Somewhere in Kerala.
The air was drenched with the stench of blood.
He crawled back in a hurry, whimpering like a stone-thrown stray dog. He was scared of the girl – no, not a girl, not a human anymore – walking slowly towards him, in this cave dimly lit by the flashlight of his mobile phone lying on the floor.
He turned backwards and attempted to stand and run away. But, unfortunately...
He fell onto the rocky floor,screaming. He stretched his hands to his leg from which blood was oozing out from the place where his right ankle was chopped off.
The thing kept looking at him without moving. Though his ankle was gone, he wriggled violently to get away from it as much as he can, which unexpectedly made him end up his back against a wall. He took his vision from his blood oozing tip of leg and stared at the thing standing just a few feet in front of him ; he looked innocent.
Streams of blood snaked down through the hard looking and made-of-smoke looking sword-like thing protruding from its right fist and dropped to the rocky floor. It shook its head to clear its tousled hairs blocking its eyes, unintentionally splashing some blood on his face ; its body was drenched in blood. A few were its own, and the rest...
The hairs which moved aside revealed a pair of eyes–their whites pitch-black with ghostly white pupils spewing milky veins across the black.They looked at him through the little strings of hair which didn't move aside.
The eerie made him froze; his breaths became shallow,his eyes forgot to blink, and his heart pounded vigorously to supply each and every vein and artery of his body blood flooded with adrenaline due to fear; the fear of death.
"P-please don't k-kill me," he plead, voice whimpering between words, tears flowing from his eyes.
It chuckled.
A chill seized his body till the marrows.
It came a few steps forward, then crouched with one knee on the ground.And with a grin, asked, "Can you give me a reason?"
"Y-yeah o-of course," he stammered pitiably; fear had distorted his senses
"Then, tell me," it demanded calmly.
"L-look" he said, "M-my brother is a politician. Money is not a problem for him. He can give you as much money as you wan..."
"AAAAAA!" His scream tore through air as the blade suddenly pierced into ground, through his right thigh.
"Can money give the lives you have taken?" It demanded; her masculine arms highlighted with ivory like veins which wriggled slightly, when it twisted the blade slightly.
"Could it?" it repeated.
Scream continued,with a little increase in intensity.
It sighed with a calm exasperation.Is muscles uncoiled, and the sword protruding from its right fist thawed away into mist.
The scream's intensity decreased.It repeated: "Can money could give the—?"
He was mourning still, without any attention to for it.
Exasperation broke out. And with a quite second..
Fists clenched.
Muscles coiled.
Blade pierced flesh in knee and twisted swiftly.
Blood splashed at his face
He screamed, but it got trapped halfway in the mouth when a rock was shoved into it.
And then, it asked; a roar of fury.
"CAN MONEY GIVEBACK MY FAMILY YOU MURDERED?"
He stared at it awestruck,his body quivering madly to control the pain. His shallow breaths got drenched with the stench of blood that came from its mouth
It then said, looking straight onto his eyes bloodshot eyes; its face close enough to him that it breaths sent goosebumps throughout his body.
"This fear, this HORROR in your eyes was there in mine too, but you didn't seemed to mind it. This," it pointed a dagger that suddenly came from nowhere like mist to his eyes, "had been present in the eyes of the innocent girls you raped."
It let the dagger thaw away into mist, and ran the smooth surface of its index finger's nail– no, an ivory claw– through his jaw line, adopting a going-to-fall tear drop in the process.
"And this," it said, taking its hand back and staring at the tear drop hanging from its fingertip, "would have come copiously from the parents whose children's lives were destroyed by your Narcotics business'." The tear drop fell and died.
"And", it said, glancing on to where the tear fell. He swallowed hardly, his shuddering intensified."Both of these," it said, a slight change in the tone of its voice—like it was getting more human-like and something else; shivering?
"Must h-had been present in the e-eyes of m-my," it paused. Its muscles uncoiled and shrank a little, and the ivory like veins disappeared. The stabbed in his knee thawed away. It lifted its downcasted eyes.
"M-mother w-wheny-you", said sweet, empathetic, despair, whisper, whose owner's black human eyes tears, drenched with grief smothered for years, snaked down to her chin in a different streams and fell onto the rocky floor.
"Were raping her, after slaughtering my dad?" She uttered with effort and let a suppressed sob broke out; the voice of her ragged gasps replaced the dreadful silence of the cave and resonated like the heartbeats of nature.
Her hands touched the ground to give her support when she bent downwards, letting tears fall through her cute beige coloured chin and cheeks onto the rocky floor.
It was like a furious tigerss ready to rampage suddenly turned into an innocent, timid, humane girl; no veins, no muscles,no claws, no ghostly whites.
The guy remained dumbfounded for a few moments, then he suddenly regained his senses and took this for golden chance. He stretched his hand backwards, searching for something that can be used as weapon;cautious to be not noticed by her.
A hammer toched his hand.
It was one of his colleague's.He clutched it, but it slipped.
Thud
He froze, fear making him forgot to breath for a moment. But luckily, nothing happened.
She didn't noticed
He again clutched the hammer, taking special care to not let it slip away due to the red liquid, whose stench was pushing him to the brink of retching.
He then mustered focus on the girl's head.
And launched.
Time appeared to move slow.
His hand moved with the hammer for her head, hoping to close the gates of demise for him.
But..
Whites turned black.
Milky root spewed from ghostly pupils.
Things went like lightning.
Its hand rose.
Snatched it the hammer
Whirled it around.
And splashed blood on his face when his left hands bones cracked and flesh squashed.
"MMM!"Was all that came crossing the rock in his mouth.
His body wriggled like a fish on shore.
"You thought I am timid, right?", it queried with a smirk.
"But now, I believe that you understand, that I–AM–VICIOUS!"
The voice which pronounced "VICIOUS"was hard, horrifying, inhuman.
"Mmm,Mmm,MMM!", he cried and wriggled in a please remove this way.
It pulled out the rock from his mouth in a swift and nonchalant motion, sending a few teeth from his mouth flying outwords with some drops of blood in the process.
He screamed,and the tip of a mist dagger gave a gentle between his eyes, dread-drenched silence telling, don't irk me with your screech.
He slowly raised his head and looked at it, water rolling down from both his bloodshot eyes and nose.
"Say what you want." It demanded, after tossing off a tear from its cheek.
"Please," he pleaded pathetically, "D-don't kill m-me. I want to live."
It downcasted its eyes. Silence.
He stared at it, his eyes shuddering slightly due to fear and awe.He swallowed hardly.
A wet gasp, a feminine, a humane one.
Tresa...,her mother's voice echoed inside her,Tresa...
"Did you allow them to live?" asked a girl's voice.
His eyes widened in terror.
Mist came out from her body. She raised her head, eyes piercing into his.
It smiled, splitting flesh from the corners of her lip across cheeks with a fleshy sound, flashing teeth wet with red; something perhaps, flesh, jammed between them here and there.
She asked mockingly, after flapping out both her arms, introducing mist talons from the tip of her fingers. The mist that was connected with her body suddenly accreted beside her head and formed the huge face of a woman.
Both lips moved with the same carnivorous countenance.
"Then why should,WE?"
————————————————————
The sun hung low to the horizon in the west, painting an orange tint to the flora and fauna of the forest. A light gust of wind rustled the leaves, acting like a nice background music to the songs of birds along with the flowing melody of the tranquil lake located near the cave.
A squirrel chittered on a mango tree on the opposite side of the river; his black-lined brown hide peppered with golden mango blossoms and painted with an orange tint by the sun hanging in the west.
He raised his head up and looked at the tree on the opposite side of the river near the cave, where ripened mango was hanging on.
He wanted it.
Although the trees were on the opposite side of the river, a single branch from both the trees made a thin connection, which can be used as a bridge by him.
And he went for it.
The branches shuddered in a rhythm as he passed through the minuscule bridge; his black marble-like eyes reflecting the canopy moving past him. Mango blossoms fell from the branches and his body onto the river, and the minuscule ripples caused by them disturbed the image of the elegant fishes of different colors swimming beneath the surface.
A chilling gust of wind brushed-past his body, making him look up.
Huge mountains of dark clouds were approaching from the east, heralding the arrival of a heavy rain in the near future.
He reached the other tree and successfully got on to the branch were the mango was hanging. He neared his face to the mango, mouth open to devour...
"AAAAAA!"
A shrilly guttural scream startled him, and he fell. Cold air cut past his body.
He was just a few centimetres from the ground when his squirrel instincts kicked, and he landed on his all four legs safely.
The scream had send hoards of birds flying into the air; their frantic cries filling the atmosphere.
A strong stench stunk his nose, which his animal intuition recognised in an instant; blood.
He froze, awestruck.
The ear piercing scream continued, with some other kind of sound mixed with it, like smashing something wet with continuous beating; flesh?
He turned and stared at the cave for a moment or two, and then heard, replacing the scream something like— "Mmm hmm mmm MMM!"—like something was happening with the scream's owner's mouth.
And then suddenly a pluck sound was heard, and following that came a weird screech; a very, VERY weird screech—like a scream without a tongue.
A heavy movement from his back.
He jerked forward a few feets screaming, before looking back to see that it was just the mango.
He went to the mango slowly, sheepishly, and looked from the mango to the branch.
The rain was going to happen soon.
He devoured the mango as much as he could, and went back to his nest.
And the WEIRD screech continued.