Pest control- 4

Read part 3 - here

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Two days had passed. Uma’s phone lay inside her worktable drawer and she’d dared not charge it lest it rings again. 

She knew her work suffered, there were important calls that she didn’t answer and for a second she felt that she probably didn’t care. 

It was this thought that ashamed her. 

Was she still so afraid? She wasn’t twenty-two anymore. That invisible dungeon that trapped her out of fear and shame hadn’t existed for ten years. Ten years is a long time for people to change and Uma had changed.

Her phone came back to life as she plugged in the charger and avoided looking at the screen. 

A small tide of messages quickly began displaying on her now alive phone and Uma decided to brave them.

The bastard hadn’t sent any messages but that did little to assuage her cacophonous anxiety

Unfortunately for her, she’d known him all too well. He was the human equivalent of a chewing gum stuck to the soles of a shoe or hair, horrifyingly impossible to get rid of. 

A spineless nobody who had no will over her anymore, yet she still trembled; her eyes looking absurdly hollow with unforeseen worry, dark circles beginning to mark their territory on her face, a sudden facial smudge that her mother in law noticed almost immediately.

You work too much she’d said and Uma had politely smiled. 

She sat watching Manu slowly sip his tea. This wisps of steam fogged his glasses and he squinted his eyes to see through them. Unbelievable how she’d come to know one so harmless and one so harmful in one life.

Uma felt powerless in these circumstances much as she did ten years ago and the phone calls had served to melt the ground beneath her feet. She was free falling back into the lurid gorge that pulled her more in its depth with each fearful heartbeat and this fear she knew would finish her. 

Uma acknowledged her weakness, the absolutely idiotic feebleness of her mind and frailty in her convictions and lamented the loss of her strength under these circumstances that the bastard had managed to suck away, to feed on yet again.

The unscrewed can of worms within her had wriggled into a nauseous tempo with a phone call but it was the now ringing doorbell and the events that followed that worked to replace her wasting confidence and fear into a resolute decision.

Manu had opened the door to an anxious neighbour who looked like she was barely restraining her agitation. 

‘Hi, hi’ she tried sounding casual but something about her countenance had triggered a bomb inside Uma. 

She’d known the neighbour, an almost middle aged woman of cheerful disposition to not have a worrisome life yet the way the woman stood shifting her weight on both her feet scrunching a paper to a crumple inside her tightly clasped fist that Uma knew something had gone horridly wrong.

‘Uh, can we please talk?’ the neighbour spoke politely but not without a touch of trepidation. 

The floor had begun melting into a swamp and Uma walked through a mass of blubbery tiles with much effort following Manu out into the corridor of their apartment building, slowly closing the door behind them. 

‘Someone is playing a disgusting prank here in the compound’ the neighbour spoke, wide eyed, in a hushed annoyed tone.

She unfolded the piece of scrunched up paper and held it open in front of the couple and Uma slowly shut her eyes. 

She felt an acrid burn, acid singing her retinas to liquid, the whites of her eyes pouring down her cheeks. Should she be so lucky? 

The tears were welling up and Uma opened her eyes to keep them from falling. 

Manu was holding the crumpled sheet of paper which was a pixelated headless  image of an almost naked woman, wearing lacy lingerie and posing in bed, except she wasn’t posing Uma knew she was lying in bed and crying because five minutes before the picture was taken the bastard had beaten her then sniveled on the ground and apologized and cried hoarsely screaming and wailing adding to the silent sobs of the just beaten woman. 

Uma knew all this because the photograph was Uma’s from a different time. It was unrecognizable in its pixelated state but not to her.

‘This picture has been put inside everyone’s mail box.’ the neighbour said appalled. ‘I can’t imagine the wretchedness of some people.’ she continued.

‘Everyone’s mail box?’ Uma found a meek voice slithering out of her mouth.

‘Yes, well of our building..and the worst part is it’s impossible to tell who it was.’

‘Maybe we can check the cameras’ Manu suggested. 

‘We have. Can’t say who it could have been because so many cars and taxis come into the compound and almost always park right in front of the apartment gate. It’s difficult to tell who among them was the culprit.’ the neighbour said thoughtfully. ‘Either that or we check the entire list of visitors and cross check with everyone in the building who had guests, because, well, not everyone can come inside and for all you know one of those delivery boys did it. There are no cameras inside the building to actually prove anything.’ 

A brief silence followed and the neighbour clicked her tongue. ‘Well, it’s hideous this business. Maybe a prank or maybe someone just being bothersome. Well,’ she made to move ‘I’ll let you know if I find anything.’ and with a polite greeting they small company departed.

Manu checked their mail box and sure enough the same picture had wound up there as well. He tore it and threw it in the trash. 

That night Uma stole to the roof, lighting a cigarette after almost a decade, she found the torn up pieces of a prostrate weak willed woman and burnt it to ash.