When The Killer Dies

The doorbell rang. Sneha had just gotten on the bed tired of waiting for her parents. Wearily, she got up, “Mom, Dad, is that you? Where’d you go without telling me?”

She opened the door without thinking, too tired to open her eyes. The day had been terrible – she’d been fired, she barely escaped being crushed down by a lorry while crossing a road, and she returned home only to find it deserted.

She screamed when she saw the stranger at the door.

“P…please help me,” he could manage this much before his legs gave way. Impulsively, she tried to support him but he was too heavy. With soft thumps, both of them fell on the cool marble floor red with blood. Right on cue, the lights went out: quite a time for load-shedding.

‘What did I do to deserve this? How did I get into this situation,’ Sneha thought. She somehow extricated herself from beneath the man.

Not knowing what to do, she sat there for minutes with her heart thumping, muscles jammed and thoughts paralysed.

A vehicle stopped in front of the house. Several booted footsteps later a shrill voice rang in the darkness, “Miss Sneha Pandit, you are under arrest.”

An ambulance had taken the unconscious man away.

She was now on the Police Jeep being carried to the police station. Several rough hands had touched her body everywhere while forcing her onto the jeep. Still in her nightgown, she felt both cold and naked. Her hands were cuffed.

“I’m going to be sick,” she whispered.

A constable shifted so that she could throw-up on the street running below the speeding vehicle. She leaned and she jumped…

She had to ignore the pain from hitting the road- she had to run.

The jeep screeched to a halt. Right at that moment, a mighty crash sounded as a big lorry collided head-on with it. The jeep was knocked over.

Sneha was dazed over what her eyes were seeing. Her voice lost.

Casually disembarking, unhurt, the lorry driver noticed her. “You survive again,” he sneered, in the voice of her respectable boss who had fired her today for no reason!

“I had to fire you, my dear secretary because my wife thought I had an affair with you! Her brother holds shares of the company; she had threatened to throw me off my post of MD! She told your parents things to humiliate me! I had to do something- had to acquire my brother-in-law’s shares,” boss trotted towards Sneha.

“I killed your parents before they got me arrested for something I hadn’t done!”

Sneha’s screams were drowned in his mirthless laughter. He was now leaning over her.

“Still he didn’t give up. I tried to kill him. He escaped and met you! So I called the police and then smashed his ambulance before coming for you,” his pistol rested against her temple. “You must die.”

‘Everything worth living lost in a day,’ Sneha thought helplessly, her insides burning. ‘Was life worth fighting for now?’

YES

A killer is most mistaken when he is too close to his target. With a sudden move, the pistol was knocked off his grip and with hatred, Sneha had never known, she strangled him with her handcuffs.

Life is always worth it… when the killer dies.