Her Revenge

It was the first thought that came to her as she woke up. He was gone. Soon, this bedroom, the house in whose eastern corner it sat, and the tiny garden outside with its gnarled old red hibiscus and the half-grown mango tree they had planted together, all those would be gone as well. It was the strangest feeling ever.

He was gone, gone forever. Gone from this world, from her life. Exactly 6 years ago her father asked her, "Pankhudi if I die, what you will do?" She was small, just laughed and said, "I will do what you never let me do. What you always say are grown-up matters."  

Today she doesn't know what to do, and how to accept.

Accept that her father has died.

Mr Dhillon was Pankuhdi's both parent since she was 4. Her mother had died in a bomb attack. After that, her father had been an inspiration for her. Her father was a detective, an investigator who strived for justice. She was proud of him.

It was Sunday morning, a day her father devoted his entire day to her. They had planned a candlelight brunch and then a game of squash. They woke up early and got vegetables and fruits from their kitchen garden washed them up singing the tune of their favourite songs. She baked a butterscotch cake, father's favourite. She garnished it with chocolates which she had made the other day, they set up the table together. They were her best moments and they were the last ones according to her destiny. As soon as the four-storey cake was cut the doorbell rang. At that moment, she didn't know why that bell made her stomach do a somersault and fear engulfed her. Mr Dhillon stood up and walked towards the door. She just had a feeling that it should have been better if she would have gone, and her fears proved right.

The gate opened with a gunshot. She froze, something wrong was going on, she realised. She shot off in the direction of the sound realising a bullet had just shot off from a gun, shot by a rather pleased looking man at the door. She picked up a glass vase which was standing there with her favourite flowers; she took it and smashed it on the person's head. He started to shout in agony, he reached for her hair and started to pull her towards him. In her other hand she was having a lemon she squeezed it on his eyes, this time he cried and ran away in agony.

From underneath the shreds of her tangled hair, she saw her father lying down on the floor with pooping eyes and blood everywhere. She had to do something, she called on the ambulance and then ran to the neighbours but they had gone somewhere out. She was baffled, she looked for the first aid kit in their house, pulled up a white bandage and wrapped it around his fathers head. Her tears streamed down as the bandage couldn't stop getting stained red. The ambulance came in, with two men dressed in white with a stretcher. They reached the hospital after what seemed hours to Pankhudi, but fate was against her and it was told by the doctor that Mr Dhillon had already died long before he came to the hospital. She was dead frozen. Until tomorrow, there was a strong lead of her father ahead of her and today she was there all alone in this wild and opportunist world that could swallow anyone. She was an orphan, neither any relatives whom she could stay with, nor did she have any godfather or godmother. Left all alone in this cruel care of society.

But life had to go on as it never ends. She made herself and her father a cup of coffee and called as she used to do daily, "Father your coffee is ready." But no one came. He was gone, gone forever. She was hopeless now. She was so depressed that she had even refused to go to her father's funeral which was organised by their neighbours who were very kind to her. But how long could she remain hopeless? She cried all day and in the end, she thought I have two options, either to make my father a martyr or to fill her life with grief and, she, choose the first one.

In the saddest period of life, she had forgotten what she had seen when she was fighting with the person with the gun. She had seen a rather typical sign on an armband which he was wearing. She once knew that it was a key to something. She searched books and encyclopaedia and the internet but she could find nothing. Exhausted by her search she slept soundly.

She was walking in the dim light of her father's room. She had just entered it. She walked straight towards the cupboard and in there was a blue box. On it was written 'Findings' with green ink. Her eyes began to open and she stood up straight in bed. It was a dream. But she was sure it was her father's message. She got up and went to her father's room. Switched on the light and opened the cupboard. She searched here and there but couldn't find the box. She was frustrated, and in her frustration, she banged the cupboard, at that time a small drawer opened at the back of the cupboard. She opened it and carefully picked up the box laying there. Blue in colour and in green ink it was written there 'Findings'. She opened it and found the same sign she had seen on the armband. It was written 'The project I am working on, Precious union'. At that moment she remembered her father murmuring Precious union in his sleep and when she asked him, he said, "It's just a group of wrongdoers," she had just gotten the point. The precious union was a group of wrongdoers whom her father was after and those people had murdered her father just because he was after them or he had got to know too much about them.

Inside, there was another box she picked it and opened it but she couldn't, she had to find the key to it. She thought and searched in all the possible nooks and crannies of the house but she couldn't. Then she tried to remember if her father had mentioned it. One of his statements struck her. He used to say to her a lot of times "My key is my strength". She then went to the cupboard in which his father kept his dumbles. She searched there. At last, she saw a slit in one of the dumble and in it she found the key. The key to the unknown, the key to the unexplored, the key to the unimaginable, the key to her father, the key to the dark box.

She took the key and opened the box. It contained several pictures, a map which was folded many times and a paper on which her father had tried decoding some codes. She took turns and looked at them carefully trying to figure out what inferences she could take out from it. Some of the pictures were as if taken from a hidden place during a meeting. One of the images was a small hut. The map showed the design of the big setup but she didn't understand why the entrance was labelled as a hut. At last, she found a paper on which something was written in a coded language that her father had de-coded. It was written. "Next meeting on 1st May 9 am at hut", the date on that day was 30th April so it was the next day. And now she seemed to understand the word hut. It was the entrance for the headquarters of the precious union. She knew it was dangerous but she wanted to revenge. It was now a do or die game for her.

The next day at 7 AM she got up. She prepared herself with breakfast and while eating she took a look at the map and studied it. It was a little hard to understand but she made it. She could now see it very clearly as his father had decoded all the words on the map. There was a hut in Brownie town and it was the entrance to a big underground building. The Precious union did smuggling and today they were to ship their goods to Korea. She had to stop them and report to the police.

Her next move was to take her scooter and ride off to Brownie town. She was there in a few minutes ride. She had reached to the eastern outskirts of the Brownie town where there were four huts out of which, one seemed a bit unnatural and at a distance from others and looking as if it was not used for living. At once she knew it was the hut she was hunting for. It was 9:50 in her watch, she decided to wait for a while. She sat under a tree nearby and took out a book from her bag pack and started to act as if she was reading. Five minutes later people began to come. There were four young men and an old man who was looking like a very important person. They all went in and closed the straw door of the hut. Pankhudi waited for a minute or so then she got up ready to execute her plan. Firstly, she slowly tried to open the gate and it opened easily. She glowed her torch around the insides of the hut and she saw no one. She then glowed the torch at the bottom and there she could see a hole and stairs leading downstairs. She switched off her torch and went downstairs. She moved in the shadows a long way down, she reached a passageway which had many rooms but no one was there. At last, the passage took a turn and it opened into a hall where the five people were discussing something. She switched on her camera on video mode and recorded their whole conversation in which they were discussing the enhanced security of Korea and now how would they be sending the goods now. She had completed the first part of her plan, she kept the camera in safely.

Next, she proceeded to the next part of her plan - to give them punishment for murdering her father. She took her father's favourite hockey stick and a baseball bat and went before the people. "Hello Precious union, you all know me? I guess yes," she said.

"Who are you?" asked one of them.

"I am Mr Dhillon's daughter," she told them.

They didn't reply as one of them raced towards her with a strong fist. She in return hit him with a hockey stick and he fell unconscious, another one came and he too showed the same results. Her father had trained her good. The third one came to her with a rope, she tried to beat him up but missed. He tied her and the other one began to squeeze her neck making her suffocate but she didn't lose hope. She bit both of them and beat them up with all her might. At that moment there came a voice from behind, "Pankhudi, beware!" She turned around and there, she saw her father suffocating the old man who was going to shoot his gun at her. "Dad," she thought she was imagining, but she wasn't. In her father's and the man's struggle, the man shot a gun at her father and he was badly hurt. Pankhudi couldn't bear it anymore, she smashed the bat at the man's head and the man fell down. She was the winner. She then took her father to the top and locked the hut. She then phoned the ambulance and the police. She made her father go in the ambulance and as the inspector came she took her downstairs and told her the whole story with the video she had recorded. The inspector arrested them.

She then rushed to the hospital for her father. There she got to know that her father had never died. He was hurt but had healed. He was then captivated and the doctor was forced to say that Mr Dhillon was dead. In the funeral also, the union had sent a wax model of Mr Dhillon that is why no one recognised. But when that day he heard his daughter's voice, he knew she was there to save him, to take HER REVENGE.