Malice

Ok, so I buy this insanely expensive, bleed your pockets out type expensive smart phone. You can call it peer pressure if you will. Personally, I was pretty happy with those unassuming little phones that happily let you call or text anyone without any fuss and without any charade to dazzle you to the point of tech worship. But then when you live with people who swear by these insanely rich pieces of circuit boards, one relents, you know. You then seek recourse in firebrand hypocrisy by buying the device one fine day. So anyway, I have a smart phone, is the point. I am goofing around and checking out all functionality and I get this watsapp thingy everyone is going gaga over. Again, Rome, Romans, you see. So I sync this thingummy with my contacts from my phone, and about 2 hours later this phone beeps. It’s a message. Watsapp. I first think its some stupid promo nonsense but then it aint that. It said “hi..”. From some female whose name brought some vague recollection. Like those tingling sensations you get when your brain tries to desperately tell you that you have come across that thing/person/sound/taste/smell/whatthef**kever it is once before. But its too vain to tell you what. So here I am with a message from a femme who I have no clue of but for a stupid tingling sensation. Well that normally happens. You see, my contacts is this roll call sort of thing that would give those guys who study people (anthropologists?) a hard on. I have the contact details of every single person I have ever met. And I never delete. I talk to a guy in the bus about how Obama’s financial ministrations are driving us off the fiscal cliff, I get his number. I help a female with her shopping baggage, I get hers. Sounds total psycho, but then people say I have great people skills. Again, not my point. Without thinking much, I “Hi..” back. And then she says “Remember me?”. The male ego doesn’t bow out just like that. I say ”of course!! How r u?”. And she says “You don’t do you? Want to meet up tomorrow and refresh that memory of yours??”. Now  I am completely curious. Wary, yes, but then, its a femme for godssakes. I might get me a nice time. And I say, “sure. Where n when?”. Looking back, I would kill myself twice over for saying that.

                                                            ****

Counselling is bullsh**.  My Post- traumatic stress disorder, or whatever they call it is my Post- traumatic stress disorder.  No shrink through any degree of soft passionate conversation and hypnotherapy and CBT or any of those things can do anything to help me. Heck, he cannot understand me, let alone breaking into soliloquies on how to cope with it. That hurts. Feigning conviction and telling me in that sickening murmur that he understands completely. That day was another of those days when I walked into that fraud place and pretended to have cottonplugs on while he proceeded with his customary drivel. I had just left the place when I got this watsapp notification saying that someone had added me. That was when all the latent hatred and revenge I had forgotten somewhere rose again. And that was how it all began.

                                                            ****

This female should have been really rich. This place she had chosen for our little rendezvous was crème-de-la-f**king-crème. So anyway, I see her and now that tingling sensation has become like a 1000 spiders crawling all over me. But I still can’t resolve the long standing issue of just who she is. We greet each other like long lost twins and give each other a bone crushing bear hug. Her dress left nothing to the imagination, by the way. This suit clad fellow gets us a table in one corner, set slightly apart from the rest of the pack and lights this big ass candle bang in the middle of the  table. “You still drink don’t you?” she asks, and I nod promptly, feeling slightly fishy about this whole business. She orders sparkling wine, and he excuses himself with a servile bow. “So tell me about what you are upto these days man, its been so long!”. She has one of the most sinfully disarming smiles I have ever seen. A perfect blend of coyness and mischief. The perfect seductress. My point is, even if I wanted to desperately man up and tell her I don’t for f**k’s sake know her, I was in it way too deep to tell her. Too far along. That’s how the male brain rationalizes. So I get on with it and chew the cud liberally, again, like long lost friends. Apart from being the seductress, she is also quite the talker. And before you know it, we are like a house on fire. Alcohol has progressed from wine to vodka,neat. And we are still talking, speech is beginning to slur and I am seeing double, but I keep going. The last thing I remember, to this date, is looking at her cleavage, in the light thrown by that candle, which was close to burning out ,by the way.

                                                            *****

The clothes were intentional. Decency was a thing I had given up on since what happened, but this was filthy even by those standards. This was moral degradation spawned by an overwhelming desire for masochism for the soul, flagellating it in a fervent attempt to exorcise the past. And I was almost there. Revenge is a dish best served cold, some fellow said. And mine had reached frigid levels. He was this close to passing out. All he needed was a prod in the right direction, and that came via a vial that I emptied into his 6^th peg. It was with some difficulty that I wrapped his hands around my shoulder and dragged him out to my car. No questions asked. My breasts were showing all the while, but who cares?

                                                            *****

I wake up to a searing pain all over my body like I am laid on a 100 burning stoves. I am totally out, ok? Totally disoriented, and i try to raise my hand and rub my eyes, which seem to be gummed together, my eyes, I mean, but I can’t move my hands, let alone raise them. And then someone splashed water on my face and I open my eyes and find the same female sitting cross legged, smoking. “ you can’t move because you have been glued to the bathtub. You are burning because I cut you a 100 times all over, superficially of course, else you would bleed out, and I bathed all those wounds with Chardonnay.”

                                                            ******

How many glue tubes did it take? A lot. And I enjoyed every moment of it. The alcohol was an inspired touch. I read somewhere that it does something to your burn receptors which lowers its threshold, in short, he suffers more. I was still surprised that he didn’t show any signs of recognition. That stung more than those wounds would be stinging him. After all, he had conquered me that day. I was his prized trophy in that pub. Admitting defeat, I asked him, “ Don’t you remember 31^st December 2011? The Watering Hole?”

                                                            *****

And then it all comes back to me, through all the pain. I had passed out in the pub that night. And it was the next day when I came to that my friend says that I did some serious nonsense bullsh** to this girl we met at the pub. Did I? He says that he ain’t playing me and that I should get in touch with her immediately. I said I would and go back the next day and tell him that we had met and that we had talked and we had made peace. He didn’t buy it, but then I always had great people skills. Well, I believe in Karma now.

                                                            *****

He is a smooth talker, that b*****d.  look how he plays it down. Sonofa***ch. There was this drinking game that night, and we were playing darts. Round of 3’s. guy v/s girl. Person making lesser points on a throw drinks a shot of vodka, neat, and should the girl lose, the guy gets to kiss her. I lose, and he comes over to kiss me. Sportingly, I oblige, and before I know it, he is kissing me awkwardly, aggressively, sloppily. I try to push him away at first, but then the alcohol gets the better of me, and I give in. Everyone is egging him on, and before I realize whats happening, he has turned me over, pulled down my pants, and begun thrusting. I am in pain, but my weak protestations are drowned out by the loud techno music. Its all over in a matter of 5 minutes. The last thing I remember is some girl coming over and asking me whether I am alright.

                                                            *****

Such things happen all the time in pubs. I didn’t know she was hurting.

                                                            *****

Purists might argue that this isn’t rape per se. I would gladly do this same thing to all of them.

                                                            *****

I should probably add that all this while, my mouth was neatly covered with masking tape, which she had peeled off when we were talking. In that time, she jacked up the stereo system volume somewhere in the next room. To drown out my screaming, I guess . All of a sudden, she puts this tape back on and starts emptying bottles of alcohol into the bath tub like crazy. The pain’s back on at full blast, and there I am, unable to writhe or move or do anything that could lessen the pain. She had thought this through. And through all this noise I hear her say “you will have to go now”. She lights a match and throws it into the tub. With a whoosh, all the alcohol fuels the flame and I have one inferno playing all over me, numbing me with pain. To hell and back would have been easier. That is when everything blacked out. I probably died, I don’t know.

                                                            *****

No matter what happens in your life, nothing prepares you for watching another human being burn to his death. You simply cannot sit back and watch. I had not reached that stage of malevolence. I knew this would happen and had kept an extinguisher handy. Without thinking twice, I opened it on him. I put out the flame in under half a minute. He was still breathing. Badly burnt, but still breathing. That is when I called for an ambulance, and fled.

                                                            *****

That’s love. That’s true love if you ask me. Nothing else can make a person intent on murder do a 180. Its pure,intense love. That is the only conclusion I can make, 2^nd degree burn injuries and multiple skin graft surgeries later.

                                                            *****

I don’t know what it was that made me do it. I am too busy trying to make good my escape to be thinking of it.

PS: The rape incident is based on a first person account I read somewhere. Don’t remember where. Its unnerving, to think that such things happen. Also,everything else is fiction.