Pest Control- 8

Read part 7 - here

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She was shuddering with hate, undisguised disgust seeping through her contorted features. Uma bared her teeth with contempt, nostrils flaring with anger as she held the phone near her ear wishing she could reach a hand through her phone and throttle the bastard who’d so casually cited his demands.

She had on many occasions during moments of idle malevolence thought up of scenarios where she’d get a chance to find the bastard tied to a chair inside a garage and how merrily she’d saw through him, slice him to pieces, chop off his legs and put a bullet in his head while he stayed gagged, begging for mercy, crying, dying; oh she’d thought of pushing him over a cliff while no one watched, of sniping him, garroting and kicking him to death yet they were just idle thoughts and now that he nonchalantly spoke on the other end of the phone, Uma knew all her fantasies were just that. 

None too practical.

How would she ever find such a scenario to put her far-fetched schemes into action. 

What was she thinking?

‘I want you Uma. I want us to be together as we always were. Happy.’

At this sentence Uma snorted, in fact, she laughed and that idiot laughed with her. 

Stupid bastard.

He spoke to her like he hadn’t just a day before stuffed full every mailbox in the building with her almost naked pictures.

‘Oh come on Uma. Are you upset about those pictures? How else would I have got you to pick my phone-call?’ he chirped.

He sensed that she was upset because of his little prank but he assured himself that she’d soon get over it. ‘Look, the pictures didn’t have your face on it and weren’t very clear either.’ He spoke by way of clarification, pouring himself another glass of whiskey the bastard was exhilarated to have spoken to her after so long. 

He had missed her voice because seeing her almost every day from a safe distance while sitting in his car outside her residence compound had limited his listening ability and he was no fool to let her on what he was up to. 

Uma had a tendency to be impulsive. She could out of some imagined fear have called the police or told her husband about him which would have rendered all his plans futile.

The trick was to slowly creep up so she was always fearful because he knew exactly what she was afraid of..her good reputation.  

Uma heard the distinct click of a lighter followed by a crisp crackle resulting from a long cigarette inhale.

He still smoked.

His smoke stained breath was the one reason Uma had quit smoking. A lingering ashtray stench always clung to him supplemented with a sour alcohol reek that served to add to his gruesome personality a touch of sickening hideousness. 

She could still smell him as he spoke and added to her macabre imagination another visual where she stabbed his eyeballs with lit cigarettes.

‘Let us meet’ he said.

‘I’m busy.’ she spoke through clenched teeth.

‘Oh.’ he said in a level tone. ‘Of course. In-laws and all. I understand.’ he spoke between sips and exhales that lent a thick graininess to his greasy voice. 

Alarm bells. 

Uma’s chest was about to explode. Her beating heart had somehow begun to clang against her breast and wanted out. She found the blood beginning to rise and colour her face, her cheeks grew hot and her spine tightened, tingling with a pressure that began bunching on her shoulders. 

‘What?’ her weak voice found his ears.

‘Listen’ he said emptying the last dregs of the bottle in his glass and licked its rim to not let the spirit waste. ‘We can’t play this game too long. You have to sooner or later, though I prefer sooner, even immediately come back to me, and..’

‘I will never come to you, you bastard.’ Uma found herself snarling into the phone. ‘leave me alone and never come back into my life. Get lost you piece of..’ but he’d hung up.

The bastard smiled. ‘She’ll never change.’

Uma shook with fury and tension. She had to focus her thoughts that ran in a dementia of fear.

He knew about her in-laws, that they were here because of course, he knew where she lived, how else would he have put the pictures in the mailboxes and he’d kept a constant vigil on her from somewhere outside. From where though?

Her phone rang again.

Bastard calling.

She said nothing.

‘You dare talk to me again like that and I will come and smash your face in front of your in-laws you bloody whore.’ he screamed.

Uma swallowed. The darkness spilling around her. Something wriggled within, polluting her insides, choking her in a slimy grip.

‘I know where your husband works.’ She heard another cigarette crackle and all that was broken inside her soldered into a ferric resolution.

The bastard was in a state of frenzy. He’d smashed the empty whiskey bottle on the floor and opened a new bottle that could have been any colourless alcohol and filled his glass to the brim, spilling it while he screamed into the phone.

Something had seized him after he hung up. He’d been too polite, too kind, too merciful. She wasn’t used to niceties. She belonged to him and he’d take what was his.

He’d called her again to remind her that, of what she was and what he was capable of. 

She’d always been so afraid of him doing something that would besmirch her good name and that had always been his winning card.

Uma was too nice to her disadvantage. Too bad he'd thought. 

He was snapping his fingers. It felt nostalgic, the way he sounded; so much like the old him, the confident him, the real man who knew how to tame a woman.

‘I’m willing to forgive you, but next time I call, you’d better have a date fixed for us to meet up. If not then you watch out.’ he snapped his fingers vigorously as a way of threat, like he always did but this time Uma didn’t crumble into a sorry state and fear what the outcome might be. She didn’t look around her office and worry that the bastard might create a scene in front of her colleagues, instead she pulled out her schedule diary, flicked the pages to a not so far off date and under the list of few things she’d planned for that day Uma added a small note which read “Kill the bastard”