Pest Control finale

Read part 15 - here

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She wasn’t picking her phone.

 He knew Uma was up to no good and something wasn’t quite right when she didn’t show up to the coffee shop.

She’d lied she was running late and after ten minutes of waiting he’d made his way back. He had decided to go to her house that evening and talk to her entire family and show them all her pictures and drag her out. He knew the only way to have her would be by destroying her everything, by closing all her viable paths, by shutting her out of everywhere.

It was a good thing too that he’d come back home because there was a gas leak, though he couldn’t remember using the stove. 

I need to stop drinking.

Some sickness was making itself felt within and he was tired all of a sudden.

The reason was Uma.

She wasn’t picking up his phone, the bitch.

He shouldn’t have had that stale alcohol.

He needed a shower, he wanted to sleep, he wanted to ruin Uma.

‘What?’ he cried looking at what appeared to be Uma standing not two feet away from him.

‘You’ he tried to grab her but she pushed him aside and ran towards the door.

It was real. 

He felt her touch on his arms as she shoved him almost throwing him on the bed.

‘AAAAAAAAAA’ he screamed like a maniac, the shrill voice pierced through Uma while she twisted the doorknob, her head pulled back with a sudden jerk.

‘You bastard’ Uma cried. He dragged her by the hair using all his strength keeping himself from staggering.

An agonizing sharpness burnt through her skull. This cannot happen again. This will not happen again. 

He was pulling with all his might with an effort to throw her on the floor to kick her like he used to, it was all coming back to him now. This was Deja vu, only now he was suddenly teetering, collapsing.

A sharp blow to his chest had knocked out his life and tossed him with a humongous force; he’d lost his footing and balance and fell down painfully.

 Uma gathered her hate, pain and all her energy into her left elbow and plunged it in his chest, letting him have it with all the strength she could muster hoping to dislodge his heart.

He’d released her hair and fallen to the floor.

Uma saw the pathetic worm flattened on the ground. The miserable little maggot, fattened and so puny. Was this what was about to ruin her life?

Isn’t that what he’d said and she brought forth into her memory all the dirt he’d ever spewed and sat on his chest.

The weight pushed him into the floor. The world was a blurry mess.

He could smell Uma’s skin. She looked angry and suddenly his face burnt with the relentless pounding.

Uma sat atop him and slapped his face and watched amusedly as it swivelled right to left with the momentum.

This was not fun but she wanted to do it. Her fingers hurt and he was trying to thrash his feet about, wanting to throw her over, but he wasn’t strong enough and horribly groggy by the looks of it.

She pinned his arms under her knees as he’d once done and pulled his hair with the intention to uproot them jerking his head side to side with the impetus of her rage.

He was slowly turning into a limp rag doll in her hands.

The roof was spinning. His head was getting punctured with needles, there were pins getting drilled in his skull and he felt sick.

Uma let go of him as he began to vomit.

Pathetic!

She stood up and kicked him twice before opening his mouth and shoving in two sugar cubes. There was no resistance anymore as he drowsily chewed the sweet hallucinogen laced cubes.

She dragged and propped him against his bed and sat looking at him.

‘Uma?’ 

‘Yes?’

He said nothing.

She sat facing him, watching as he held his arms to embrace her. 

The softness of her skin, the perfume in her hair, the sweetness of her kiss and the beautiful garden they were in, sitting on a bench together, looking at the colours in the sky while old people walked.

Flowers had begun blooming, people walked their dogs and they didn’t notice him because Uma was at his side.

He was reaching for her, his hands streaked with pigments of her clothes, everything he touched melted into colours on his fingers.

He was scared of the sudden paralyses, he wanted to touch Uma but couldn’t lift his fingers and the colours were so beautiful.

Uma sat watching for a while, his eyes could barely stay open and slowly he slumped to the floor, drooling from the corners of his mouth.

It was still bright outside but it would soon be dark, another hour maybe, and so Uma lit all the candles, the large ones, the most promising ones that would burn for hours.

She changed out of her clothes and turned the gas stove on.

The market was slowly becoming dense with people in the narrow streets with a frenzied attack on small vegetable shops.

It was strange, the cautious walk from that deserted, oddly forested no man’s path to this sudden burst of people where she let herself get consumed in grocery shopping glancing skywards every few moments.

A tea shop beckoned, a small almost inaudible boom made itself heard picked only by Uma's ears.

Unperturbed she sat languorously sipping on the small cup of tea, ordering another until finally a thin column of dark smoke soared from someplace far up ahead.

No one seemed to notice.

Almost evening.

Manu calling.

Pest Control - 15

Read part 14 - here

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Uma panicked, the approaching footsteps stood shuffling at the door and she could stand looking shocked no longer.

She’d have to hide, there was no time to jump out the kitchen window.

The door clicked open and someone walked in.

Uma bit on her bag to keep herself from crying out of fear, out of failure at seeing her plan fall apart as she crouched noiselessly in the kitchen sink cabinet barely fitting in, its wooden door refused to shut entirely opening a threadbare slit through which she could see the entrance of the kitchen.

An empty garbage bin pushed back to reclaim its space and its dank mustiness seemed exaggerated in the darkness.

This was not going according to her plans.

How did he come back so early? 

It must mean that he had called her while he was on his way back. 

Why didn’t Uma envisage any such contingency? 

She berated herself tearfully, shoving her face in the tatty cloth bag hoping to wake up from the nightmare but there was nothing except the dripping muggy smell of the cabinet and a sharp gas like stench which she silently exhaled to keep her sobs quiet.

The gas. She had forgotten to turn it off.

She’d lost her nerve and her senses and sat hidden in a place that was effectively a gas chamber.

Now, this was getting out of hand. 

She wasn’t here to die, in fact, her sole reason to plan a death was so that she could live free. 

Is this what they call Karma?

Any moment now a cigarette would get lit and she’d turn to cinders, Uma surmised that she was more prone to a certain death in these circumstances.

There was no time to think, she’d die if she didn’t turn off the gas.

Uma resented herself that moment. Her inability to think, to act and even now she hesitated to leave her hiding place.

She’d recognize that sound anywhere, the unmistakable scraping screech his feet made on the floor when he walked. It sounded like someone was dragging their feet on a sandy blackboard, it aggravated her so and Uma could only shut tight her eyes to keep herself from blacking those memories that came associated with the way his feet shuffled on the floor and right now the vexatious sound crept closer.

He was coming into the kitchen.

Uma could see through the slight slit of the cabinet door that stayed open on account of her knee getting in the way.

The bastard

His repulsive almost disfigured uncouth mien consoled her. Time had been justly unkind to him but not nearly enough because he wasn’t dead.

He held an unlit cigarette in one hand a teacup in another which he proceeded to knock back in one big gulp and winced hideously after swallowing.

He sniffed as he entered, holding what looked like a mouldy unwashed bathing towel to his nose and lunged towards the gas stove. He’d disappeared from her line of vision but the sound of knobs assured Uma that he’d turned off the gas.

A wordless exhale. Now all Uma had to do was wait for him to sleep so she could escape.

The phone was vibrating in her pocket but she couldn’t access it given her contorted state and a scream rang through the house.

‘You bitch pick up the phone. I’ll ruin you, I’ll make your useless husband watch. Pick up, pick up, pick up’

His shrill screech reverberated through Uma who was burning with absurd indignation. 

She’d have crushed his neck if it was between her hands. The nails dug hard in the soft flesh of her palms as she closed her shaking fist tight with demented anger. 

Uma drowned the unsettling background howls of a deranged man’s grisly threats flung into the air all the while her phone vibrated with calming thoughts of how she proposed to kill.

She wondered if it wouldn’t be fun to break his bones and watch him snivel and beg for mercy, or maybe she’d want to plunge a knife in every part of his body and kick him to death while he bled.

Her elaborate fantasies were fast approaching reality, the surreal quality of this situation manacled with her painful crouch and the putrid stench of the sink’s underbelly bolstered her confidence and the house suddenly grew silent.

Her phone had stopped vibrating, the insufferable shrieks had dialled down to hushed incoherent abuses and the song of running water made itself heard.

It was the unmistakable sound of a shower followed by the closing of a door nearby. 

Definitely the bathroom door, and so Uma quietly crept out. 

All she had to do was sneak out the front door because an escape from the window was definitely time-consuming

Inaudible like the critters in the kitchen Uma walked out of the kitchen and stood face to face with a man about to light a cigarette.

Uma tasted her heart. It had caught in her throat and saw the door behind him which was only a few strides away.

Pest Control - 14

Read part 13 - here

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‘I’ve made dinner reservations for just the two of us.’ Manu’s soft voice failed to assuage the stiff tension Uma felt at finding the bottom of the pot empty. 

‘Yes, good’ she said distractedly while squeezing the phone between her right shoulder and ear, bending to pick another pot. ‘That’s good’

‘And? what else? have they come for pest control already?’

‘Yes, yes.’ Uma knelt in front of a haphazard row of similar withered potted plants.

‘What did you have for lunch? Must have eaten outside.’ Manu was in a chatty mood.

The pressure of time, of her plans immediately crumbling at this man’s doorstep, was quickly colouring Uma’s visage with scarlet strain ‘ Yes I ate’. Why did she even pick up Manu’s phone? What was she doing kneeling in the dirt, plucking plants from their pots?

How could I not have thought.. and suddenly she remembered something.

Uma exhaled long. ‘I have eaten sweetheart.’ she spoke calmly. ‘I’ll talk to you in a bit.’

Manu was happy that day and his cheeriness echoed in his voice. ‘Okay,’ he’d said and hung up.

Manu’s moment of contentment and delight clashed with her frantic seconds of despair and her sudden loss of nerves at being unable to find the keys had unsettled her. Her knees wobbled while she fumbled with the flower pots trying to rearrange them after her fruitless frenzied search and walked to the backside of the house.

She had lost time, precious time and her phone vibrated in her pocket.

Bastard calling

‘Where. Are. You.?’ Caged rage, his voice was about to erupt in a million screams and hurtful words. 

Uma felt a gnawing cramp growing inside, the maggots coiling under the skin of her arms edged towards the spine.

‘I’m running late’ her voice came out a dreaded whisper like it used to almost a decade back. 

No, this couldn’t be. She had changed. Uma drew herself to full height, she wouldn’t droop just to make him look and feel taller, she wouldn’t walk with a hunch. ‘I’m late’ She imitated his voice. ‘Had some work. I’ll see you.’ 

He was grating his teeth and breathing hard. ‘You bitch. What are you playing at? Now, look what I do to you once I reach your house. I’m coming to get you at your house, you bitch. I’ll drag you out..’

‘I’m not in my house’ Uma said calmly keeping herself from gouging his eyeball through the phone. ‘I told you I’ll be there in a bit.’

‘How long?’ he asked, his voice oily with an intent to harm.

‘Fifteen minutes.’ Uma replied.

She’d have to be quick.

She tried pulling open the kitchen window which didn’t want to open all the way out, getting stuck with years of neglect, dirt and congealed wax that had dripped all over its pane through the rails, into the sill and sat collecting layers of grimy murk.

Uma held her breath and pulled with restrained strength to the sound of a soft crack which was the thick film of wax giving way and falling to flakes.

It wasn’t a very large window and Uma flung in her cloth back and wedged herself in, forcing her body to go through the slight wide opening, contracting her stomach, crushing her waist and pulling herself through the narrow window until she was almost doing a handstand on the filthy kitchen platform, she wiggled the last of her length sliding her ankles in and crouched on the platform blanching as she got hit full in the face with that awful reek that dwelled in his house which might have been chronicled in hell itself because nothing existing could ever breathe in that torture. 

Tying a scarf around her mouth she shut the window.

The kitchen was teeming with lifeforms that had initiated a colony of their own inside of leftover food packets and pizza boxes on which her cloth bag had landed rattling the chitinous denizens.

Uma slowly walked out of the kitchen, everything had somehow gotten dirtier if that was possible in less than two days and she felt something crunch under her foot. A careless cockroach.

She carefully studied the room, observing and mentally remembering every detail of what she saw. It was a bottle that she now looked for and found one almost empty next to which sat a stained teacup full of rum. 

She emptied the jar of powdered sleeping pills into that cup, knowing his vile habit of never wasting alcohol.

Uma had pounded an entire packet of high potency sleeping pills the night before.

Where was she going with it she wasn’t sure but somehow these pills would find a way into his system, of that she was certain.

Now for her plan proper, as these were just some frills attached to the main scheme of things.

Pest begone.

Uma walked back to the kitchen and turned on the gas knobs.

The large gas cylinder attached at the end of the length of the gas pipe had never been used and so Uma surmised that it was full of good stuff.

That was her plan. She’d thought of it over and over and knew a few of his habits, ones that were questionless, that he always came back home and immediately knocked back a drink or two or even three with the accompaniment of a leisurely smoke. 

The last cigarette that you light will ignite and burn you from here to hell.

There was no sound except for the stench which usually accompanied leaking gas and it was quickly spreading.

That was easy.

Now all that remained was to call and inform him that she’d rather meet him someplace not as public, someplace like his house and so he’d hurry back, knock back some sleep laced drink, light a cigarette and boom!

Plan A was going to be a blazing success.

Uma opened her cloth bag to retrieve a change of clothes and the hair on her arms bristled with fear.

There was the unmistakable sound of a car outside, followed by the distinct thud of a car door closing.

Uma froze and she knew it to be him.

No no no no no no.

Pest Control- 13

Read part 12 - here

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It was a phone call she dreaded. 

He had been something of a friend but not really because one generally tends to remember a friends name and this man, well, this acquaintance was a person of great resources whose name she never asked and he never said and so she’d stored his number as ‘D’.

D for drugs. 

Uma at times could be rather unimaginative. 

She hadn’t spoken to him in years or months. It was about six months back that he’d arranged a certain packet of gods greens and she’d not asked him for anymore after that mostly because it was a recreational habit which she indulged in recreationally, rarely and though he’d hinted on more than a few occasions about his elaborate cache of other, more fun substances Uma had remained uninterested and it was today that she wanted to speak to him regarding the availability of a certain hallucinogen.

She fumbled with the phone, toyed with the idea of what she was going to ask and seeing how silly she sounded to herself Uma dialled his number, spoke to him and arranged to meet D the next day.

‘Were you cooking something last night?’ Manu asked that morning.

‘No’

‘It sounded like you were crushing something, like when you crush peanuts or make garlic paste.’

‘Oh that. I was just..uh.. crushing some medicine with the pestle.’ Uma fumbled with her answer.

‘ah, was it that? I thought you were cooking something.’ Manu said planting an aimless kiss on her forehead and left.

‘What medicine?’ Uma’s mother in law had overheard their conversation, not that she was eavesdropping.

‘Uh..Just..uh the medicine for the uh pest control tomorrow.’ Uma spoke quickly not believing her own lies.

‘Oh!’ the elderly woman exclaimed as a way of understanding.

The family had been packing to leave the house for the next few days until the fumes from pest control died.

This was going to be a busy Friday.

The half empty rum bottle was fast on its way to exhaustion but the bastard decanting the dark liquid in a stained teacup was exuberant with animation.

He’d just hit send after forming a tediously thoughtful message that was both persuasive and meaningful.

It had been a week and he wanted, needed to see and talk to Uma. 

‘Let’s meet tomorrow for coffee or I will come over to your house’ the message read followed by a prompt reply saying ‘ok’ and this had elevated his somewhat distressed mood which the bastard carried on into the night after the small incident in the afternoon.

A speeding car had almost run him over and in his attempt to get even with the imprudent driver of the car he’d caused a bit of commotion on the street, an exact outcome of seeking justice and getting rewarded with harassment from dyspeptic idiots with a license.

He’d been in a fight that afternoon after he refused to get off the road and his totally rational annoyance had peaked to a deranged metaphor when a man had physically tried to push him off the road.

He was in a mad mood having been punched in the face after he attacked the driver of the mindlessly honking car with a knee in his stomach. 

The bastard was enraged, never the one to play fair, he’d bit and pulled at his opponent's hair; the fight ended badly for the bastard and it didn’t help that an elderly couple whom he’d followed to the park passed by the commotion looking at him like he were a common thug. 

Their reprehensible glare making him feel like a miserable worm had added to his foaming lunacy and perhaps it was his need to hate something until his heart spilled or love he sometimes found himself unable to tell the difference that he messaged Uma, ordering her to meet him because this couldn’t go on any longer.

It’d been a week since he’d contacted her and now it was time, she’d have to meet him.

The bottle of rum now nearing its demise was artlessly gulped to its last breath and the bastard made a plan for how he’d want to spend the day with Uma.

Start with coffee and end with..he looked at the empty bottle and smirked.

Uma had meticulously planned for the big day. The day she’d known that the bastard would die.

It was unwillingness on her part to make any contact with him that kept her from sending the bastard a message to meet her but stars aligned when he did it himself in his usual threatening little small ways, the spineless coward she mumbled to herself while picking her pace through the narrow market alley which seemed to be busier than last afternoon when it was but all deserted.

Her eyes glued to the ground, she drew no attention in keeping with the prevailing fashion of the few shoppers with a tatty cloth bag that contained a change of clothes, a container full of ground sleeping pills and two cubes of sugar laced with what D called magic.

“it will take immediate effect but try to take it sooner in the day because the chemicals begin deteriorating and it loses potency.” he clarified and Uma had sealed those sweet gems in a vacuum bottle.

This was to be her plan B to slip them in his coffee if she met him and watch him drive into a glorious accident, but she didn’t want to meet him and so it was plan A that needed her to sneak into a little hellhole..momentarily while the bastard sat waiting in a coffee shop.

Uma had thought this through in a way that this plot lacked loopholes from her point of view and she had hypothesized how the bastard would probably think but that was just an assumption because he was erratic, imbalanced and unstable and every time that she played the upcoming scenarios in her head, Uma’s imagination took a despairing route and came to a dead end.

Waiting was the keyword, that he would be waiting for her. He knew nothing of patience and so Uma would have to be quick.

She plucked the withered plant to retrieve his house key and found it empty. 

This she had not anticipated.