Murky Messages from the Subconscious

 

He was my conscience and I could tell him. He would never give me in. I could count on it.

This fact that you have killed someone. It is like a old healed wound that you have to be careful with, lest it opens up again. You never know. Convince yourself that it never happened, but always be on guard for the day it might come out. A constant tug of war between forgetting and remembering.

I was not clean-handed anymore. But curiously, that which bothered me was not the thought of blood. Come to think of it, there was very less blood, it being a somewhat neat work. It was the realization that I had moved past it which disturbed me the most. That I was beyond the reach of guilt.

He asked me with a genuine curiosity and oddly, with even a hint of admiration. “What happened?”… 

The attic was dark and suffocating. Everything was dark around me. The wall was painted dark and the filament of the bulb glowed dully like a dying flame. There was a thicker murky  darkness in corners of the room.

Like being dragged by chains under water, my lungs writhed and struggled for air. The skylight, yelled something inside. I opened it, putting my head out and swigged down the cold air. Hastily.

And I told him.

You are going to believe that this did not happen. You will believe it in all sincerity you can muster. Do you get it? I am not talking about forgetting this. It is about - not believing this. You will “un-believe” it to every single detail. Every little part. Every little twist.

The narrative that unfolded was about how me and Rohit had committed a cold blooded murder in Delhi.

What if the cops connect the dots?

Never. They can never do it.

But what if they did?

Rohit’s father was a lawyer. He would somehow get away. 

Maybe I really am alone in this one.

Anyway, he just drove the car. He never asked anything but he knew what was in the bag. I could see him looking the other way when I dropped it off the bridge.

It was those last few days. The frustrating work was coming to an end. And Rohit came to me to talk about this person who was arranged to help me with the moving.

“Payment is fixed.” He said. “Thousand rupees for the whole deal. Not one rupee more.”

But we both knew that it would be difficult to keep it that way. And I had the dirty job of ensuring it being so.

He came for work late as they all often did. A menacing bulk of a man. The work was clumsy. And rough. And imperfect. 

I could feel hate filling inside like a container with some dark liquid dripping into it. Filling it up slowly in regular insentient drips. Drip. Drip. Drip. Every second I watched him.

I knew he would start the desperate bargaining. On and on and on. As always. As they all do. With a superhuman sense of picking up the stench of money. The ravenous eyes, absorbing every detail around that gave out signs of affluence. Reading the contents of your wallet in the mere flashes of its exposure to their devouring eyes. Every piece of currency note inside.

He wanted five hundred more than the amount fixed.

The container inside was overflowing. Hate, as a gushing dark liquid, was spilling out. Seeping into my bones. Clouding my vision. Oozing out of my skin. 

Then as I watched, my hands took out the concealed country revolver tucked into the pants behind and shot him. Thrice. 

The calmness that descended is hard to explain. Serenity at its best.

The corpse was huge. I had to shrink it to manage it without much difficulty. Shrink it to a manageable size.I dragged it to the terrace. To let the Delhi sun spit fire on it for three days. Till it could be sufficiently dried up for one large polythene bag. And it did. The Delhi Sun, hitherto my foe, proved to be an efficient partner.It was more like a wrinkled piece of firewood by the third day. 


“It is Firewood”, assured a cold voice within. I started chopping the hands and feet off. 

The polythene bag was heavy. 

Rohit waited down in the car. His demeanor growled impatience. “I don’t have all the time in the world”, it seemed to convey. 

A quick drive with no words exchanged and the polythene bag got removed from the picture. 

            And now you shall remove it even from your memories. 

The air outside the skylight was thick and suffocating now. 

Yet, I was convinced that I would continue to live unperturbed. 

------- 

Some complicated interpretation of the dream (more of a nightmare) that a friend did for me came up with a conclusion that it could either be the suppression of some guilt (even a trivial one) coupled with a general hatred for Delhi, or a sense of escape that is behind it. 

It was, however, a disturbingly vivid one. Took me almost an hour to come in terms with the reality after waking up and take in that I am no murderer.