When I stepped out of her home, I felt it again - a unified frown that bayed for my disappearance. Feeling that my mere presence would create unnecessary problems, I rushed to my precinct.
"You, boy!" exclaimed a guard. I stopped and stood frozen. "Where were you last night?"
I came up with a false alibi, claiming that I had spent the night in a brothel within our precinct and had gone to work early in the morning before their shift. Fortunately, the guards didn't cross-check my return with the evening shift, a stroke of luck that ultimately spared my life. Uttering those words felt repulsive, as the very thought of involving myself with the exploited was deeply abhorrent to me.
"Your sister, boy, she was killed while you were rutting in the brothel."
"What?"
"Your youngest sister is dead, killed as a punishment for breaking the curfew,"
I had the responsibility to accompany her home as Devika was unwell and couldn't make it, but consumed by my own selfish desires and lost in my aspirations, I completely neglected her.
I walked in silence, uncaring of everything around me, numb with shock and pain. I did not run, too afraid to see the words shaping themselves as true.
I even entertained self-deceiving thoughts that not running would prove the truth as untrue. I was wrong, my sister was dead. All because I dared to dream.
One could never expect their dream to be the eternal rest of everything that makes them flow proper in this disarray. The perfect irony was what made me feel alive feasted upon it, exposing me to the lies of the wearisome winsome that mandates an inequitable levy to revert the balance to imbalance.
And the sight of that levy is something I wish I could erase from my memory.
I've tried to forget it many times, but Mythri's broken body forever haunts me. My parents didn't cover her body as people watched; the guards explicitly instructed them leave it be for three days to make an example.
Among the crowd, some expressed sympathy, but most blamed her, the victim, instead of the fiends who murdered her.
My mother lowered her face into her hands and cried in quiet, hopeless sobs. My father in shock kept on mumbling as tears rolled from his eyes 'silly girl, so careless, silly girl so careless'
Upon sighting me, Devika ran towards me, grabbed me by my tunic, and pushed me down and kept punching my face, calling me a selfish bastard and I deserved it.
In her anger she broke my nose, and I remained lifeless, purposefully avoiding the unfolded tragedy.
I deserved every slap, every punch, every cuss word uttered at my expense because in the end, it all comes down to my failures. My failure as a brother, as a son, as a human being.
I wasn't ready to accept it, but the world doesn't wait for you to digest its inhuman and unamiable cruelty.
"Do you know what they did to her?" My sister asked as I lay on the ground. "While she waited for you to arrive, those men found her and kidnapped her."
"Stop it!" I cried out, shaking my head in denial. "This is all a dream, this is all a nightmare,"
"They shattered everything pure and innocent,"
I put my hands over my ears but she used all her strength to remove it. "They cut her so viciously that they tore her skin all the way to the bones,"
"This is not real," I cried.
"They urinated on her, tied a noose, and displayed her in the open. The guards cut her down after enough people had seen her body, her face the only part left unharmed so they could send a message to us."
All I could do was repeat, 'This is all a dream, this is not real,' and my sister couldn't bear to see the sight me. She walked away, knelt by our sister, and gently cradled her head.
I couldn't stay there, not after what I had done, so I kept on running until I reached the only place in the world where I could hide—Samira's home. She /et me in and, seeing my tear-streaked face, asked about the cause of my melancholy.
However, I did not answer her questions. Instead, I picked up my sarod and played. I didn't know how much time had passed—minutes, hours, perhaps a day—I didn't stop playing so I could wake up from that nightmare and be in my preferred reality—in Yestermorn.
My fingers bled, but I did not stop and kept on playing, hoping my sanity crumbled and my life decayed so I could no longer exist. And ensure that my blood could never be a libation for potentates.
But samira didn't want me to. "Indra," She said softly, her hand brushing the side of my face. "What happened?"
She stroked my face gently, and I broke down. "She never hurt anyone. She was always kind, never harbored hatred for anyone. How could they?"
Words poured from my lips, recounting all that had unfolded. Time became a blur amidst my tears, until exhaustion drifted me into a slumber. With my head cradled in her lap, she tenderly caressed my hair and in my peaceful rest, she remained still as the fairest star, a gentle presence that soothes the broken, and guides the lost to touch the horizon of their dreams.
****
When I returned home my existence was unseen by my sister as I I explained to her the reason behind my absence. My parents drowned in their own sorrows did not question my lack of presence that night.
The days that followed her death had not afflicted me with ire to scourge the empire and turn it into a hearth that warms my cold, splintered soul. I did have revenge as a desire to quench my parched spirit by considering revenge as my fondest wish.
The only desire I abided by was to send my sister to heavenly abode.
I spent two days with Devika, chasing away the carrion eaters to protect her body. The Guard made frequent visits to our home to ensure the body was uncovered. This continued until their abominable curiosity was sated with our abraded mirth.
On the acme of night, with dormant inquisitive gazes no longer troubling us, Devika and I carried her body to the burning field. I paid in gold and the dour keeper of the ground had arranged everything we needed.
Unlike our betters we had no priest to perform any ceremony. All we had was fire and wood and a few of her belongings that needed to be burned alongside her.
"I bought this for her," I said, showing Devika an ornate comb. "She had such beautiful hair." I smiled, trying to hold back tears.
"On that day, with all the money I won while singing, I thought our family could finally be happy. I thought what I did was right, but because of my selfish actions, She's"
"She's dead," she completed for me, placing a hand on my shoulder. "It was not your fault but theirs. They took our sister from us."
In tears, I did not see it—the fever, the rage, the desire to turn mendacious mendicant. Instead I only focused on the funeral.
I put the comb and her belongings on mythri's body before covering it with mango wood.
As a man, as the scriptures dictate, I, the undeserving one, was meant to be the one to light the pyre, and I did.
The flesh of her was gone, our smiles faded for a lost future, hearts jaded for a heartbeat lost, cold settled for she was gone, taken by sun eater pyre fire.
****
A month later, we resumed our usual work. I visited Samira and told her I was not taking up on her offer and she said she understood. I started taking up odd jobs to evade the situation at home.
Devika's employer, displaying compassion in the face of her bereavement, graciously allowed her the respite she needed to grieve the loss. But to my sister the respite was unbearable. She went back to work, as staying within the confines of home echoed memories that latched, adder-like, onto her sanity.
I thought of her work as a welcome distraction, never anticipating the unquenched, unending vendetta—a desire to attack the catalysts responsible for a paradise lost.
I was not the only who was blind to what was come. The catalysts, they never anticipated the falsity in assuming that all that breathes behind the walls bore likeness to the fawn they butchered.
The familiarized nature of their prey lacked insight of preys capricious natures, for they could never acknowledge that the hunted could mirror the hunter.
To them, we were caricatures of tamed demons. Our lips were a devil's nest never to be opened; our tongues, cut blossoms meant to be plucked; our eyes, charcoals never to be burned bright.
It happened at the night, and in the evening, I waited for mythri, as I had been doing since the days she started working again. However, she did not come, and naturally, my feet had taken me to her place of work, but I could not find her there.
Soon, the sun, drunk-like at eve, passed out, and mankind hurried to shut their eyes from starlight beauty. But I did not leave.
I trailed the shadows to avert the butchers of nigh and gold drop eaters whose fates are sealed by the temperament of the wind. The wind was never an ally to preys prowling in night and I was careful not to be snared by ucchavarnas, to me they were near phantom for I could never gauge the evil they may possess. Could it be a face curling in disgust or a hand that reached for a gun or a machete, there were innumerable ways to die in murk as a lesser at their hands.
My plenty care for personal safety was not present in my sister's demeanor for her hand held a knife and her eye spied through a hole of a closed tavern that let out lemon coated light.
I grabbed her hand, and she nearly took my eye before she recognized who I was.
"What are you doing here?" I hissed. She put a hand on my lips with panic in her eyes.
She grabbed my hand and took me to a shadow claimed alleyway that stood alongside the inn.
"What we are supposed to do!" She spat. My eye travelled to the knife. "Why do you hold that knife? Where did you get it?"
She caressed the knife as if it were a newborn babe. "Our sister," she whispered to me, "has been telling me that she cannot move on."
Her eyes widened as she continued. "The other day, during an errand, I overheard one of the men inside gloating about murdering a sullied girl. I chose to follow them, listening to the things they did and hearing their laughter as they boasted about it. I bought the knife with that gold of yours to exact my vengeance."
Her lips curled into disgust. "That parrot faced bastard thought I was buying it for my master and he kept on staring at my chest while talking me down like a worm. You see how they see us? We are nothing more than objects for this bastards to have a power trip. Perhaps when we are done here, we should find him together? Show him the sharpness of his creation. You are with me, right, brother?"
I put my hands on her shoulders and shook her. "What are you even saying. This is madness. We need to leave, if anyone sees us they'll kill us."
She struck me across the face and raised her voice. "They killed our sister!" She looked at me with a frown, her eyes reflecting a sudden realization. "You never saw her as a sister, did you? In your eyes, we were always the bastards, isn't that right?"
"How can you say that?" I exclaimed, my tone uncontrolled, feeling unjustified. "I loved you two more than anything in this world. How can-."
"Who goes there!" Uttered a gravelly voice. She and I froze as a pudgy hand holding orb lit lantern stepping towards us. His fair face and emerald eyes gauged us and as they travelled to our hands they widened.
"Well, what do we have here?" he inquired with a lecherous smile. "Seems as if my gambling debts are no longer a concern. The reward for apprehending you devils will solve all my problems."
He made a clucking sound as our visages gained clarity to his nigh obscured eyes. "Such beauty has to wither," He shook his head in disappointment. "Such a sha-"
With one hand over his throat, his other hand reached to grab my sister, but she darted away. He lost his balance and fell face-first onto the stone floor. Devika, with cat-like caution, slowly approached and knelt before his body. She lifted her knife-held hand in the air and, in a swift motion, stabbed him at the back of his neck.
The man stopped twitching moments later.
I stood frozen. I could not understand the violence that unfolded in front of me. But my sister seemed to be familiar with it. She tried to turn over his body, and after struggling for, God knows how long, she finally managed to flip it and fell on top of him, completely exhausted.
Just in time, the clouds parted to reveal the clear and true facade of mankind that had gathered on my sister's face. A dark bronze countenance shimmering with red ripe nectar, her heart so sought.
That bloodied face was a mankind's legacy of days yet to come and had already come.
"Why be a statue, brother?" The tone of her voice was casual, as if whatever had happened had been an mundane occurrence. "You want to let your fragile sister do all your work? Hmm?"
"Y-y-you... you killed him." The words trembled from my quivering lips as my body shook.
"That bastard is carrying a pistol. You should have my knife brother. I want to try the pistol," She grabbed my arm and placed the knife in my hand.
"W-w-we need to go. This will ru-ru-ruin us."
My stuttered pleas were to a deaf ears as her gait trailed out of shadows and into the light. I ran after her, stumbling over the the red nectar of fallen man.
The thud of a freshly fallen and the sound of the gun that made it happen caught by ear. I ran faster and followed her into the tavern.
She pointed at a man, clutching a six-sided dice in his hand, poised to be thrown. "That's him, brother. He's the one who took our sister from us."
In our imaginings, evil is a form very repulsive, but the man I saw that day—the face of evil—was one of many that blossom in an ever-growing garden, feeding on glory and blood, which tastes sweet as sugar and feels as entrancing as wine.
He had a face lovelier than the fairest of maidens. His hair, obsidian; its waves, an envy pull, his skin, a hue of dimmed gold of unsown land caught in dawn's first kisses. The dame beside him, a beauty in her own right, pales in comparison.
He had a companion who was maidenless for the right reason, for his gaze could make even men bathe out of disgust. It was unholy and repulsive.
The handsome man laid down the dice as he heard the sound of the pistol and the bullet finding the heart of tavern keeper.
"Off you go" Devika uttered in a tone that sent chills down my spine. She aimed the pistol and shot the one with greasy stare in the forehead.
Blood sprayed from the wound like a macabre fountain, and his body crashed onto the stone floor. The woman screamed, and the man, as if he were a gentleman, held her protectively.
"Do you know what your lover did?" Devika asked, edging closer and answered her own question. "Your lover is a rapist."
"How dare-"
"You raped her! You murdered her!"
The woman pushed him back and got herself on the feet. "Is what she is saying is true? Has my trust been forsaken"
"No! I did no such thing," he tried to assure her by taking her hand in his, but she recoiled away in disgust. "Have you been unfaithful?"
His eyes narrowed as temper took over. "I—I tolerate your bitter complaints despite your stinginess with virtue. You, you bitch. I promised you marriage, why do you still insist on being so difficult? What stopped you from spreading your legs? So what if I did it with a sullied whore, I am a man I can do what-"
Devika squeezed the trigger, and the pistol roared to life, its explosive sound was followed by a chilling scream as the gun inflicted a explosive havoc, severing Devika's fingers in a gruesome burst.
Seeing her in pain thrust me into a frenzied whirlwind of action shattering the stillness that came in me with first murder.
To deal with the threat that was me, he tackled me to the ground, sending the knife clattering. He climbed on top of me, cupped his arms around my neck, and began to strangle.
I struggled to breathe as his hands tightened around my throat, my vision tunneling into a blurry haze. My sister even in pain got on her feet, found a waterpot and shattered it against the man's head and in that process slipped and tumbled to the ground. The man's focus shifted and his body reacted immediately. He got on top of her and proceeded to strangle her in blind rage.
I crawled to the fallen knife, took it in hand, and used all the strength in my bones to stand on my feet and reached the man who brought darkness into my life. The blind rage betrayed his senses. He did not notice my presence. My left hand grasped his hair and the other held the knife over his throat. Noticing the danger, he froze.
"What... What did Mythri ever do to you?" I asked, my voice trembling.
"She deserved it," words that left his lips felt like the cold of a void.
"I did it to her." He uttered in a way that came across as gloating. "Do you want to know in detail? The things we've do-" He paused as his lover knelt before him, hands joined together.
"Spare us," she begged, her eyes shining, caught in the flickering flame of torch as tears streaked down her face.
"H-He made a mistake. H-He did not want to do it, he r-romed with the wrong crowd, and they manipulated him to do it, right Ravidasan? He is a good m-man, he was nice to me, it's all because of that greasy b-bastard, he he."
"I suggested Nathuram to abduct her" He cut in, sabotaging her pleas to save his life. "I liked it, I will do it to again to your bitch of a sis-"
I did not let him finish. A sharp cut set afire the frost blossoms in his lover's silky night hair and his tongue wagged no more. He fell sideways and upon beholding her cantankerous lover's fallen corpse, the damsel vented the agony by the consequence of the adder seed that shackled and exploited her.
I took the one that planted the seed and there was indeed clear lack of appreciation. Perhaps the onlookers of my sister corpse weren't the only one's in delusion.
The act against my sister was a truce on a ruse that cost them their very lives. The carnage that unfolded was an act by a hand wielding a knife in great anger, sober from the drunk propriety, bringing forth a wellspring of blood.
Their act of monstrosity turned us into murderers, their adopted kin; the kinslayers, our saga, filled the annals inked in blood.
The woman's dark complexion turned pale and her body in shock was unready for self preservation. I loomed over her with a knife in my hand as cold practicality settled in. It only took one kill for me to think about murdering a woman. To eliminate the final witness.
I got on top of her and held the knife over her throat. The belated fear came, and a scream escaped from her lips, triggering something in me—an image of the one I adored, with a monster looming above her, donning my face.
I dropped the knife, overwhelmed by a visceral wave of repulsion, and instinctively distanced myself from her. Panic settled within me like a curtain of frost as I bore witness to the aftermath of senseless violence that unfolded before my eyes and done by my hand.
In desperation I searched for something tangible to anchor myself against the invading panic.
I stumbled here and there, my surroundings a blur of chaos. In the midst of this disarray, my sister, sensing my distress, swiftly approached to provide a tangible anchor in the storm that raged in my heart.
Her hand gripped mine and had grounded me, pulling me back from the edge of despair.
No words were said, no blame was imposed for the violence unleashed was an act of a mind too pained and ruined by unpunished evil.
"They t-took her from us. They t-took her from us, but she still lingers. I still s-see her. She d-doesn't go away. Why? Why? I k-killed them, I set her free, but why?" I p-put all of us in jeopardy, I... I..."
I shushed her and drew her into a hug, suppressing my tears, assuming the role that I had so evaded. The death of our sister was something I coped with aversion, but Devika faced it head-on, and that broke her.
I needed to protect her—no matter what—and so the death of my reluctance came.
I took her hand, gripping it tight. I said, "Devika, you did not put us in jeopardy. This is my failure. Mine alone. It is not your fault. It is not your fault."
I kissed her forehead. "You did nothing wrong. Do not blame yourself for it. They did this to you. They broke you and brought this upon themselves,'
I wiped the tear from her eye. 'We will live through this. I promise you that I will not make the same mistake ever again. I will be the anchor you've been to me."
Glancing around, I realized the woman had disappeared into the night. "We need to go!" I hissed, hastily grabbing Devika's hand. I rushed through the front door and into the dimly lit alley.
