The Lady In Black

The scorching sun kept dwelling on the open backyard with traces of it being felt on her face as she tried to turn the other way to get her perfect sleep. But the disturbance was already made and the creaking fan had now become a notice point for her. She woke up nonchalantly, trying to make peace with herself but the screeching thoughts of last night shot up in her head. She hoped it was only a dream, though knowing it did actually happen she rushed out but later realised that she had no other option left. She took a cold bath, dressed in her favourite black suit with her hair neatly arranged and her lips done all red, and began her long walk to the destiny she had finally chosen.

She had everything one could desire, but her instincts had driven her this way with an incident which triggered the insanity in her. Ten kills and fifteen injured that’s what her count was; she was known among the news circles as ‘The Lady in Black’ Murders. It was never the money which she was after but the sense of insanity which she drove in her victims just before they breathed their last, that’s what caught on her like an addiction which was hard to move on from. She had a careful process which she went through religiously as she laid out the scheme of things around her victims. And the victims, they weren’t normal people; they were hardened criminals who were so thickly polluted that the public at large saw them as messiahs’ in white. This irony, this very irony, unleashed the devil in her.

It started with the molester who took away her friend’s life and robbed her from a faithful companion who she thoroughly revered. She was there, right next to her, lying helpless as the molester, her friend’s ex-husband dragged her friend out into a moving car before disappearing in the dark. She lay their hurt and bruised, crying for help but no person in that crowded street had held their hand down. That night when she woke up with strips attached to her veins, she made a decision while coming to terms with her friend’s loss which changed her life forever.

It started with revenge, which became a necessity for her. It began all emotional but it only turned into an addiction. She kept convincing her mind of the moral ground she was achieving by putting the bad men to rest who have escaped the clutches of law. But she could never convince herself thoroughly about what she was doing was right. All she knew was that it was time, and she had to put these men to rest but she never knew when that fine line was crossed which made it impossible for her to return.

As the days passed, she began to feel the desire to kill growing enormously in her and later even tried finding the means to justify her act. Horrendous crimes she kept committing, one after the other. She was so close last time from being caught that the policeman had secured a bullet into her shoulder which she had to painfully extract herself. However the desire kept building in her, finally, it reached such an extent that she forgot her ends and only means remained.

Out in the dark, she heard an old woman asking her to help cross the shady road; the bloodlust began to thrive in and within moments she held the knife so close to the old woman’s throat that it was only matter of seconds. She managed to stumble upon her eyes, helpless, screaming with pain but no one to hear her help. She felt a déjà vu; she felt she was in a similar position before and when the scene got recollected, she dropped down on her knees. She cried and cried as she couldn’t come to terms with what she had become. That night she couldn’t sleep, she felt trapped in her desire and the only way out was to surrender herself in.

In a shabby discreet police station of a remote village in Maria’h, there were a throng of newspaper reporters holding their microphones high, to collect the podcast about the surrender of the infamous serial killer ‘The Lady in Black’ who had been the cause of the murders in various places of the state for over a year. Masked in black, she walked out in shackles as she was moved into the police van to get deported to the capital where her trial was about to begin. 

“Monsters aren’t created from the outside but they are made from within. Sometimes, in a desire to beat the monster down we ourselves become our worst enemy. There are ways to solve a problem, there are problems aplenty, but the fine line stays and it shouldn’t be crossed, no matter what.”– Testimony of the convict, ‘The Lady in Black’ murders.