The night was still shrewd with darkness and the man sabotaged a life a blink before. Walking out of the mud, and stepping towards the entrance of the graveyard, he was careful not to get noticed by someone. Footsteps leftmark on the road, constructed a few days before. The graveyard was the oldest one in the extreme corner of the city. The place where it is located is filled with more void than the people did. Fear and superstition led the crowd to migrate from the place. The only few left were either poor ones or those who took care of the half-broken house and the oldest unoccupied graveyard, the only place in the city which remains analogous if compare with 25 year old one. A road and a tap were the only changes that happened there. The concierge remained at the place for more than 15 years but with nothing new. They tried to earn remuneration from another source instead of being employed as a sentinel of no less than a haunted place. Illiteracy and lower caste pulled them back with no success.

The man dawdled down when reached the tap. Opened it slowly with the shoes and wash them with a bitsy gap amid the opening of tape and shoes. After when mud flew out, he closed the tap similarly. The gate was in the right side corner of the tap. He opened it quietly and after moving out, closed it. The whole thing went into a course of action with no single mistake as if he knew what would be the next move.

The man walked down the street in the little dew and rain. The first footstep fainted just after he took another. Hands in the pocket, eyes lowered down, lips thundering and clever steps taken suddenly stopped. Eyes getting wider and the man turned sharply. He felt like someone following him. A little closer to him was no one and for long-distance, it was impossible to identify anyone in the lerch dew. The man reciprocated eyeball in a second but no one was there. No sound other than him, he heard the whole time but a clever and experienced brain alarmed someone else’s presence. He was determined that someone was surely following him. The man reverted to his position and start walking again but with a running brain too.

He was persistently-taking steps but then suddenly took a left turn and disappeared. Although there was no sound of footsteps before, or after the turn, it seems that the journey stopped. No footsteps seem approaching anywhere. The only view was dew.

The man opened the gate to his only room. The appearance would not glimmer in such a place. A few books are on the right corner of the broken desk. A small lamp was lighting the things only close to it. A hanging towel on the chair was wet and contracted. Distorted clothes everywhere showed a lazy man living in the house. That scenario of the room went into the eye of a stranger, watching them through the broken end of the window.

The man who followed the killer reached his destination.

The man inside removed the cap and puts it on the top of a notebook on the desk.

The killer’s face was until then unseen completely by those stranger eyes watching him from his back. He took out the kurta and puts it near the cap. Eyes were watching without blinking from the window. The killer saw his thin body, collapsing bones from the chest leaving a gap in between the middle of the chest ribs. He touched the mark on the chin, watching it in the mirror for a small fraction of time and then all of a sudden turned around instantly towards the window. The man who followed the killer scrolled down with fear.

The killer knew but waiting for the correct moment. The game was over. Spying ended before gearing up. The killer had seen the one who was following him. No more curtain remained. The only voice around the window was the man’s trembling lips. Shattering voice of the door was heard that night in the middle of darkness and then strong footsteps.

The window resides just left a wall to the door. There was no time for the man to run away from the killer. Quick footsteps suddenly stopped, and the man sat with his head inserted in his lap, trembling heavily, fearing like real and sobbing like crying.

The killer was in front, standing calm, staring at him, and then towards the sky laughing as if waiting for such a long time. A deep voice was heard in the middle of a screaming night.

“One more time, I won”                              

**********

It was a long journey. Calm and peace were the only companions from outside. Inside, terrible massacres recruit new guilt one by one. Cold winds from the north left most of the passengers closing their windows except the one for whom sweating was the only motioning thing that day.

A woman sat next to him when closed the window, Muzammil felt as if a major stroke hit him. Sweat covered the face within no time delay. The woman sensed his suffocation through his face only. She opened the window quickly, and kept saying,

“I am sorry”

“I am sorry”

“I am sorry”

She was beautiful enough to gather everyone’s attention but Muzammil saw her for the first time since the bus started its journey 3 hours ago. When she was apologizing, nearly all the passengers were gazing towards Muzammil.

A few passengers came up with their home medic to the suffocation which Muzammil felt more while watching them looking at him relentlessly. It all went more embarrassing for him. At the time of pain sometimes the slightest pullout from it relaxed much more than a victorious battle and so did a stormy blow of wind which when strikes his face, calms the whole situation with a snap. He looked at the woman consciously. She had a baby girl on her lap and a boy of ten beside her. The boy seemed to be in fear of something.

After a long distraction from the woman and passengers, Muzammil drew his eyes again to the boy. He sensed something wrong with him. The boy was well dressed, with buttons properly fastened from the top of the shirt to the last bottom. It looked as if he was dressed properly because of his mother’s will to make her child well-behaved and well-disciplined. Muzammil looked at him with pity, untied the buttons of his sleeves, and freed him from the boundaries of a well-behaved society.

As soon as he opened it, the toy, the boy, was holding, fell and his hands hung like a cracked bones. The mother fastened the buttons quickly before anyone could watch and show undesired sympathy. She did it ferociously that a few nuts in her palm fell. After when Muzammil had seen all, she told him that the boy was extremely weak and that his body, bones, and brains too were fragile. He could not support his own body. That’s the reason; she tied him tight in his clothes. Muzammil remembered someone from his past had the same problems of hiding weakness from the laughing world. He never wanted to travel ever in the past through his emotions ship but the world showed him after a long time, the reality. After a long silence and deep thinking, Muzammil drew up his diary and wrote,

“I realized one thing today, the mother of a boy, just to hide his weakness and not show it to the perfectly trained world, tied her son tightly. It might have hurt him but ultimately become the only way, for her, to show the world that her son too could compete with them. We too, just to protect ourselves and not show our weaknesses to civilized society, often, covers our bodies with pretending clothes that let us stand and work. The clothes of visualization, the clothes of perfection, and the clothes of doing only what people appreciate”

Muzammil was not feeling well writing such harsh lines. He was in disgrace which brought the kid into this world.

The writing, which he started a year back, was huddling him with the burden of the cruel world. He was thinking about his wrong decision to write fiction that would seem real.

The whole journey to the new city felt miserable. He was abstract about the last two incidents, and wanted to go back to the village, and help them but couldn’t. Day ended before the journey meets the destination, the destination of the suffocating man and this story.

Sun usually never shines on his face but the day and new city welcomed him to witness the biggest story of his life. Muzammil had the only money left to buy him 5 days a meal. He started searching for a job as soon as reached the place. Mumbai was well known for not keeping anyone hungry. A small quote on the fifth page of a local newspaper took him to a strange place, which had graved enough stories in it forgotten under the sea.

Muzammil searched profession as per his qualification. There were several job vacancies. He went through them one by one. Struggling in his starting days, he learned an important thing about the city. It never let a pious man live in it; either swallows with no sign left or threw the person completely out of it. Muzammil had no other option than to get swallowed by it. Hunger for the first four days ate enough part of his stomach and self-confidence that the need grabbed him to work as a delivery boy.

He was qualified for a better job in the city but when saw his face similar to the young person whom he saw in the village, a day before that person’s death, he decided to enrol wherever getting a job and two times meals. A new life of struggle began scolding, abusing and sometimes beating Muzammil because of his softness in arguments. People took him as a kid. It was only the owner of the restaurant, where he works, who never let him feel miserable. The owner of the restaurant always took him as an honest and pious man. He let him live in the backyard of his restaurant and feed him better food.

An entire day went by delivering items from one place to another and walking with the voice of Fazr Azan, he was pulled up by the gravity of imagination to write a story, the only hope, he had to face the cruel world with a pretending smile all day.

One after another, the cruel world welcomed him to enter it. Poor needs but never let them sell easily. The city was changing and Muzammil’s ideology too but all the time, it was literature which took him back towards roots. Struggle while harnessing sleep strengthen him gradually. Muzammil, a few days back was at the edge of dying and started getting at least something to live. But there was still something, something which couldn’t let him feel happy.

“An endless confront with him, falling penance, relentless restlessness, defiance imagination, and the roaring story he wants to write to live”

A month evanesces with the man getting dark circles below his eyes. The owner looked at him working hard and advised him to take some rest but he disagreed. All the decisions he took never helped him a little so he felt no more sigh in relaxing him.

He should have taken a halt from an ongoing travail mediator of reality and fiction but he didn’t and that is when he drowned fully in the core of the world, hanging in zero gravity.

Then came a night, unlike the rest ones when he went for delivering the food. It was a scary one. Dew had covered all the space. It was very hard to look at a distance. Muzammil decided to walk through the street instead of taking any vehicle after delivering the food. Small drops of water were flying in the clouds like persistently. Desperate eyes find it difficult to analyze on which side of the road, the body was driving. Nothing helped him twist or turn except a striking voice, which he heard easily, locating its exact spot. Muzammil, in curiosity, went towards the left. He took a spy walk taking small and careful steps.

A moment later the dark orange light from the pole, helped him get a view, translucently. Although it was not a mirror-clean view, an unleashing pole light helped him to watch a man digging a grave.

Confusion was erected for the first few minutes in his innocent mind but when saw a person bringing a dead body excoriating from someplace, near the grave, his heartbeat reached the dead end with lightning speed. Fear had been walking in his body entirely when the brain lost sight shrinkingly. Holding his breath, making enough sound to be heard by someone closer, Muzammil hid beside the water tank outside the graveyard and kept on watching the man’s activity inside the graveyard. Little drops of the shower suddenly changed into rain when he saw the man filling the upper portion of the grave. He couldn’t see him smiling, looking towards the sky under the light of striking clouds but sensed a crime, unlike he had read before.

The person who started taking steps to come out of the graveyard, Muzammil hiding outside, lowered himself more behind the well. The person went slowly with tranquil footsteps. Muzammil waited for him to cross the well and then started following him.  Although being scared a lot after watching the actions of the person inside the graveyard, a writer pulled him towards another sabotaging.

A few steps, Muzammil had taken when he forgets about his heavy breathing sound in the darkness of fear. When he heard it himself, he stopped walking any further. He was unaware that the person who came out of the graveyard already suspected someone’s presence.

Neither the killer nor the delivery boy can look at each other but the distance between them was so less that even if the killer took 10 steps back, he would have grabbed Muzammil. A few seconds ahead Muzammil started hearing the footsteps again and he started the chase, again. The only thing that helped him that night was Asgar’s shoes he was wearing. No sound travelled from them more than a meter. Muzammil nervously followed a sound as dew filled a layer between them could have ended his chase but when it started flushing out, the first clear vision appeared in Muzammil’s eyes. It went with a coincidence when chasing without noticing, Muzammil reached the exact place, the killer was headed. He saw him from the back with a long Kurta, a traditional cap, and long shoes gravelly.

Muzammil stopped and waited for the killer to surpass, making enough distance from him, not to get suspected. He was wrong. The killer had already known about him being followed by someone. He wanted the person to follow him even more. A cruel idea had already been born in his mind and that pious, innocent boy was completely unaware of his fate.

He followed him until a small house that looked like a storeroom appeared in the extreme left corner of many such rooms built in the same line, with only a wall separating them. But most of them were empty as who would have wanted to live near the graveyard in the locality which was famous for goons? Muzammil’s heartbeat went on rising tremendously. The field, which had witnessed enough crime ever recorded in the history of the nearest police station just 4.5 km. away, was another graveyard deepened inside.

The killer closed the door and entered his house without looking back as if he knew the man who followed him was standing just opposite the door. Muzammil went closer to the house. He changed the path from the front of the house towards the left sidewall. He saw a throwing light from a window from the sidewall of that house. He sat down instantly below the window, not to get noticed.

There was a broken side of the window at the bottom of it. A curious story he was following was no less than bait for him in the crime. He took the wrong choice, glancing through the window.

The person inside the room assured the presence of the delivery boy after watching an eye reflecting from the small mirror placed above the bigger one in which he was watching his weird body and a deep wound from the ear to chin.

He didn’t give Muzammil enough time to spy and when saw his eyes getting wider; he flicks through all of a sudden towards the window, towards the chaser.

The delivery boy bumped down.

He started trembling heavily, reckoning that the killer had seen him. The breath which till then he was holding did not stop adding more sound in the grave silence. The next sound he heard was the shattering voice of the door and then rushing footsteps. There was not enough time for him to run away. Quick footsteps suddenly stopped, Muzammil had already sat with his head inserted in his lap, trembling heavily, fearing like real and sobbing like crying.

The killer was in front, standing calm, staring at him, and then towards the sky laughing as if waiting for such a long time. A deep voice was heard in the middle of a screaming night.

“One more time, I won”