Followed By Fate by Aruha Aref (ebook reader macos txt) 📕

The ship begins to move and Ayushmati goes into her room while Mohan stays at the deck. She tries to sleep but she cannot. Her thoughts keep switching to Mohan, she doesn’t eat anything at all and whenever Mohan calls her, she refuses. Late at night she silently leaves her room not knowing it was not only her who was planning.

Before she can reach the deck to find where Mohan is, a throbbing pain cut her leg and she comes down on her knees.

‘What do you think? You can kill everyone at night and go away alone with the jewels? I am not a fool, others may be but I am not Ayuush-Ayushmati,’ Mohan stammers.

Ayushmati thanks Krishna for her name to be difficult and smiles for the first time out of her excruciating pain; he is drunk!

‘Baby look what you did,’ Ayushmati says sadly pointing towards her cut which had been caused by Mohan’s knife, ‘I came to join you, I couldn’t sleep in my room. I never thought in my craziest dreams that you could think of me like this.’

‘What are you sayin’. Eh? You were hiding in your room planning to kill me, I know.’

Ayushmati takes off her rebozo and ties it on the cut to stop its bleeding, opens her hair and smiles at Mohan. He is still busy settling his thoughts when Ayushmati crawls nearer to him and throws him on the ground by using her uninjured leg; she stands up, limps and gets hold of Mohan’s knife.

‘Ayushmati…,’

‘Shut up!’ she shuts him up by putting her hand on his mouth, ‘It was all me Mohan, what you did? It was me who brought you here to Bharatpur, it was me who played with the heart of Jagdeep, it was me who killed him, it was me who was digging the graves since last six months, not you. And if now, somehow, I got caught, it will be me, never you. So who are you to have the share? I did the mistake to tell you all about it and bring you here to Bharatpur. Well, I think I should like to thank you for acting good as my loving father. Need a gift? I must give you one,’ with that Ayushmati straightens Mohan’s arm with her foot and slashes his wrist with the help of her free hand, she waits until Mohan is dizzier enough not to shout so she removes her hand only to drag him and shove him into the merciless cold sea.

She takes a deep sigh, and hurriedly cleans the blood from the surface of ship and goes to the bathroom. First time in six months she has a carefree bath even with the deep slash in her skin. She bandaged it carefully after drying herself and wore new clothes.

She couldn’t remember when she slept peacefully last time and smiles at the thought that from now on she’ll be sleeping profoundly. She yawns and tumbles on the cozy bed of ship.

-

She screams, deteriorating the beautiful silence of the night, relieved she feels, knowing it was all a nightmare.

-

It has been four nights and five days on the ship. One more night and she’ll reach Kanpur.

She is standing on the deck, her eyes swollen because she didn’t sleep any of the four nights, even the days seems to be deceiving her. The nightmares are more than she can stand and most of the times she can’t stop gagging thinking of those nightmares; she burning, she drowning, she bleeding to death, she beaten by the shovel, she suffering kicks in the stomach…

A part of her hopes is that this all will stop when she’ll reach Kanpur and everything will be fine, but then she knows deep down that nothing will stop and that she’ll never be able to sleep again.

She wants to weep but tears doesn’t come, may be because tears aren’t worthy of these beautiful dark green, brave and strong eyes with long black eyelashes.

All she does is screaming because this is what helps her only, may be because the frustration in her gets a little nicer to her.

So, she screams, deteriorating the beautiful silence of the crashing waves and dancing sunlight.

Text: Aruha Aref
Images: Google Images
Publication Date: 08-09-2015

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
Dad, for it was his idea for me to write Crime with Suspense.