Was his dad still alive?
Was Herba still breathing?
The images of the headless body of his dad were still fresh in his mind. He tried very hard to forget the merciless crime committed on Herba.
Did it really take place? Rocky was deeply confused.
Rocky made his way down the hill. He knew the route better than the back of his palm. He still could not figure out the situation.
Who was alive?
Who was dead?
Was it all just a dream?
Did Natas really die in the explosion?
Was there really an explosion?
Lost in his thoughts, Rocky failed to notice someone following him in the darkness.
Rocky’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a snapping twig. There was someone behind him. Rocky did not want to be captured again. He was paranoid. He discreetly picked up a decent-sized stone and waited until the person came close enough for him to strike. It must surely be one of the cartel men, out to capture him. The sound of footsteps became louder and louder as the person closed in on Rocky.
‘Rocky! Come out! Where are you?’ shouted the person.
Rocky hid behind a dry bark and waited to strike. A person appeared in his view. He could not see the face. It was very dark and Rocky could only see the dark outline of the body. The person was clearly searching for him. It must definitely be one of the cartel’s men. Rocky struck the stone hard on the person’s head. The sound of the skull cracking was heard loud and clear. Just to be sure, of the death, Rocky bashed the person’s face repeatedly until there was nothing left to hit. There was blood all over his body. It had splattered from the body from the force of the repeated blows to the head. Rocky threw the bloodied stone and ran down the hill.
He was now worried about his dad and Herba. Were they still alive? He ran as fast as possible to his house. There was no car for him to drive. He ran faster and harder. Rocky was sweating and panting heavily when he reached the house. Too bad, he was so unfit.
The door was open and the kitchen tap was running. There was no one in the house. Rocky was now extremely intrigued. He was at Stoner Hill when he woke up and there was no sign of a headless body there. But the door of the house was open just like how he had experienced. The kitchen tap was open. Water continuously flowed from it. Rocky sat down on the couch trying to take stock of the situation. Nothing was making sense to him.
The landline rang. Rocky was shocked at the sequence of events. He picked up the phone.
‘Rocky?’ said a familiar, feminine voice.
‘Yes...ah... Who is this?’ Rocky spoke with difficulty. He was gasping for air.
‘Rocky it’s me! Herba!’ the voice said on the other end.
Rocky almost burst into tears of joy. Out of all the madness, at least Herba was alive!
‘Where the hell have you been? Come to the farm fast!’ Herba sounded excited as well.
Rocky turned off the tap, locked the door and ran to his dad’s old car parked in front of the car. He turned on the old engine and pressed on the throttle. As he zoomed his way to the drug farm, his mind was flooded with thoughts. He had no idea what he was going through. He decided to put all his thoughts to rest and get it clarified when he met Herba back at the farm.
After a bumpy ride, Rocky arrived at the farm. The house was still standing strong. No sign of any bomb blast. No sign of any bloodshed. No sign of any dead bodies. The men were sound asleep in their tents.
One tent had a small light turned on inside of it.
‘That must be Herba,’ he thought and ran towards it.
He barged into the tent and found Herba sitting inside, without a worry in the world. Rocky hugged Herba as firmly as possible and kissed her on the neck. He was so happy to see her alive.
Herba was surprised to see Rocky so worked up.
‘What the hell happened here?’ Rocky asked Herba.
He wanted to take stock of the situation as quickly as possible.
‘We tried LSD in this tent and the next thing I remember is you not being here when I woke up,’ Herba replied, consoling Rocky with her gentle palms.
It was then that it struck Rocky. He eased up a bit and felt relaxed.
It was all a bad dream caused by the LSD trip. The LSD had given him the worst trip of his life. It had effortlessly mixed reality and dreams and played havoc with Rocky’s mind. The Cannabis and the meth had left Rocky’s mind vulnerable and the LSD just made it worse.
‘I just realized I had a very bad dream,’ Rocky said sounding very foolish of himself.
‘What dream?’ said Herba as she moved Rocky’s head to rest on her shoulders.
‘I had a dream that Natas will plan to kill the drug lords and end up killing himself,’ Rocky said replied as if speaking to himself.
‘I don’t want you to ever die,’ said Herba, sounding sad.
‘Not me, Natas. He dies in the dream,’ Rocky said, this time with a louder and affirming tone.
‘What do you mean? You said you will die in the dream,’ Herba replied.
‘I said Natas will die, not me’
‘Is this a joke?’ Herba asked irritably.
‘No it is not. What’s the matter with you Herba?’ Rocky replied.
‘What’s the matter with me? You are Natas,’ Herba raised her tone. She was frustrated by Rocky’s dumb replies.
A full three seconds went by for Rocky to completely comprehend that last statement.
‘What? I am Rocky not Natas!’ Rocky stood up sounding very alarmed.
The momentary peace in his mind had been completely shattered. Nothing around him made sense.
‘What the hell is wrong with you Rocky?’ Herba sounded deeply annoyed.
‘Your real name is Natas. Rocky is just your casual clan-name’
Herba was very confused. She wondered what was wrong with Rocky. What had happened to him all of a sudden?
Rocky’s legs were feeling weak once again.
‘Arghhhh!’ he stormed out of the tent and shouted in frustration.
‘Natas! Are you alright?’ Herba ran behind Rocky out of the tent.
‘I am not Natas! Why are you calling me Natas?’ Rocky shouted in utter disbelief.
‘Rocky, what are you talking? Your real name is Natas! Ask the men inside the tent if you want’
Rocky stared at Herba with a blank face. He had nothing to say to her. His brain had turned into a mega traffic-jam of electrical signals. The bad dream, the images of his dad’s death in that dream, the gory crime on Herba and now, this. It was just too much for him to handle at once. Rocky could feel his body turning cold. His eyes were bloodshot and tears were beginning to form out of desperation to make sense of the surroundings.
He ran into the tents where the men were fast asleep. He woke one of them up with a rude jerk and asked him.
‘What’s my name?’ Rocky spoke very fast. He wanted an answer right away. The man was still sleepy. His sleep did not let him comprehend the fast question shot unexpectedly at him.
‘Tell me god dammit. Tell me! Please!’ he cried out, almost begging for an answer.
Rocky shook the man violently out of sleep.
‘It is Rocky. Why? What’s wrong boss?’ the man replied, wondering why his boss was acting weird in the middle of the night.
‘Then who is Natas?’ Rocky asked the important question.
‘You, boss. What’s wrong? Something happened?’
Rocky’s body froze.
Was he still in a dream? Was the LSD still playing havoc in his mind?
He did not reply a word. This was too much for him to handle. He stormed out of the tent and sat down on the ground. Herba walked up and sat next to Rocky. She tried to console Rocky.
Rocky’s face was as cold as a stone. It bore no expressions.
‘Rocky...’ Herba tried to make Rocky understand but she was cut short midsentence.
‘Shut up! I am thinking. Don’t talk.’ Rocky silenced Herba vehemently.
> Rocky considered the facts that lay around him. He tried remembering his real name. He could not recollect it.
‘How the hell did I forget my own name?’ Rocky cursed himself.
He cursed himself for all the meth he had snorted over the previous months and for having met the wretched Natas in the first place.
He tried hard to remember how he had come to meet Natas. He was in no position to think clearly. He tried hard. He needed answers at any cost.
Then it struck him.
Rocky had met Natas in the football ground just after the ball knocked Rocky off his consciousness. One by one, it all fell into place for him. Rocky remembered when Natas had told that he lives in and around the football field. Because, he realized, that was where the imaginary figure was born. He remembered the day when he had met Herba on the hilltop for the first time. Natas had claimed to have spoken to Herba about a place to grow Marijuana when Rocky, who was sitting right next to her, had not noticed Natas talking to her at all. He himself had spoken to her. When Rocky was introduced to Marijuana for the very first time in the car, Natas had creepily said that it was Rocky who had asked for it. It was Rocky himself who had set up the hot box in the first place. Rocky often wondered how similar Natas looked to Rocky. He often noticed how Natas’s car resembled his dad’s car. It was Rocky himself, all along. There was no Natas. He was Natas himself. It was Rocky’s own idea to start the Marijuana business in the first place. It was his mastermind which had planned the weed outburst in the city. It was his greed for more money that had led to the killing of the cartel heads. It was all Rocky. It was all Natas.
It was true. Rocky had to believe it. He was Natas. He had single handedly built a drug empire. He wondered at the enormity of the situation that he had just come to understand. He was glad that the death of Herba and his dad were true only in his bad dream. He was slightly happy to have realized he was Natas himself. Natas was in him all throughout. He was Natas from birth.
The entire episode had all of a sudden become clear to Rocky. He was still in shock, but at least, something made sense now. Rocky could not believe how easily the narcotics had played with his realities. How effortlessly, the drugs had changed his perceptions of the real and the unreal. He regretted for having gotten himself into such a mess. All of a sudden, he seemed to hate those drugs. Marijuana, Crystal Meth and LSD. All of it. He was disgusted by the mere thought of using them.
Herba mustered up some courage to talk again.
‘I called you because you were not there for the preparations. We have a big day tomorrow,’ Herba sounded nervous about the big day she was talking about.
‘Huh? What is it?’ Rocky asked, ignorantly.
He was deep in thoughts.
‘The cartel heads are coming tomorrow. We are going to bomb them down. Are you joking around? You made the plan!’
Herba was very frustrated now. She could not understand why Natas was suddenly acting extremely weird.
Rocky had no energy left to react to that statement. Dawn was breaking and the house was clearly visible. Rocky closely inspected the walls of the house. There were wires running down from the windows and it went all the way to the greenhouse. One by one, things were hitting Rocky and his mind could not take it anymore. Many parts of the dream were falling into place in reality. The open door, the kitchen tap, the house rigged with bombs, they were all there in his dreams.
‘So the cartel is not after our lives as of yet?’ Rocky asked. He was barely able to complete that sentence. His brain was working over time.
‘No! Why would they be?’ Herba narrowed her eyes.
‘So, there is no threat to my dad. But he was dead in my dream,’ Rocky spoke to himself.
Suddenly, his heart skipped a beat and his eyes froze.
Who was that man who was following him on the hill? Now, it turned out that it was apparently not the cartel men.
Was it his dad?
He ran to the old car parked near the house and sped off to the hills. When he reached the foot of the hills, daylight had broken fully. There was a very pungent smell lingering in the air. There were police cars everywhere. Rocky got out of the car and ran towards the crowd. He broke through the crowd and went to the centre of it. A body lay on the ground. The face was smashed beyond recognition. Rocky identified the clothes on the body. They were so very familiar to him. They were his dad’s office clothes.
In the heat of the moment, amidst the paranoia and the dizziness, Rocky had smashed his father to death.
Script of Satan
“For a brief moment, he thought about the money he had minted from the sale of drugs. It was huge. However, that did not appease him in the slightest way.”
The situation, although it looked very complicated to Rocky, was quite simple. Rocky was Natas. But in the event of the ball hitting him very hard, Rocky’s mind had somehow created an imaginary person named Natas. Natas was a projection of Rocky himself. That is why Natas resembled Rocky in looks. Natas was the part of Rocky that Rocky could never become. The side, which Rocky did not know, existed in him. Together, they had built a drug empire. Everything was going fine until the meth addiction led him to LSD.
The LSD trip gave Rocky an intense dream in which his imaginary friend dies and the wrath of the cartel is let loose on his father and his girlfriend, Herba. While having the bad trip, Rocky walks himself to Stoner Hill following suit with the dream he is having. The trip is so intense that when it ends, it knocks Rocky back to reality. A reality where Rocky was Natas. A reality where an imaginary friend was absent.
But many incidents of his dream were real. The door, the tap, the house rigged with bombs and the death of his father were all spot on.
Maybe a coincidence?
His informants informed Rocky duly that the cartel leaders were on their way to the drug farm. Rocky was still recovering from the series of events that had rocked his consciousness. He was still recovering from the murder of his father. He had lost his grip on the real and the unreal. If things went exactly like the dream, Rocky and Herba were both to die in the coming hours. Rocky and Herba gave a thought about escaping the drug farm and abandoning all their businesses associated with drugs. They dropped the plan soon. The cartel would easily find the eloped duo. The consequences, then, would be far severe.
Rocky had to finish what he had started. Natas was greedy for power and money. He wanted to control everything. He wanted dominance while Rocky was happy with the money they were getting with the deal with the cartels. Now that the imaginary Natas was gone, the onus was on Rocky to finish what a part of him had created. The part of him called Natas.
Drugs had ruined his life in all ways imaginable. His body was now almost skeleton-like. He had murdered his father in the most gruesome way possible. For a brief moment, he thought about the money he had minted from the sale of drugs. It was huge. However, that did not appease him in the slightest way.
‘What good is it now?’ he thought to himself.
‘What good has it ever actually been?’
He had to protect the one person that remained in his life. Herba.
Rocky kissed Herba, for it could be their last kiss.
‘If anything goes wrong, you run. Understand?’ Rocky held Herba’s face in his palms and kissed her once again.
‘We either win big or we die. But this is ending today,’ Rocky said.
The cars arrived just like in the dreams. Two big black SUVs. There was no need for Rocky to pretend being nervous this time. He was genuinely scared. Because he knew what was to come. Just like in the dreams, Rocky was beaten black and blue. Just like in the dreams, Rocky’s arms were tied behind his back.
Until this point, everything went in sync with the dream and then, suddenly, everything turned for the worse.
The cartels’ men casually walked up to the bush near the entrance of the house and pumped all their bullets into it. The men who were hiding inside did not expect it at all. They died instantly. Blood flo
wed out of the bush in a wide stream.
The man in the green house panicked and tried to escape. He ran towards the woods. Herba knew the mission was a failure. She had no choice but to run. Two of the cartel men easily chased her down. Four other men ran behind the man who was running into the woods. They caught him after a hard chase. They slit his throat and let him die a slow and painful death.
The two men dragged Herba back to where Rocky was tied and where the drug lords were standing. Rocky knew what was coming next. He was forced to see it. The informants had broken the plan to the drug lords long before the preparations at the house had begun. Rocky was foolish to think that he could topple the battle-hardened veterans in the field. The drug lords were no kids. After Herba was raped and burnt barbarically in front of a helpless Rocky, a gun was held to Rocky’s head.
‘Any last words, Natas?’ said a voice.
Rocky’s time had ended. Drugs had ruined his life completely. It had ruined the lives of the people who he cared for. It had ruined everything in its path. Rocky closed his eyes and accepted his fate.
Just when Rocky was readying himself to meet his creator, he realized something.
A smile came on his face.
‘I have got the story now,’ he spoke slowly and confidently.
The trigger was pressed and the bullet effortlessly tore through Rocky’s brain.
Natas woke up with a severe headache. He was sitting in front of his desk. A wide smile on his face showed that he had accomplished something remarkable. After months and months of frustration, he finally had a story worthy enough to pen down and turn into a novel. A story of the delusional lands of narcotics. A story of mistaken realities. A story of murder and love.
All the killing, the love, the drugs and the business were only played out in his dream and nothing eventful had happened in his reality. He had had a dream within a dream. He was satisfied. He took up his pen and started writing. He named the script as “HERBA”. Below the title he wrote, “By NATAS”. A small table-mirror stood right next to the sheet. In it, the mirror-reflection of Natas’s name was clearly seen.
Herba: Once in, there's no way out. Page 11