The killer grabbed Muzammil by his neck. Trembling body started shuddering. He rose the boy’s face. Muzammil could not flip his eyes towards the killer when the killer was staring at him like he was staring in the graveyard, at the grave name. But how could he avoid facing him for the longest time so he gathered all his strength to face him? Clear eyes were staring at Muzammil persistently.

That night, a long one, disembogued the rain again. Unlike the shower, at the graveyard, heavy raindrops begin to alter the sticky hair person into a blowzy. Half of Muzammil’s eyes were covered, restricting his view of the killer. The sound of drops was browbeating him. He found him a scary statue. The impact of the killer, little understood by him earlier and the rest by the firm grip on his neck didn’t even let him make efforts to lose out of his hands.

The killer waited for the rain to stop completely. As soon as the sound of beatboxing rain cleared the dirt of air completely and a chirping sound began irritating the killer once again, he accrued his grip and took Muzammil inside the house.

Muzammil tried robust to let him free knowing that once getting in control of the killer, he will not survive but the killer took him in festinant before anyone could watch. Closing the door, he threw him in front of the mirror. Muzammil when lifted his face, saw a weak and innocent person crying in the mirror. It was not the first time when he saw himself crying but fear on a pale yellow face was something new entirely. The worst part began when the mirror reflected the killer’s attempt to strike him. Widening the eyes, with an abrupt slid, he quickly turned around and his sudden movement made the rod hit the upper brim of the left eye. Although the hit was not so strong, the sudden blow fainted Muzammil mentally for a couple of minutes.

Blurred eyes when revived, gazed at the bloodstain on the ground as its first view. Blood was horrifying to him but the pain was not more than what he had already gone through in his life.

Incessant blinking eyes when watching the killer standing beside him suddenly jumped wider. Muzammil when looked at him, the killer pulled his hair with a strong jerk leaving no time slice to ask,

“Who are you?”

“I am sorry. I am sorry. Please leave me.” Muzammil blabbered. Trembling lips cut themselves enough time during speaking.

The killer had the whole night of torture. He touched the blood droplet on Muzammil’s lip with his thumb, watched the pattern or might DNA of blood, waited for some brainstorming and before Muzammil could speak, pressed the cutting part of lip tightly, pulled it a little out and cuts it deeply with an acuminous knife.

The pain unleashed Muzammil to try and push the killer away from him but sooner realized that his hands couldn’t make move. They were tied from the only wooden table’s leg in the house.

Blood started dripping from his lips on the floor, pouring towards a cup, laid at the sloppy end of the floor. He was trying to free himself, agitating the entire table but with no success. Finally, a notebook fell from the table when he shooked the table with all his internal strength. He would not be attentive towards it if the killer’s face won’t change to an indifferent expression after falling off the notebook. The whole smile over the killer’s face faded in a second. He quickly stood from his place, grabbed the notebook, and put it in an opened suitcase.

Dirty picked clothes in very small quantities were in the suitcase. Most of them were irregularly floating on the bed. The killer closed the suitcase with the fewer firm hands he had while holding Muzammil’s neck. He quickly put the suitcase on a shelf and smother it with an old torn cloth. Muzammil wanted to sneak into the notebook quickly. The whole scenario flushed in his mind with a single word,

“A STORY”

Everyone has a story. All our action depends on it, all our life. Muzammil knew it better than anyone else that night. An ecstatic writer sensed the story of the killer. He took out the optimism from the night giving him two reasons,

First, a mind-blowing story might come towards him, and lastly, the killer’s story could become the only reason for him to remain alive. The scenario had changed. The killer indulged in deep ideologies, engraving his thoughts and Muzammil just smiled shifty, looking at an intensifying face releasing the scary fear.

The killer then comes out of thought and glances at Muzammil’s face shredding fear out. He went near him and asked,

“You are smiling?”

“Aren’t you?”

Muzammil slowly adjusted the mask of fear on his face.

“Aren’t you afraid of death?” The killer continued with a pitying voice for the first time.

Muzammil did not give any explanation. The killer did not empathize with his pretending innocent and fearing face. He groped his throat with the firm hard fist. It was no less than a choke. The smile inside screamed verily. The grip turned Muzammil’s eyes into blood tub and face pale yellow. The killer again took out his monstrous knife and made the pale yellow cheeks red.

A small cut he made at the thickest part of the cheeks. Although it wasn’t a deep cut, the bleeding fluently rolled down with no restriction. The smile became a serious mistake, Muzammil reckoned but the killer didn’t stop at that. He slides his grip a little below until sees a small area of the throat sweating and galloping. He put the knife on the edge of his throat. Life at the cliff with infinite fall and hope dying at its fate. Muzammil had closed his eyes. The last breath of life was travelling towards the end. There was just a single bridge to cross. Nothing could have taken him back definitely there was some story, which needed him alive, collapsed, the bridge to death all of a sudden.

It was completely unexpected of the killer’s nature that his hand loosened its grip. The knife was still there but breath comes in. Muzammil started breathing heavily. The killer, sitting on the toe, lowered his head and refused to kill Muzammil.

An unusual event had happened for the first time in his life. He couldn’t stop himself from killing a 10-year-old boy, playing football at the corner of his house. Surely, pity was not an option. There was something else.

“Maybe a story”

“Maybe that notebook which had fallen from the table”

Whatsoever it was, it helped Muzammil. The killer stood and walk away from him without looking back. A distance between them sighed a relief for Muzammil who had almost lost his life a few seconds before. He backed his breath but his brain was losing consciousness.

He let him awake when the killer without looking into his eyes asked,

“Who are you?”

Muzammil sensed the end of the killing part and the beginning of a negotiation. He replied,

“Muzammil”

“Who?” The killer turned towards him and asked abstractly.

“The delivery man” Muzammil replied gathering strength to wake and be conscious.

The killer looked him in the eyes. There was curiosity. He sat down on his toe after approaching Muzammil, asking if interested in enrolling in a conversation with him.

“A deliveryman, from how long?”

Until that question, Muzammil couldn’t hold for much longer and unconsciousness started closing his eyes vigorously. He didn’t respond to the question but the killer wanted an answer. He lifted his head repeatedly and again, whenever it lowered down. Nothing helped Muzammil a little more to stay conscious anymore.

The conversation between them ends when their eyes are closed. Muzammil no longer could resist any more. In a wave of anger, the killer stood up and kicked him hard in his leg but he didn’t respond. He did it many times but finally ended his brutal torture. Extending his arms watches the window, he took out the notebook from the suitcase.

Grabbing a pen from the pocket of the kurta, he opened the exact page of the notebook he needed. The first name he wrote scratched the page with no ink. The pen was not his belonging but of a person whom he killed one dreadful night. It was the hardest thing he had hitten in his eyes.

It was not a weapon although the killer used it, as an important sword against a man whose eyes were more beautiful than anyone would have. The last blood drop remained on its tip, which made a hard layer on tip of that pen. The page had the first ten rows containing names of the person who had already been cut down after when the killer killed them. There were some fifteen names on the paper. Removing the layer, he began writing the sixteenth name towards the end of the paper. He Flipped the page when the names were not enough for a single page to carry, on top of which, capital and bold letters had shown,

“THE LIST”

The night shrunk hiding secrets in it.

The next day, the last screaming voice of the hen, opened Muzammil’s eyelid. A screeching drunk fan was unfamiliar to him. He had done the exercise of opening and closing his eyes thrice to remove the blurriness. It was not easy for them to get cleaned by themselves. Muzammil tried to bring his hand towards his eyes but couldn’t. He thought it was a dream but when the killer entered the house with the blood in his hand, grabbing the neck of a hen in one hand and the rest of the body in another, it was clear that last night, Muzammil gonna remember the rest of his life. He tried shaking his body but the rope didn’t let him away from the bed on which he was sleeping. He screamed for a second but watching the killer approaching, the cruel night appeared in his mind in a single click.

“One more screaming and you will be the next hen”

The killer after warning indulged in cutting small pieces of the hen after removing the skin so efficiently as if experienced in a butcher’s shop.

Muzammil imprisoned himself. Closing his eyes, he went through the time in his imagination, trying to solve the puzzle which trapped him. Felt in a minute that the decision to follow the killer should not be taken, giving himself, different excuses at the time when he was standing in the middle of dew and last night. All of a sudden, his mind tickles a question,

“Why the killer left him undead”

A mystery, he loves. The whole night flashback appeared in his mind as if happening right in front. The notebook and silence of the killer for a few seconds generate an idea of bringing a wonderful story to his life.

Reality knocked on the door of imagination with a heavy burst when the killer struck a knife at the hen.

One moment before he was on the road which could take him to the brighter end and the next moment in a dark room adhered with a dark light in it. The sound of cutting small pieces of chicken was threatening. He felt terrible until the killer asked him about his work.

That conversation, he would have never expected. Last night, he didn’t remember any conversation but torturing. No more feeling dusty. It was a need to know each other, which let the killer converse with a strange person.

A moment appeared when Muzammil felt the long conversation he had ever made with anyone in his life.

***********

There was someone who listen to him all the time in his childhood but that person too couldn’t bring himself close to him. The past 24 years kept running in his head with frame after frame. A constant life. He could only watch him sitting at the top of the school hiding from the seniors of the high school. An alone wolf of his imagination trapped in the kingdom of tigers, a lot of. There was no one to talk to. Silence and fearful nights appeared twice every week. The boy with the above intelligence felt aloof and disregarded in the middle of average students who remained together all day. The only person who helped him was the one who paid his fees. Muzammil did not want to lose his errand. He had never told him what he feels. The smile and hidden tears remain where they were.

He was in his final year when the only person, he loved, slept in the lap of silence forever. Somehow, he graduated, but the hidden art of imagination never stopped. It craved him out of the finite world into the universe of infinity.

All his beliefs kept on testing stepwise. The grief from the world only could he resist through his writing. The place he started exploring went on unleashing more of his imagination and desires.

*******************

The killer although could never become anyone’s hero but Muzammil had inclined a little bit towards him.

The killer asked,

“You afraid of dying?”

The boy nodded in yes.

“Then you have to work for me”

Muzammil panicked a little. He sensed the work, the killer could belong to but couldn’t refuse him as well.

The killer said,

“I need the address of a few people and you will give them to me”

The man started thinking about the reason for the killer’s belief in him. The killer abrupt his thought,

“You have one life. Do not try to waste it on thinking about anything, which could make me think because when I think“

He took a pause and after striking hardest at the strongest bone of the hen, breaking it into two said,

“I kill someone. Don’t be that someone”

Muzammil, being an honest and innocent person was aware of what would be the consequences of his work. The whole day, the killer took him as his hostage; feed him well but when the sun rises for the next day, Muzammil found him sleeping on a bench two streets away from the place where he works.

He tried to believe the whole thing was a dream once again but when checked his pocket, a piece of paper broke all those dreams. Unfolded it, was a shaky moment. The page contained what the killer was writing the whole night when Muzammil went unconscious. It was,

“THE LIST”