THE UNEXPECTED MURDER

I was just one kilometer away from school when I saw something horrifying and headed back to my home with my heart pounding loudly, because I wanted to tell my mother something. It was too important to meet her face to face because what I wanted to say was too important to put in a text message.

I rang the doorbell thrice but there came no reply, it might be because my mother was sleeping. Then, I eat the door harshly. She opened the door and I began to speak like a tape recorder. My mom tranquilized me, gave me a glass of water filled to the top, and asked me to sit on the couch. Thereafter, I spoke with lightning speed, what I wanted to say since ages.

I uttered everything in a breath, “I saw two people, a stranger and my cousin, Joe, fighting and abusing each other on the street. The stranger shot Joe and most probably he died on the spot while the murderer fled away. Joe was filled with blood!” My mom had the wind up and she could not believe me and said, “This could not happen! Why did the strange kill Joe?” She phoned my aunt, Joe’s mother, before you could say a knife and recounted my words to her.

She was in the market arrived at our home, dewy-eyed, as if she was just a phone call away. She could not accept it, she called Joe a dozen times but he did not receive any call. I leaded them to the spot where incident had taken place. When we culminated there, there was a crowd of people beside the dead body. My aunt, with her watery-eyes, pushed her way to her beloved son. There was a white cloth spread on the body of the deceased. She was shivering like a leaf while pulling off the cloth to see the corpse.

To her astonishment, it was not her son but it was our neighbor’s son, who resembled Joe immensely. Perhaps, I was deceived because I saw them from a considerable distance. She thanked Allah that it wasn’t her son but simultaneously she was in anguish that how could our neighbor accept the death of their only son. Our neighbors were grief-stricken.

My aunt again phoned Joe but he did not receive the calls. We were extremely worried. When my aunt reproached her home, she was surprised to see Joe slumbering in the bed. She slapped him tightly and rebuked him for being tremendously careless as he did not attend a single call and due to him, she was grief-stricken.

It was literally a baffling experience of my life. I never thought this peculiar incident would ever happen with my family member. “Sometimes unexpected things happen at an unexpected time and in the presence of unexpected people.”