Surrender

Surrender

 

Police led Tony to the third floor of the building, the building and the surroundings stood in desolate emptiness, cordoned, and a crowd was swelling in the neighboring rooftops.

His handcuffs scratched against his wrists peeling off some skin while ascending steps, but he didn't feel any pain because comparing to what Cibil went through, it was nothing.

‘Tell us what happened that day?’ Thomas, the police officer barked when they reached the third floor.  A few people crowded around; workers in the shops,  many shops were now functioning on the floor. 

He tried to remember what happened that day; memories being piled up like withering wreaths over a dead body, it wasn't easy.  The lay out of the once abandoned floor has now changed beyond recognition.  The yellow blotch on the wall of the entrance hall, Cibil's thick oily hair used to smooch on the wall when she sat on the floor was not there, licked away by somebody's paint brush.

‘Come on, try, the effect is miraculous...', a tall thin bearded man used to wield the power of the stuff he carried in his bag, to him and others, murmuring that soundbite. Even his sight was disgusting;  red gawking eyes, grit in between teeth made Tony vomit. He wore a pink shoulder bag and moved in and out the campus freely. Huge trees marked the open area of the compass. Their dead folios filled the ground; beaten by the rains and the sun they lost their texture and merged with the dark soil on the ground. He daily walked over the dark soil, and who was he, nobody asked. His promise of the miraculous made Tony curious and followed him.  

‘Almost all in the campus are my customers’, he laughed proudly on his way to the building next to the compass, to its third floor. 

At the first inhale of the smoke he trusted him profusely.  A pull onto his nose and mouth  that made him large was more than miraculous and even funny. He was flying in the sky and straight to the heavens. At the heavens a click was enough to summon the dancing beauties to his service.  The miracle multiplied when his monstrous father shrank to a mouse at his sight and scampered away looking for a hole. For the first time in life he was relieved from the fear of his father.  That made him laugh.

‘I walked into this place’. He said slowly.

‘Alone?’

‘With Cibil’

‘Who else were present here?’

‘Almost all our buddies and more’

‘Bastard talk in a proper language’.  A blow fell onto his back which made him fly to the wall and almost fall down. Inspector Thomas knew how to attract attention from crowd.

Doesn't he know that hitting an accused during interrogation was a crime? After all what attention was he seeking when the accused surrendered willingly?  

The other officer Ali, took Thomas to one side and murmured something into his ears.

‘We need names’ When they returned, Ali took over the interrogation.

‘Perhaps two-third of the college was here, I can’t remember their names or numbers’

‘Since when had the peddlers used this place for their trade?’

‘I don’t know but long before I started.’

‘When was that?’

‘Almost an year ago’

‘So that day you came with Cibil, tell us who was Cibil’

‘She was my classmate’

‘You wanted to kill her’

‘No’ He lapsed into silence.   

''Was she also a customer?''

''No.  She was my friend, came here to talk to me.''

''Talk what?''

''That drug is bad and I should quit it.''

‘'But you saw her as a sex object.’'

''No.''

''Then what.  You bastard we haven't come here to listen to your lies. Give us stuff.''

‘I was an ordinary teenager having all vices of this society, deprived of love, groomed into believing that females are subordinates, untrustworthy, and sex objects.  But Cibil was different, she  was intelligent and had her own thoughts.  And she loved me’

‘Did you love her’?

‘I don’t know, honestly, I wasn't sure what was love?’

‘So you wanted to have sex with her that day?’

‘No. I had fantasized it, but was scared to approach her’

‘Have you had sex with anybody’?

‘Yes, on a few occasions, at my home, with my cousin?’

‘How old were you?’

‘I was fifteen, she was twelve, that was easy for me, no thoughts involved, her body wanted me, I wanted hers. We went into the dark store behind my house. But Cibil was different, as I said, when I went closer to her I got my thoughts, they inhibited my body’

‘If so, what happened that day?’

‘We were talking, that was the last day of the term, this entire floor was crowded with my campus mates. Boys and girls sat together, smoked, talked, laughed, kissed, some disappeared into the inner darker places of this building, may be doing what my cousin and me did in our storehouse. Drug peddlers were happy calling out their friends to supply more. I was worried how would I survive the holidays at home. I hated my home; my monstrous father, my slave-mother, my spiteful brother, and my stupid sister, it was a living hell.

‘You forced her to go to the dark inner place?’

‘No. To take away my worries, I took a doze and that was getting on to me. In the bustles in my head, I forgot her. I went on like that for a while. When I was back to normal, the crowd had almost dispersed. I started looking for her and then I heard she crying and calling out my name. You see by then the other side of this building was under construction. I heard her crying from that side. I ran to that side, my legs were not easily touching the ground. When I Just entered there she was jumping down. I saw her flying in the air, and he running away from her. On his way he pushed me away. I ran to the concrete edge and looked down. I saw her body floating in the red pool on the ground like a cross. I clamped my body on to an iron rod to avoid slipping down.

‘You knew him’

‘Very well’

‘Who was he’?

‘Me pronouncing his name wouldn’t do any good for you’

‘You have to tell us?’

‘Our well known professor, John Mathew’

Mention of John Mathew made blood rush to the face of Thomas and Ali, and their eyes jittery.  There was shudder on their face as though seeing before them the naked body of John Mathew lying in a pool of blood in his bedroom, a dagger thrust into his genitals. 

The crowd's eyes were now beaming into Tony's direction. 

‘I ran away after reading media’s sensational bullshit. In their pulp fiction machinery, they juiced our lives and the public swilled it.  And John Mathew published articles on my erotic behaviors’.

‘You police, you too followed their fiction and embarked on hunting me for Cibil’s death. Now I surrender not to give you credit, but to tell the truth to the world; I slaughtered that bastard John Mathew.''

***