ANDREW POV
I looked at his cold face, holding his one hand tightly stretching him against the mirror in the bathroom, as he rattled. The thrill of watching his eyes popping out as harder it got to breathe for him was sensational. I gradually increased the pressure on his throat, enjoying the exceptional fear turn into withered peace. I softened the pressure as he was quiet and compliant. I wholeheartedly hugged and stabbed him with a knife. He growled softly. I pierced his stomach again putting him down on the floor and stared at Alicia.
Her dark face soaked in sweat and she probably peed a little bit. I liked that she was afraid. I gave her the phone and asked her to take some photos of me with the corpse. When I had had my fun, I walked closer to her.
“Come here. Sit with me.” I whispered to her, cleaning the blood on my hands. She sat shivering; her blood ran cold as she saw the blood pouring out of the boy. I locked the bathroom door and putting my head on her crossed legs, I laid down on the bloody floor. The school bathroom was somewhat smelly and set the mood perfectly.
“He was a nice kid, you know. He brought me fritters; his mom’s special. I am gonna miss him.” I said with relief. Her tears wetted my forehead and I could smell her pee, above all. Despite that I was comfortable in her lap, moment of peace folded me into a shell. It was quiet in there. I had faded away again. I could hear them all, cursing me for what I had done. I stayed quiet, relaxing, away from all the trauma back at home.
Andrew, my name, not that anyone knew of, still I existed, in a borrowed body with couple of others. Each one of us was unique and we existed for a reason. Our host Amir, although had a perfect charming body, was not much impressive mentally and emotionally. I came into existence, to do what Amir couldn’t, to kill our father Prasad. I tried, yesterday.
My attempt to kill my father was a failure; the poison Alicia gave me wasn’t strong enough to kill him. He was furious, surprisingly not at me, rather at Mary. I couldn’t watch her beaten up like that. She didn’t deserve that. She was not a weakling; I had seen her being fierce, when it came to me and my little sister, the minion. There was no one for her, except me. She was living in a nightmare and she had no idea that there could be a way out of it.
It wasn’t always like this. Rivan, the one who came before me wrote in details about it; how Prasad changed from a loving husband into a monster. Mary came from Herat, as a suicide bomber through Kashmir in 1990, the time of Islamic insurgents in Kashmir and Kashmiri pandits were forced to flee. One of them was young Prasad, belonging Zutshi family. He, like a hero, saved and brought her with him.
Problems started when Rivan got a message from a girl on Instagram. He posted a picture with Mary on Instagram and after two years, destiny happened. The girl who messaged Rivan was actually Mary’s sister from Herat and apparently, all Mary did was for Marzia’s mother. Marzia, her half-sister, was not even born when Mary chose to be a suicide bomber. Marzia’s mother was suffering from a heart disease and Mary needed money for her treatment. Someone offered the treatment and following, Mary ended up here.
When Mary got to know that her sister was alive and living a happy life with her mother, she couldn’t resist and started talking with her. When prasad found out about this, he was furious. The love that flourished between them doomed and gradually what left was loath.
Amir, our host, could not even believe the change in his father. He lived in Prasad’s shadow and never dared to speak against him. I had seen him crying in corner of the room folded into size of a football. That was when I came in. I wasn’t afraid like him or a coward who wouldn’t stand up for his mother. I came into existence like a saviour who would save Mary of this misery. I was supposed to be the way out.
Another guy, Rivan, who probably came into existence before me, was kind-hearted and generous. I never knew why he was there, although he had always been a great help to me. Blood triggers him and he was probably cleaning my mess right now in the school bathroom where I killed that boy. His ability to work under high pressure had saved us all more than once.
That evening when I came back into light, I was in Tessa’s bedroom. I had her in my arms. I could hear my father shouting at Mary. I hugged her tightly and she broke down. We calmly set down on the bed. Prasad meant a lot to Tessa. Someone leaked a tape of her kissing Alicia and he was mad at her for that, the last person she thought would ever be mad at her.
Consequently, she flipped. I didn’t say anything and kept her tightly close to my heart. The tape was playing on her laptop. I closed the laptop and took a relieved breath. I put Tessa’s sleepy head on the pillow, removed her fluffy shoes, and walked to my room.
After long depressing talk with Aarifa, I was exhausted. The thrill I felt killing that boy was gone and all that left was madness. The wrenching vessels in chest were choking me, engulfing me in like a blackhole. My mind had become a war zone. The cold aversion toward myself raised accompanying the fear of exposure, sweating me midst of the fog that entered the room through window, blurring my sight and brain. I was boiling whilst the winter chilled Manali.
The soul grieved but my mind was shrewd; it casted the protection spell. After a long emotional war, what prevailed was just survival, the only true emotion I understood in that moment that wasn’t gonna hurt me. Goodness and badness were just perspectives which were imposed on me to limit what I had to offer.
The sun rose with a new adventure. Coming out of that emotional turmoil I felt freedom like never before. Like an orgasm, the urge for thrill to kill was back again. This time I was ready to kill my father for good. The new loss of fear that ran through my veins was exciting and tempting, wanting me to do over. I watched the photos I took in the school bathroom with the dead corpse, and I could literarily feel like flying.
At the school later, watching everyone freaked about the death of the boy was another kind of thrill that chilled me. I had done with all the sweet talks with Aarifa, too. It was time for step up and do something that Amir never could. Chatting with her at school, I finally slipped the sex in. It was on. But life never played fair game. Risks associated with those little adventures revealed very soon.
I almost got away with the murder. But like a lamb, I fell into a trap. Alicia, the closeted clever bitch, offered me a job in exchange for ricin, a deadly poison which I could use to kill my father. Before he would know it would already be too late. I was up for it, without even blinking and that was the biggest mistake of my life. I was so inclined to kill prasad that I didn’t see her through.
Next evening was enough for me to blindly fall into the abyss that Alicia had dug for me. The way Prasad talked me and Mary, and planned to marry away Tessa, just because she kissed a girl, it came like a last push I needed. I just had to scare a girl before I go fuck Aarifa. Yeah, yeah! She was thirteen and it was prohibited by the law. But, doesn’t that make it more thrilling and adventurous? I was ready to go out and threaten a little girl, whomever that was, when Mom-Dad left for the party at his boss’s house. Everything was as I planned except one thing.
The multiple personality had backfired me once again. Rivan did his best to clean the murder site of evidences but he left one thing. An eye fucking witness! She threatened me and it was enough to flip me. Up until now I was my choice but now it had become a necessity; not a good feeling for me. Frustrated, I walked downhill in the deserted lane with my accomplice Jayant and Vishal.
The moon once in a while looked through the clouds, glittering the wet lane. I walked piercing through the fog, lost in thoughts. I would have done things differently if Alicia wouldn’t have threatened me or Prasad wouldn’t have yelled at Mary that evening.
It wasn’t until I was back at home and looked at the yellow raincoat on the fence that I realised what I had done. I watched Tessa fallen under the banyan tree. I couldn’t dare to walk near her. I ran back into the house and called Prasad, for he would forget everything and help her. After all, she was the only one in the house he truly loved.
Scared and shivering, I sat in the room corner like Amir did when I first time came into existent. I was angry and hateful at my myself. Tessa fought like a warrior; the wound on my leg that she made with the hatchet gave a tiniest bit of relief. I injected my finger into the wound, smashing whatever was inside, hoping to overcome the pain in my heart with the physical pain. Blood was Rivan’s trigger and I badly wanted him to come in the light. But he left me in the pain.
Prasad screamed Amir’s name from downstairs and I ran down the stairs. There she was, laid on the table, soaked in blood like martyred soul. Slowly, I descended in and everything blur behind my eyes, though her blood-soaked body stayed there, realising me of what I had done.
***
Losing time was the most irritating thing about my situation. The time I came back in light, after fading away watching my sister soaked in blood at my house, I was in a dim lit room with Aarifa, full of decorating lights. I was trying to put out the burning top of hers on the floor and she seated beside me on the bed, smoking a cigarette.
Amir, the first one of us, was having an affair with Aarifa for last two months. The one everyone thought we were. I hated when someone called me Amir. He was coward; I had read his texts. He would have never been able to get into bed with her. Thanks to me, I simply asked her for sex. Like an innocent and foolish teenager, she agreed.
Rivan, out of nowhere, was the lucky one who watched her bare emerald body. It hurt me that I wasn’t the one to see her like that. It was sad that I was horny even after what I had done to my sister. It was my thing now. There were emotions but never stayed there for long. The shrewd mind always found a way out of it. Some might call me a psycho. I won’t care. This feeling had an undescriptive pleasure within it that every time it overshadowed me, I was a completely different person.
Before walking downstairs with the burnt top, to stop the annoying fire alarm, I looked at her and ventriloquized, “I am the one. You love me. I am your soulmate. Come find me. I am waiting for you.”
“Did you say something Amir?” she confusingly said.
“My name is Andrew. Why do you keep calling me by this name? Who is Amir?” I said calmly and walked downstairs boiling inside. I knew what I had done and Rivan could not save me this time. I wanted to come back once before I vanish, but suddenly my phone rang; I had forgotten it in Aarifa’s room. As I saw she had picked the call and uttered Alicia’s name, I ran out of the house like wind.
I saw the police uphill with ambulance surrounding the site where just hours ago, I did something unspeakable. Now that I think of it, there could be no possible explanation for what I had done. My heart pounded like a sledgehammer. I was running out of time. There was so much to do in very little time. With the dawn, a new wave of problems would emerge for me; I could feel it.
I rushed back to my house, taking other route. Mary seated on the sofa holding a pillow tight to her chest, her eyes full of tears that had ruined her mascara she put for the party. I ran past her upstairs and she didn’t even notice me. I opened my laptop and browsed the recordings on the google drive. There was something going on between Aarifa and Alicia on the call. I heard the recording and opened our own website the tech genius Nicole had designed for us.
Nicole came into existence after me. He had complete folder dedicated for us named ghost protocol for situation like this. First step was to clean the phone. He had modified the phone with suicide device in our phone full of capacitors that passed high voltage current into the phone’s motherboard, sim card and memory chip, especially designed for a moment like that. I could manually control it from the website and blast my phone beyond repair when needed. He had installed his own app in the phone that controlled the vibrator of the phone to remove the insulator between the phone and blasting device.
I initiated the suicide mode on the phone and confirmed it with Google’s find my device. I wish I had something like that on my laptop too. That was how Rivan must have felt he was working his ass off to clean the mess I had made every time. Not this time though; I had harmed my own sister whom we all loved equally. If any of them came back to light now, they would put Tessa’s life over our own but I knew better. Life is precious.
I moved to the second step—ghosting on internet. It was simpler than I thought. I just have to launch a program on the laptop that controlled a dark web server; Nicole had done all the work already. I would have hugged Nicole today, although It was technically impossible. Algorithm to remove everything about me on internet was gonna take time which I didn’t have. Luckily, once initiated, it could work without the laptop. Next thing was me to do was—get rid of the laptop.
I could encrypt it and throw it but I couldn’t take chances, it contained the photos I took after I killed that boy in the school bathroom. I removed the solid-state drive and destroy it. I removed it from laptop and walked downstairs, stopped to look at Mary for a second who was still immotile, lost in her thoughts. For a glimpse of time, an urge erupted inside me hug her, to hold her and accompany her. I looked at the watch; it was already past three in the morning.
Ignoring her I walked into the basement. I opened the outer covering of SSD and crushed the chip inside it with hammer. Following the electrification in saline water, I burned it in old oven in the basement. I smashed pieces again with hammer and threw it into the toilet pipe. I walked out of the basement into the hall where Mary was still dead still. When I looked at her, I could see everything flashing before my eyes that I was gonna miss—her, Tessa, Aarifa and Manali’s weather.
One moment, and all that I had was gone, forever. I lost Mary, Tessa, and though it was mixed feeling, Prasad, too. Full of thoughts and with heavy heart, I walked closer to Mary. It crippled my mind and a chilling sensation rose inside me that, for the first time, forced me to pour some tears. It was ugly as I felt weakened. I sat down on my knees and put my shivering hands on her knees.
“Mom, I have done something terrible.” I told her everything even though I wasn’t sure she was listening. She was still dead still. She didn’t even blink. I stood up and slowly walked away. I looked over my shoulder as she stood up.
She walked to the kitchen and came back with a knife. I moved back drawing a gasp. I knew I done something terrible, something unforgivable but I never thought Mary would be ready to kill me for it. Anticlimactically, Mary drew the knife through her palm instead of my neck. The blood poured out of her hand and before I could realise what she was trying to do, I faded away again.
***
to be continued...

© the forbidden child