There was a thudding noise. Someone had broken into his apartment.
12
Five Minutes Ago
Shakti Apartments, Navi Mumbai
She kept knocking on the door, but nobody was answering and then she heard a loud cry from inside. She recognized the male voice instantly and did not take any further ado to learn that something had terribly gone wrong inside. She turned the latch, just to try her luck. The door was locked from inside. The only solution was to break open. She took few steps back and turned around to see there was anyone who could be of help. However, she could not see even a single soul around. The apartment seemed to be deserted. And then it struck her, just because she was a woman did not imply that she could not break open the termite laid wooden door. She could do it on her own. Taking in a deep breath she launched herself onto the door. There was hardly any impact on the door, it shook by a millimetre, however Pakhi felt a sudden pain injected into her right shoulder with which she had banged on the door. She patched the injured shoulder with her left hand and looked around again to find something hard to hit on the door. She was not going to give up. She remembered the sledgehammer she had seen inside the elevator. At once she ran to the elevator, praying for the sledgehammer to be there, she pressed the button to call the elevator.
‘I hope its owner did not come back and take his toolkit. Take away everything; just leave the damn sledgehammer there. That’s all I need!’ She said to herself as the elevator’s door opened. She was praying to an unidentifiable entity, being an atheist she did not identify God. The elevator’s door opened and she quickly scanned the entire floor of the elevator but alas she could not find the sledgehammer or the abandoned toolkit anywhere.
‘Damn!’ She cursed at her ill-luck, ‘Wait! The elevator just descended from upstairs and there is only one floor above this. So, the person who used it before me must have got off there.’ Saying this to herself she pressed the button for up and then with a jerk the elevator came into motion. She moved upwards. ‘Oh! I hope I find the guy with a sledgehammer right in front of me!’
The elevator opened, and she saw what she had prayed for… A man in a mechanic’s suit at a distance of a few countable feet and just next him lay the mighty sledgehammer. Pakhi ran towards the man and asked unhesitatingly ‘Can I take this hammer, please? I will bring it back in five minutes.’
The man turned towards the lady in distress, but before he could ask her anything Pakhi pleaded ‘Please, It’s urgent. I will bring it back.’ She suddenly stumbled her trembling hands into her jeans’ pocket and brought all the currency notes she had inside and placed it on the floor in front of the kneeling mechanic, ‘Here… keep it, I will bring this back.’ Without waiting for his consent Pakhi picked up the sledgehammer and ran into the elevator and in a minute she was out of the elevator and running towards Manav’s apartment.
The sledgehammer was heavy and it was taking its toll on her already injured shoulder, yet she fought the pain and panted towards the door. The hallway seemed longer than before. She had come here so many times in the past; the visuals kept passing around her. Her eyes were filling quickly. She pulled the hammer backward with all the strength she could produce in her arm and then swashed forward onto the door’s surface.
BANG!
With one single blow into the door, a huge hole was created near the lock. She pulled out the hammer and dropped it on the floor instantaneously. She felt a burden unload off her physical self, but there was something heavier inside her heart which she had not been able to unload for a long time now. She put her right hand through the hole and then turned the door latch and pulled opened the door.
The screams had stopped. She rushed inside. She had no idea what she was about to witness. Whatever the matter, it was not just a sensational news report for the prime time slot, but something way beyond.
Beyond her own self.
13
The darkness in front of him dimmed into a blurred grey and then again went black. Once again he felt it dimming back to grey, a figure blurred in Gaussian skimmed across the greyness. Darkness ruled again. He felt a slight touch on his cheek as if somebody had rubbed a tender feather of a dove over the rough patches of his skin. He was not in shape to react, the grey grafted into the darkness once more and this time he could see a brown oval closing in on him. The world for him was nothing but a hazy manifestation of obnubilation. Through the haziness climbed in a silky voice, it was hard for him to identify it under the intoxication but it surely was not the voice he was running away from.
Pakhi slapped hard on both his cheeks continuously, however Manav did not respond favourably. He kept rolling his eyeballs involuntarily from one side to the other.
‘What the hell have you done to yourself Manav?’ She asked the unconscious director, as tears rolled down her eyes. The drops of tears fell on his face, bringing the first touch of moisture on his skin that had been facing a drought of dryness for a long time. She touched his forehead with hers and kissed his nose mildly ‘Manav? Do you hear me at all?’
Manav kept opening and closing his eyelids narrowly; the movement was slow and was getting less frequent as well. She lifted her face from his and looked around if she could find anything. She noticed a syringe lying on the floor, next to the string that she had untied from his hind limb. When Pakhi had entered the room, she rushed towards the drawing hall and saw Manav lying on the couch with his limbs tied up with a string to block off blood circulation. She had immediately unfastened the string and cast it off his body and that led to some circulation of blood and Manav had started to open his eyes occasionally, but still he was almost unconscious. She looked around to check if there was any empty bottle of the drug he had administrated to himself. At least she could call up a doctor and ask what should be done to counter any side effect of the drug on Manav’s body. Then she noticed a small strip of tablets at a distance. She placed Manav carefully on the couch and went to pick up the strip.
Sleeping Pills!
Her anxiousness grew manifold after noticing that three out of three tablets from the strip had been missing. There was a steel glass tumbler nearby with some residual milky liquid at the bottom. She picked it up and poured the drops onto her palm and tasted it. Manav had dispersed the tablet in the glass that contained few ounces of water to form a dense solution which he could inject directly into his bloodstream for an immediate effect. She placed the glass and the tablet strip on a rack and turned to look at Manav who was unconscious… sleeping!
Was this supposed to be a suicide attempt?
She wanted to make sure that things were still controllable, so she called her friend who was a doctor at a multispecialty hospital in Thane.
The call was answered quickly and a thick voice answered excitedly from the other end ‘Hey Pakhi, how are you?’
‘Shweta, I am sorry I needed to something urgently.’ She put forth in an anxious tone.
‘What is wrong dear? You sound so tense.’ The doctor replied.
‘Can sleeping pills be used to commit suicide?’
‘What? Why are you asking such a question, please do not do anything stupid!’ Shweta exploded from the other end thinking that her friend was about to commit an act of self-satisfaction.
‘Just tell me… It is my friend here. He has injected a solution of sleeping pills into his body.’ She explained looking at the unconscious body of Manav.
‘What drug is it? Please check the constituents and tell me.’ Shweta said in a doctor’s enquiring manner.
Pakhi picked up the strip from the rack and turned overleaf and spoke disappointedly into the phone ‘Shit! The tablet was taken from here and the printed area is lost. What do I do now?’
‘Relax! How do you know it’s a sleeping pill in the first place?’
‘It’s written on the top. It is a strip of three tablets, really small.’
‘Oh!’ The doctor sensed some recognition, ‘How many pills have been consumed?’
; ‘All three! And yes he had tied his thigh to his ankle tightly with a string.’
Dr. Shweta gave a minor sigh and then deduced ‘This friend of yours… Is he regular drug user?’
‘I do not think so… Not as far as I know him.’
‘The dosage is pretty heavy if it is the drug I believe it is, just that it induces some haziness and gradually put you to sleep for a few hours or maybe forever. Drug abusers love the haziness induced. But three can kill you if it is administrated along with a solution of ethyl bromide.’
‘So, will he be alright in some time?’ Pakhi’s voice carried a concern.
‘He needs an immediate check up! An antidote must be administered at the earliest,’ the doctor continued, ‘I will message you the combination for the antidote, go to any recognized chemist, he will he arrange it for you in a soluble form.’
‘Thank you Shweta, but would not they ask for a doctor’s prescription and stuffs like that?’ Pakhi clarified.
‘Look darling; if you have time to find a doctor, you can do that. However, it will be a waste of time only because a well acquainted doctor would administer the same solution that I am giving you. This is not a serious situation at all if and only if you get this antidote into his body before his body starts turning blue.’
Pakhi introspected Manav’s body. It was losing the normal wheatish hue, though not blue yet. She pleaded into the phone ‘Just message me the required please!’
‘Do not panic, breathe!’
‘Thanks Shweta… Bye…’ Pakhi said and hung up the phone without even waiting for her friend on the other end to respond.
She moved and sat on the couch in front of Manav. She looked at the man. Moments ago she had her face so close to his; she had never come to such close proximity for years. She could not understand why Manav had made such a weak attempt at suicide or if it was suicide at all. Things were not making much sense to her, but the pieces put together had started to form one big puzzle.
He announced his retirement from films. Then he disappeared and now this!
The journalist inside her had resurfaced, asking question… seeking answers… But the question that kept coming to her was… Why would someone as successful as Manav Gandhi force himself to sleep?
Sleeplessness? Stress? Schizophrenia? Suicide?
She would wait for him to answer and then her phone beeped. She had received a message from the doctor. She read the message and immediately set out for the chemist. She had a life to save and a lot to live.
14
Tarifa
Eva felt herself being carried upward, into the thin air around her. Never before in her life had she felt such lightness in her body as if she had no body at all! There was an uneasy pleasure developing within her as she opened her eyes to the vast sea in front of her and never had the Mediterranean Sea looked so azul before. It was as if the heavens had descended upon earth and taken over the beautiful body of sea that separated Andalusia from the African continent. Waves that carried the pride of the sea ejaculated milky foam over azul blue that frothed below a bright white sky that was straight out of the pages of heaven. Eva did not believe what she saw with her eyes, it was spectacular! She did not seem to remember anything from her past, life seemed so far away from where she was standing. She was almost halfway to heaven when she felt the ascent stop. The movement upward had stopped and she looked down and what she saw startled her. Far below on the sandy shore of the Mediterranean Sea lay a body covered in blood. A knife placed neatly on the chest of the body…
It was Eva’s body… dead she had been and it was her soul that was indeed rising to the heavens! But something had happened in between, she was stranded in mid-air. The sight of her blood clad body down below and the beautiful bright sky up ahead started giving her an ironic fright.
Then everything around her started flickering into dimness. A strange feeling passed through her soul, the lightness getting heavier. She looked down, but there laid no body and there was no sea either. It was just a dim blankness all around and the feeling of being subjected to the ultimate degree of solitude raised a fear that was above all humane emotions. And then she was not human anymore, just a soul that was being held up in the middle of white and blue clouds.
A shadow faded in front of her, a thick dark shadow that was taller than her, she felt.
The shadow of a man.
Suddenly she felt herself being carried forward towards the shadow. The shadow had some distinctive features, the height being the primary one. The man in the shadow walked towards her and held out his right hand as if he was holding out some sharp object. His long legs stood parted at a slanting angle from each other. The stance was normal for a man of such tall stature. She was getting closer to the shadow now and with that level of proximity she observed something wound around his palm of the left hand. Some kind of a thread that was tied to cylindrical pendent. And before she could know anything more she passed through the shadow. The impact of the collision was whiteness so bright that she could not see anything else.
‘This is not your time… you must await your destiny…’ A voice mewed from nowhere. The voice was not grand, but soft.
Eva tried to rebel the force that was carrying her, but it was of no use.
‘You cannot rewrite your fate, O child of human! This was not meant to be, you have to go back. Back to fulfill your destiny because with your destiny is linked a million destinies. What you seek shall be condemned if the lines of destiny are tampered with. You must go back, you must wait, for child your destiny is yet to be destined.’ The voice spoke in an authoritative tone and then there was nothingness.
Darkness!
Heaviness entered her soul.
15
Shakti Apartments, Mumbai
‘It is time to go back…’ the angelic voice started fading away into the darkness as he felt himself free falling. He felt himself getting heavier with every inch he descended. The fall was picking up velocity and he could not do anything to stop the fall. A distortive force had started acting upon his skin as darkness suddenly boomed into bright daylight. His eyes were open wide. He panted like he had sprinted for a mile. He could feel a hand caressing his hair. He looked upward and saw a lady, who was speaking to him. He could not hear what she spoke; nevertheless, he tried to recognize things around him. After falling through the darkness of the nothingness, everything seemed to be bright, too bright for his eyes to capture. Before he could do anything, the curved edge of glass was placed in his mouth and something gently pushed the glass tumbler upwards. A fresh stream of cold water went in through his mouth.
Pakhi gave Manav some fresh water as advised by Dr Shweta. The antidote had worked perfectly and just as the chemist had prefaced, Manav woke up panting out of a deep comate state. She was scared at first because the syringe was not going into his skin, as the muscles had already started to freeze. For the first time in twelve years, she had prayed to God for everything to be all right; to give her strength. And miraculously the skin that was on the verge of breaking the tip of the syringe softened itself to let the pointed tip to pass into the unconscious man’s bloodstream.
Manav finished the glass of water she had given him and pushed the tumbler down with his hand. He moved his body, trying to stand. Pakhi quickly caught old of his arm and placed her other hand around his back and helped him rise from the couch.
Manav looked at the lady who had held his hand; his vision was still blurred though not as bright as before. He asked her in a viscous tone ‘Were the lady who came in my dream?’
‘What?’ Pakhi knew it could not be a desperate attempt on his part to flirt with her.
‘The dream… I was dreaming, right?’ His speech was slow and voice almost inaudible.
‘Manav? This is me, Pakhi.’
‘The v… The voice…’ he claimed in breaks.
‘What voice?’
‘Please tell me I was dreaming!’ He begged.
‘Manav… please tell me, wh
at voice are you talking about?’ She shook him hard.
Manav’s vision was getting restored to normal and he could make out the face of the lady who was taking care of him. It was not an unknown face; in fact it was a long forgotten face, but a closely known one.
‘Pa…Pakhi…’ he tried to speak her name, ‘Why are you here? How did you know?’
‘I know you pretty well, Manav. Among all places this is where I could find you.’ She answered in a mildly triumphant jazz, ‘Please, Manav you have to tell me what has happened to you. Why are you doing all this?’
‘Do me a favour…’ He requested.
‘Yes, of course.’ She affirmed.
‘Get out of here and leave me alone!’
‘No I am not leaving you like this, Manav. You might not give a damn, but unfortunately,’ she came closer to him and said, ‘I still do.’
Manav sighed away, clearly stating dissatisfaction on his chiselled face.
Pakhi whisked her right hand across the center table reaching out for the glass of water that she had placed on it some time ago.
‘Here, have this first.’ She said offering him the glass of water.
He gobbled the entire volume in a gulp and exhaled a breath of relief. The action reminded her of the way he had always been. The things that made him Manav Gandhi did not change even after all these years, even after all the success. She had been with him all those nights when he was struggling to get his first break and failed pitching at production houses. It was difficult to let go off those memories. It was in that very apartment where they had first made love with each other, ten years ago and they were then in college. Their individual lives had turned out exactly as they had planned, but their love life had not. Manav, being a practical career enthusiast, his first and only love was cinema, while Pakhi took all the beating for being the victim of a one-sided relationship. And exactly eight years ago, he had asked her to move out of that very house, driving a stake through the relationship forever, walking out of it against her wish. She had not forgotten that night. She had come back after attending her first day at a new work place to find an over-frustrated Manav gagged on the very same sofa, with a blade held close to the wrist of his right hand. Failing to impress publishers was his reason for ending life at that point. Like every concerned girlfriend, Pakhi went on to lecture him about the value of one’s life and how one could make the best out of it and all, only to end up frustrating the male chauvinist to the extent of breaking up with the over-concerned girlfriend. Pakhi always wanted to patch up, but Manav never turned back. He moved ahead… too far ahead… too high… even higher than the stars, but now he was back to where it began, and worse than ever, he had crashed down and wounded was his body and soul. She looked at her old lover, her first and only one. He had not lost the charm, but yes, a thick layer of anxiety brooded over it. The reporter in her sensed the smell of fish right from the beginning of the chain of events that led her to Shakti Apartments outside the slums of Navi Mumbai.
A Game of Gods: The End is Only the Beginning (The Anunnaki Chronicles Book 1) Page 4