Predator (2 page)

Her blood froze when she had heard the voices once again. They’d come back to ravage her body, or what was left of it, yet again. The familiar, deep voice was there in the pack as well.

This time, more than the pain, it was her helplessness and desperation that was making her scream her lungs out. A strong hand clasped her cheeks and covered her mouth ruthlessly. It left her battling for air while the rest of her body was being brutalized.

The pain was too intense and she didn’t have the strength to scream. Then again, she heard the sound of sickening, maniacal laughter all around her. They had returned for more. One of the beasts had an iron grip on her wrists while forcing himself into her mouth while another was brutally raping her.

Another one grabbed her from behind. A grotesquely painted face sat in front and watched the gruesome act with a sneer on his face. She couldn’t quite see just how many of them were there this time. This was probably her fifth day in captivity.

The last thing she remembered before she lost consciousness was being punched and kicked on her chest. She howled in anguish when she saw the long metal rod thrust into her vagina and then passed into merciful oblivion.

The silence in the dungeon was deafening, after the beasts left. She realized she was being held captive at some remote location, a place too isolated for people to chance across. The bastard! Or how many bastards, she didn’t know.

When her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she realized that she was a prisoner inside a room of some sort. The room stank of urine, blood and defecation. They had kept coming back for her like vultures. A sense of gloom and abject despair overcame her and her heart shrieked out for help. But nobody heard her.

Maybe they would still come back to ravage the corpse once she died. God had left the world a long time ago. She wished she were dead.

The chains clanged as she tried to get up. She couldn’t. She slowly moved her bound hands over her stomach. There was blood all over, so much of it. Her heart sank as she realized that there was nothing she could do. She tried leaning back on the cold, bumpy wall. As her chains clanged against it, she realized it was a ghostly glass wall of empty wine bottles stacked from the floor to the roof.

Her mind was racing trying to figure out where she was. The wind moaned somewhere far above. Tears streamed down her face as she realized that she was trapped in an underground cellar.

Her broken arm hurt as the chains ate into her wrists. She tried to get up but the chains around her ankles hurt. Had God left her to die like this?

Bereft of strength and pride, her body slumped to the floor. As a cloud of darkness descended into the dungeon, she felt happy that death would soon embrace her. She hated herself for being so careless and trusting.

The overly sophisticated bastard had just wanted her nude pictures online to wank off and jizz all over until he could have sex with her. It had never been love.

She wished she had never sipped the wine. It had never occurred to her that he could be the Predator.

She wished she had never gone online …

ONE

The Rainbow

London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down
;

London Bridge is falling down, My fair lady.

But here you are, all tied up, all gagged up, all trussed up
;

Blame yourself for your woes, for your pain, my fair lady.

But now you’ll never be stolen away, taken away, led astray
,

No, you’ll never ever be whisked away, my fair lady.

I’ll watch you all night, smoke my pipe, watch you bleed
,

No, I won’t fall asleep, watch you die, my fair lady.

—The Predator

Christopher’s Pain

Chris lay sprawled on an oversized couch that reeked of leather. He was mildly irritated. It was like lying on something dead with cotton and springs inside it. The opulent velvet spread over the couch only added to his woes. Like his mother, the couch was too soft and overly sophisticated for his liking. She was dead too.

It was a boring, sweltering afternoon, as boring and nauseating as his father. Even the air conditioner had succumbed to the humid summer wind blowing outside. The ceiling fan created more noise than it circulated cool air.

The plush house reminded him of his parents when they were together. A façade of luxury and comfort, while Chris’s world burned within like a dormant volcano. His life was trapped beneath an ocean of endless arguments and violent fights between his mother and father. Maybe, someone would make a movie out of it someday and call it
The Boring Life of Christopher Jones
.

Only his older sister, Florence, could understand him. He hated the fact that now everyone called her
‘Salmonella’
for some strange reason.

Chris stared at the ceiling and a sense of emptiness engulfed him. He wondered where his life was taking him. He hated being a couch potato. The sense of ennui around him was defeating. The grass on the lawn outside had probably grown by an inch while Chris lay trapped between the couch and a stagnating life.

The howling of a wolf came from somewhere inside the large room. Was he hallucinating? Chris let fly a cushion to shoo away the imaginary, pesky animal. The effort was in vain for he could still hear the persistent, aural cacophony. Feeling too lazy to get up, Chris chose to investigate the surroundings sleepily from his couch with just one eye open.

The repetitive howling was the ringtone of a phone and he realized it was his smartphone. It was ringing incessantly. He glanced at it with disdain. Chris hated it every time he got a call from his Dad, the rich and famous Jonathan Jones. He chose to ignore it.

It was one of those mandatory calls every evening just to remind him that he was still living in his father’s shadow. The custom ringtone of a howling wolf that he usually tried to ignore was specially designed, the signature tone for his Dad’s calls.

Just because he’d peed with him once when they both were drunk, his Dad had started to believe that Chris was obligated to share his innermost feelings with him, always, and be available to him all the time. Just because his father always bailed him out didn’t give him the right to intrude into Chris’s privacy all the time.

His father, the rich and famous Jonathan Jones, wanted his useless son, Christopher Jones, to grow up to be a man like his father and become worthy of his inheritance. ‘My ass’, mumbled Chris, as he remembered the time when his Mom and Dad had argued for the last time about everything.

The memories of his childhood were like pieces of nightmare with several blanks left unfilled. The bits he had heard and remembered left him with more questions. The acrimonious slanging matches between his parents had the word ‘mistake’ screamed so often that it was seared into his brain. It always made him wonder whether he was the ‘mistake’.

Or perhaps, it was his Mom who was the biggest ‘mistake’ his father had ever made. She was just another weak woman who was no match for the mighty Jonathan Jones.

Although Chris had loved his Mom, she always seemed to love his older sister, Florence, a lot more. She’d always compared him to his sibling and found him wanting in every respect. For her, Chris was genetic trash while Florence was the angel who could do no wrong. She played with her Barbie Doll all the time and never got into trouble.

The day he had turned ten, Chris had witnessed a ferocious battle between his parents ending in domestic violence. Mom and Dad were evenly matched when it came to verbal combat and decibel levels.

His rich, presumptuous Dad had always gotten a blistering earful from his Mom for spoiling her son silly when he was way too young to handle it. The Rolex watch which his Dad had gifted to him for his birthday had triggered a night full of miasma – a domestic hell complete with the stench of sulphur and brimstone. Wrath had flared in his mother’s eyes as from a furnace, but even more frightening had been the evil lurking in the depths of his father’s soul that was reflected in his cruel eyes.

From a child’s perspective, the tectonic upheavals seemed like a chain reaction to his Dad buying him something foolishly expensive or trying to initiate his son into his business.

In retrospect, Chris understood his mother’s fury somewhat. The tokens of paternal love were actually unscrupulous payoffs, or bribes if you will, to enslave the child and make him want to emulate his father.

It was more than obvious that she had always regretted marrying Joe. Perhaps his Mom realized that Chris was being robbed of his childhood in these seemingly innocent father-son bonding gestures. Or, perhaps, his Mom was merely stuck in her staid, old-fashioned, Catholic upbringing, and was afraid that the devil would take Chris’s soul. The bottom line – she paid the ultimate price for trying to stop her husband corrupting Chris.

On the other hand, his Dad believed he was God himself and his son, a demi-God.

Chris liked to believe it too, that someday he too would become God – it would be the day he stepped out of the shadow of his famous Dad. As time went by, his own footprints were manifesting the influences of the familiar footprints of his father. The distinction was diminishing; which meant the day was not far away. But his mother’s footprints were nowhere to be seen.

At the time, Chris had wanted to talk to Florence about it, but she’d shoo-ed him away for she had to put her silly doll to bed. The only real friend in the world he’d thought he had was his sister, and even she preferred a dumb, plastic doll and loved it more than her brother.

If only Florence had played with him more than she played with her Barbie Doll, he wouldn’t have done what he did that night. Something inside Chris had snapped. He waited for everyone to go to sleep.

Around midnight, he had tiptoed into her room, and took her doll away as she slept. Chris had gone back to his room and locked the door from inside. He had then pulled out the hunting knife that his Dad had gifted him when they’d visited a forest reserve near Sikkim.

He had felt a surge of power when he stripped Barbie naked and laid it on the bed. Then he had stabbed it repeatedly with his knife. The savage act made him feel powerful and manly as the helpless doll stared back at him and said nothing.

But Barbie was certainly a lot stronger than his weak mother. Unlike her, the doll would always stay smiling. He blamed his Mom for being too weak and submissive. Maybe, that’s why she whined like a bitch all the time.

His sweet sister’s Barbie Doll needed to die for him to get Florence’s undivided attention. In his mind, he’d wanted both to die that night. But since he couldn’t kill Florence, it had to be her doll. After all, it was her constant companion who had stolen his sister away from him.

He had then stared at the countless cuts on Barbie’s neck, arms and legs for a long time. They were deep and passionate as though carved by a sculptor. He had then chopped her hair, gouged the eyes out and sliced off the ears of the ever-smiling Barbie doll, as it helplessly lay on his bed, naked. The stupid doll continued smiling.

Chris had then taken the mutilated remains of the doll and doused it with kerosene. He had taken it to the balcony and set it on fire. He had gleefully watched it burn with a slow crackle as the plastic smile melted from her stupid face. The stench of the burning plastic had given him a new high. As the smoke rose into the air from the melted heap, his soul glowed with satisfaction.

Now his sister would love him again. There would be no sharing of love. He’d loved every moment of the gruesome act. His sweet sister would never shoo him away again. Chris smiled. Although he was a mean bastard, he loved Florence and would always be her cute, little brother.

Somehow, it didn’t come as a surprise to him when the next morning his Dad announced that his Mom was very ill and she’d soon be gone. She died a month later, on 18 October, the night before Florence had announced her decision to leave the house forever. Chris was relieved. In a way he was happy for his Mom. He had watched her writhe in agony for a long, long time.

He’d always wondered if Joe had poisoned her. Young Chris had maintained a month-long vigil by her side. Not out of sympathy or love, but watching her in pain gave him a perverse pleasure beyond reason.