I’ll tell your parents you are up” then she left. I hated hospitals since I was a kid and had lost my mom in one.

There was no one else but us in that ward, I got down disoriented, I still had my own clothes on. My head didn’t ache, it felt as normal as waking up in middle of a night to get ice-cream from refrigerator. I opened the white door and went outside. The hospital was crowded, I couldn’t make out which hospital I was in but it looked familiar. A lot of hospitals look similar from inside, white walls, same white dress code, posters and TV on walls showing animations about health and life.

I started walking left then I recognized my foster parents at the reception arguing with an old fat man who seemed to be main doctor around. They were arguing over hospital bills probably, I wouldn’t spend a dime on them either. I turned around and went down the other way. On my left were more ward rooms, some chairs and crowd. I saw the exit door in right, that was my cue. My priority was to get out of the hospital and get some human air to breathe but my head told me I missed something. I walked a few steps, I couldn’t help turning around and in the crowd I saw Priya, she still had Ashish’s blood on her. She went to a door and tried the knob but it was locked. I didn’t want to miss getting some answers out of her so I ran to catch up. She startled everyone around with every push to the door, a nurse tried to pull her away but she hit him in the balls, cheap shot. Before I could pull her by hair she broke in and ran inside, I followed her.

Ashish laid unconscious on the bed in that ward, his mother had fell asleep after crying for hours sitting by the bed. I could tell by her washed out eye-liner when she looked at me. She got up and didn’t waste any time to slap me and said “you tried to kill my son!”

“I didn’t do anything! she did!” I said that before pointing in the direction where Priya should’ve been standing but she wasn’t in the room.

That old fat man made his way in through crowd, gathered to watch me get more. He asked “who?”

“Priya, Ashish’s girlfriend”

Ashish’s mother and he shared a moment looking at each other. He was his father. He gestured her with head and she went to a corner to call someone in her mobile. Ashish’s father came closer and asked in lower tone “that girl you are talking about was with you in the woods?” I nodded.

“And you saw her in hospital here?”

“Believe me, she was right here at the door” I replied. He apologized and told everyone to resume what they’d been doing.

“Crazy swine!” that nurse said to me, which was weird.

I looked at Ashish, rich dad’s only son in the luxury ward, didn’t see it coming from his ex. His hair was trimmed and his head was wrapped and a bill of sale from blood bank under my feet. He didn’t need me, he had his family. The father picked the bill and put in his pocket, I stepped out. He pulled my arm and asked “where are you going?”

“I am going out” I said in agony.

“No, you cannot go anywhere till police arrives, you tell them about that girl”

I jerked his grip away and walked out of his face. That nurse pushed my shoulder and I struck him on his left and he crashed behind, like a madman I kept bludgeoning him on the floor with my fists. The father pulled me off, I was resisting and trying to get him off me. I could’ve hit him too but that nurse pulled my leg and pinned me under him. Another nurse from behind punched a syringe on my butt-cheek and sedated me. I still worked over someone who was trying to stick my head to the ground. As my eyes closed she appeared from the crowd, I only saw her white shoes, covered in dried blood which had almost turned black, I lifted my arm to point her out but it was jelly and fell on the floor with a splat. I was out again.

I woke up again on the same bed as earlier, things were looking blurry again and my hands felt wooden and shivered pretty bad. I didn’t look at the watch instead I looked at the bed on my left and sat up. A nurse had gloves on and was picking up a tray full of blood, on the other hand she held the bloody bed sheet of the old man. Maybe he died there too. An officer who had been sitting on a chair before me snapped his fingers to pull my attention.

“Did you lose a friend?” he asked, in context of me looking at the bed.

I didn’t answer him, trying to prepare an argument in my mind. The nurse left the room and the door made a skewing noise unlike earlier.

“Who are you?” I opened.

“No, the question is-who is she?”

I looked around, Ashish’s parents and a lady officer stood in the room behind the senior officer. I looked back at him, the watch was making a ticking sound which hardly topped my silence. Then he continued “Mr.Goyal, I mean Ashish’s father, told me that you saw a girl in hospital who was involved too…is that right?”

“Yes, she is the one who attacked us!”

“Yeah, she did? from where I stand it looks like you planned the attack and now are making up stories to avoid responsibilities of your action”

“What? I was the one who called cops and I bet she heard your siren and ran away”

“And she didn’t try to kill you both again while she could? When you were blacked out, we checked all the security cameras of the hospital, from the time ambulance brought you here till now, there was no girl with suspicious behavior or fleeing the place. We didn’t find this imaginary girlfriend of yours, what are you holding?”

“May be there’s no camera near that room”

“Oh no, there is one and you know what in fact we saw you hurting the nurse to break in Ashish’s room…to finish what you started I guess and then again you attacked him when he stopped you from running away”

“Why are saying that? I didn’t hit him, she was at the door, she hit him and got inside the room”

He got agitated and raised his tone to intimidate me.

“Stop lying! there was no girl in the camera footage, tell us the truth! what happened in the woods? what were you both doing there after college?”

It seemed like everyone either were playing a bad joke or had an untold scheme to turn me insane.

“I can prove she exists and she did it! she and Ashish broke up, she told me that…that she wants to talk to him in private behind the college building and as a friend I helped her. I didn’t know she would do this!”

“how do you know her?”

“We met on Facebook a week ago, she is from different college, Universal Institute of Commerce” I didn’t realize that I gave them name of the college I was studying in.

“Do you have her contacts?”

“No, but Ashish has her number in his phone, which is in his bag”

Mr.Goyal rushed out of the room.

“Tanisha, we could track her device by getting IP address from her profile but that would require us to obtain a court order which will waste alot of our time and this a mesh, we should start asking in the college” the officer said to the lady officer.

“If we had her picture we can locate her record in their files, there can be more girls with same name in the college” she replied.

“Can you download her picture from her profile?” he asked me.

“Yes I can”

“Do it then”

I went online in my not so smart phone and logged in my profile, I searched her posts but she didn’t have any picture, all her posts in which she shared her selfies didn’t have any images either. Somehow her rich profile was then colorless and bland.

“This is strange, there’s no picture of her”

“do you know where she lives? hostel? apartment? or other friends?”

“No I don’t know much about her”

Mr.Goyal returned with Ashish’s mobile and gave it to me. I searched for name Priya and “PR” and “PRecious” but there was no such contact in the phone-book.

“After their break-up he must have deleted her number, its not in here. You can try the register the security guard maintains for people who visit my college, he always makes girls write their number in it.”

He held his right hand out for me to lose the phone, I gave it to him. Tanisha and Ashish’s parents left us when he asked.

“This only looks bad on you, don’t think it will buy you some time…”

“I am helping you! I don’t want to stay any longer in this hospital, take me to your station”

“Don’t tell me what to do! stay here until we want else” He had really poor listening skills.

“Now, why are you in a hurry to leave? when Ashish’s father mentioned calling police, you tried to run away. Why?”

I didn’t answer him, I looked at my mattress and started making circles on it with my finger. He slammed his hand on the bed pretty hard which scared the hell out of me “Your silence will be used against you” he said. I moved a little back and leaned against the wall. “My parents died in this hospital” I said.

“How did that happened?” he had to know.

“This is none of your concern, just find the bitch and let me go!”

“You won’t see daylight, if you don’t answer me”

“Is that a threat?”

“No, that’s your sentence”

I hit back of my head on the wall, took a deep breathe and started the monologue reluctantly after closing my eyes.

“It happened around eight years ago, some kids in school were bullying me and I was upset so mom took me to grandma’s place for few days, thinking I’d cheer up. When we returned we caught my dad with a woman in the living room, if you get what I mean. I didn’t understand what I saw then, the music was loud and that woman bled on the couch and had cigarette burns on her face but it was like she was drunk or sedated. Mom and dad had an argument and he hit her. My mom was strong and fat, so she took it. The next instant she pulled me by collar and tucked me in my room upstairs, turned off the lights and went down. All night I heard them fighting, screaming at each other and sounds of heavy things falling on floor. I didn’t had balls to go and check on them. Next day I went down when I felt hungry and in blood they were…dead. I don’t know what happened. I sat there crying, neighbors came, called ambulance and brought them here but the doctor said…my dad…was dead on arrival and my mom died here while doctors waited for police. They never found that woman, she was identified as a prostitute, her name was something…started with P”

It was a remnant of what I always tried to deny. I opened my eyes, brimmed with water and looked at him, he was listening attentively.

“You cannot leave till I had a word with the doctor but you’ll be in a cell” he said going to the door “I want to see that footage” I said.

He cuffed me and took me to the security room where I was shown the footage. I didn’t believe what I saw, it was obviously me who kicked the nurse in balls and broke into the ward room but how was that possible? I saw my own caricature beating that poor bastard who tried to stop me from running away. I was confused, so was the cop. Maybe it was the sedation or the sleepless night or my personal zeal to quit alcoholism abruptly kicking in, every second that passed by took me further away from reality.

I looked at the cop, who was sure I had issues. He was about to say something and I caught her sight again behind him at the door. I pushed the officer and ran to catch her and she wasn’t there, the cop tried not to lose me but a rotating chair had slowed him down and we had a chase ahead.

I went left from the door and she was standing down the hallway, when I got there my vision distorted for a second, my head started aching and I lagged behind. She spawned herself on the stairs to my right that went up. I looked her in the eyes, they were like two glasses of scotch that went deeper in her skull. She had that dead expression on her burnt face, her skin was more rancid. She walked to her left behind the wall. I ran upstairs and saw a human form, it was as black as an oil painting wet on white canvas. It moved its hand to point up, I saw her standing on stairs.

The lights blinked and I heard a kid’s voice echo “momma, who is that woman? did dad hurt her?” I looked around to find I was alone and ran up. Lights on fourth floor were out, a window by a study table let through the bluish ambience from moon, I realized it was my bedroom. I heard “be a good boy now, momma and dad are gonna talk, okay?” but there was no one who could’ve been saying those things. I got out of the room and that form was standing downstairs, it paced left in the kitchen and then went across holding a knife and I ran down. It went in my dad’s office and looked at me then shut the door, I heard it beat my parents, I banged the door but it didn’t open and I turned the lights on and found myself on third floor of the hospital. Boy did I need a draft of beer and some aspirin.

I reached the door which barred me from her, I kicked it open in third attempt. “Rahul!” the officer cried my name but I didn’t stop and went on the roof of the hospital. It was somewhere around 0400 hours, black sky severed by the honeyed skyline, cold and forlorn. I found her in a corner, leaned on the railing, looking over puny people five stories down. To our right was the hospital’s red cross light-rig that lit her side of the roof in its color.

“I know who you are!” I screamed walking to her.

She turned around slowly.

“Are you sure?” she said but in scrambled ghostly voice as if she was talking through an empty barrel.

“You are a whore!” I stated.

“Light bulb at last, I knew you said him about me, I was just testing when you’d say it yourself”

“Stop lying, you wanted to hurt him, stop hurting people in my life! get out of my house!” I really meant my head.

“So you can go back to your mama? you are jealous of your only friend, you remorse losing a fight you ran away from, you are a coward and a loser! so I killed them for us”

“I would never hurt them, you manipulated me! I was weak, you killed them and you tried to kill us! why?”

“I? I thought we had hit the highway already…but you haven’t figured that out, no wonder you’re up here talking to yourself than kill your dear friend in his sleep. I can do him without you and funny is they will cage you for it”

“I won’t let you hurt anyone!”

“Let me see you do it”

I was aware that she wasn’t real, that my mind was playing tricks with its person but I had to get rid of her somehow. She casually leaned against the railing. I pressed her neck and tried to suffocate her, she laughed at me. I lifted my arms and tossed her off, she fell all the way down and crashed on her back, no one had noticed or were bothered, nor did she bleed. She still had a smile which didn’t make sense, nothing did.

The officer pulled my T-shirt and slapped into reality. I deserved more than a slap but not from him. It really shook my head off and regressed my head ache.

“That’s it! I am locking you up” he said with parched throat.

“I killed her, pushed her off the building” I said.

He looked down and didn’t understand why I said that.

“Who? there’s no one down there”

“Can I see Ashish first?”

I was worried that if Ashish died or went into coma because of me, I’d have new set of nightmares to deal with. We went to his room, Tanisha was sitting on a chair across and put her phone away when she saw us. Ashish was still lying on the bed, his mother sat on a stool by it. She stood up seeing me walk in, when she did he turned his head and looked at me. I went closer, certainly my presence wasn’t cheering and he didn’t seem much pleased either.

“Why did you hit me?” he asked breaking every word.

I felt embarrassed and exposed, I left the room without saying anything. I told the officer that I tried to kill him and to take me in. We went down in the parking area to the right of the building, I was finally out of the hospital and had mixed feelings for last few hours. As we walked to the cop car we crossed the pavement where she should’ve been lying dead but she wasn’t. I never saw her again. The senior officer put me in the back and sat on a seat facing me, Tanisha drove. I never got his name.

“What if I created her Facebook profile and had a delusion of her existence?” I asked him.

“Then you really need some help kid”

What I really needed was a pint of scotch. I knew what would happen then, they’d charge me with attempt to murder, try me in criminal court, question my foster parents, call a psychologist to assess me who in his diagnosis would state which was anyone’s guess. Guilty with insane or not, I killed the bi##h who had murdered my parents and I let go what had happened to them.

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