Men Or Monsters?

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Have you ever had good fortunes of being inside a furnace? A place big enough to tightly accommodate a person, half of your size, and yet you fit yourself in. Darker than the darkest place you have ever been, which sticks with the effluvium odour of dead rodents. In these places, under the gradually reducing oxygen levels, your brains begins to play a trick or two and the fuming heat and darkness can add fuel to the fire. My situation wasn’t too different from what I just described, inside a tattered chest.

Breathing heavily with throttling and yet curbing myself from making any sound, I heard the metal gate slamming against the wall, for someone had opened it with a lot of aggression. With that, there ensues a tapping sound, of a pair of boots on the wooden floor, which kept getting louder as the person got closer and closer to the chest—I was hiding in.

“I told you to kill her, while you could! Didn’t I?” A man spoke to someone in his imposing tone. “I knew she is a snitch and sooner or later, she is going to spill the beans.”

“There are two persons; not just one! But I heard only a single pair of boots. What about the second person?” I replayed to myself.

“What makes you think I can’t do it now?” The other man responded. “Slitting her throat will only take me a few seconds—dare she dreams, let alone in real, of telling anything to anyone.”

I was right there; hidden inside the chest, listening to their conversation, but they didn’t have any idea. Although the voices were not completely clear but they were loud enough for me to hear them. The second person had an accent; quite different to the locals and, the bass of his voice gave an impression of him being an intimidating bloke.

The first man spoke again, with even more tenacity. “Gandhi is history! Don’t you know? Sometimes you behave of him, merciful and forgiving, when situation demands for a killer.”

“You only ask her yourself, to whom was she snitching, behind our backs!”

I heard the usual muffling of the poor girl, who sounded completely petrified, by the coercion of these men. Although I couldn’t see what she signalled—for obvious reasons—but I was certain of a things; she was doing everything in her capacity to keep my presence a secret.

“Keep in mind, this one thing.. I will grant you a one-way ticket to hell, if you tried any funny business with me. Get it!”

“I have crushed many enemies—like mosquitoes—under my boots and, you are not even a fraction of it; so do a favour to yourself and don’t dare say anything to anyone.” Threatened the second man.

“But buddy, you have already sliced her tongue out, she anyway can’t say anything to anyone! Don’t you think so? Ha ha ha…” The first man giggled in sarcasm, while saying that.

“Alright—so these are the culprits behind misdoing with this poor girl.” I said to myself.

An urge arose in me to just reveal and confront these pigs, in the skin of men, myself. But by doing so, I would have put the life of this girl at risk, and hence I remained discreet and waited for them to leave the place.

“Keep the gate closed!”

“We will come back again in the night. So behave, for your own good!”

Said the first man and with that, both exited the house. I heard the sound of the gate closing followed by the latch being bolted. The chest’s top opened and I saw the girl right there. She had evaded the evil and kept me a secret from those monsters.

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End of Chapter- 9

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Previous Chapters:

1- Chapter- 1: The "Ancestral" Village
2- Chapter- 2: The Haveli
3- Chapter- 3: Legend of the Village
4- Chapter- 4: The Local Bazaar
5- Chapter- 5: The Banyan Tree
6- Chapter- 6: The Muddy Path
7- Chapter- 7: Open The Door
8- Chapter- 8: Horrible House

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Would you consider to please follow me @vinyprop & upvote this post, if I tell you that I publish a new post every single day?

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