by Eric Brown
At one point as they hurried down the alley, something flashed high overhead, and both Kevi Nan and Ana looked up. She saw a bright glint of light, like sunlight glancing off a pane of glass, but nothing else.
“Let me go!”
“And deprive Sanjeev his pleasure, Ana Devi?”
She was shocked that he knew her name, as if this, along with his grip, was another violation. “Sanjeev-ji has been watching you, Ana, watching you and waiting.”
What was he talking about, she wondered. Sanjeev was so fat that he hadn’t left his room for years, so how could he have been watching her?
“I have rupees,” she said. “Twenty rupees. I’ll give them to you if you let me go!”
Over the years she had managed to save a rupee here and there, and had amassed the grand total of twenty which she had concealed behind a loose stone in the outer wall of the station’s Brahmin restaurant.
Kevi Nan laughed. “Twenty rupees? Sanjeev will pay me ten times that for your yoni, Ana!”
Something froze within her. Her yoni… Sanjeev was going to take her properly, this time, draw blood and deprive her of her virginity. She stared ahead, unseeingly, frozen at the thought.
Kevi Nan dragged her down a rat-infested alleyway, past slums where infants stared out with huge, kohl-black eyes. Some of the kids were older, perhaps her own age, and she hated the quick look of pity in their eyes as she passed.
They came to a high wall and a green-painted gate. Kevi Nan called out, and the gate opened just enough to allow them to squeeze through. He dragged her along a garden path overhung with a riot of unkempt trees and bushes, towards a familiar house painted as pink as a chunk of barfi. Ana felt her stomach turn as she recalled her first time here, years ago, and what Sanjeev had done to her.
They passed into the house, across a cool tiled hallway, towards a green double door. Kevi Nan called out, “I have the girl, Sanjeev-ji!” He eased open the door with his right foot and thrust her into the room.
The door closed quickly behind her. Ana stopped her headlong rush, regained her balance, and stood blinking in a room illuminated by a thousand flickering candles.
The heat was overpowering, along with the cloying scent of incense and dhoop.
When her vision adjusted to the glittery twilight, she gasped as she made out the figure ensconced in the corner of the room.
Sanjeev Varnaputtram was fatter than any fat man she had ever seen, and far fatter than when Ana had last seen him. He sat on a bed in the glow of the candles, naked but for a towel draped across his lap. The rolls of fat that made up his chest and belly were slick with either sweat or massage oil. His arms and legs stuck out at odd angles, forced apart by the amount of fat that encircled his upper arms and thighs.
His head, perfectly circular and absolutely bald, was a tiny thing perched on the mountain of his shoulders.
Sanjeev’s appetite was prodigious. Rumour was that he consumed six take-away curries from Bhatnagar’s — an expensive restaurant Ana had only ever dreamed of entering — every day. On the rickety table beside him a pile of a dozen ghee-coated silver trays suggested that the rumour might be true.
Now he was smiling, and a gold tooth — the tooth she recalled with horror from all those years ago, when he had tried to kiss her — caught the candle-light and winked.
She backed up against the door, pushing against it. The wood rattled but did not give, and she knew that Kevi Nan had bolted the door from the outside, just like last time.
“My, my,” Sanjeev purred. “How you have grown. How, Ana Devi, you have blossomed from the vicious little she-cat you were, into a beautiful woman… Yes, indeed you are — a woman. Now…” he patted his lap, “come and sit down, Ana.”
“No!”
He chuckled, as if delighted at her spirit. “In that respect you have changed little, Ana Devi. Still you are as feisty as you were… what, five, six years ago? You fought, then, if you recall, scratched like a lion cub. It made for even more enjoyment.”
He gestured to the wall. “I have been watching you, Ana, watching you grow, mature, become the beautiful young woman you are now.”
She stared at the wall beside the bed, and saw what he was talking about. Stuck to the wall was a photograph of her, taken very recently. She wanted suddenly to sob. It was as if Sanjeev had stolen a part of her. She wanted to take the photograph from him; that it belonged to Sanjeev seemed wrong.
“I have been waiting, Ana, biding my time. When I received the photograph…” He gestured with a tiny hand. “I knew that the time was right.”
The actual photo was not the only violation, she knew; someone had stalked her, sneaked up on her and taken the picture without her knowledge. What should have been her privacy had been despoiled. She felt sick. She was a street kid, but surely this did not mean that her life was not her own, a thing to be shared, abused, without her consent…?
“But if I may say, Ana, a beautiful woman such as yourself should no longer be wearing the apparel of a child. Look at that t-shirt! Filthy, and ragged, and doing little justice to the delights it conceals. Your breasts are those of a goddess, Ana Devi, and yet you choose to cloak them in rags! And your shorts…” He shook his head and tutted. “Are you aware of how wonderful you would look in new clothes, a sari, a shalwar kameez?” He pointed across the room to a table bearing a pile of folded, silken clothing.
“They are yours, Ana Devi. Please, take off those rags.”
She stared at him and almost sobbed, “No!”
He chuckled, and the sound sickened her; it was the sound of privilege, and power, the sound of someone who knew full well that his desires would be satisfied.
He reached down, took hold of the corner of the towel which covered his midriff, and cast it aside.
She could only stare at his manhood.
His balls were huge, grotesque things, surely as big as coconuts, and by comparison his cock was tiny, really and truly like a small chilli pepper, apart from the domed, shiny thing at the end. It stood to attention above the coconuts, and Ana would have laughed had she not felt so terrified.
He reached out to a small bedside table, picked up a golden genie-lamp, and tipped it.
A thread of golden oil drizzled out, saturating his manhood.
“Ana,” he said, “take off your clothes and come to me.” And his voice was no longer tender, cajoling, but hard and forbidding.
He reached down and played with his oiled cock, coaxing it further upright. Its dome strained, empurpled.
“I said, come to me!”
The words to deny him would not form in her mouth, so she just shook her head and darted a glance around the room, searching for something she might use as a weapon against him.
She saw nothing, and anyway knew that resistance was useless: his leering cohorts were outside the room, very likely now laughing at what their boss was about to do to her.
She backed up against the wall, shaking her head.
“Very well, if you will not come to me…”
He called out, and instantly the door burst open, startling her. One-armed Kevi Nan and a rat-faced man strode into the room, staring from the naked Sanjeev to the cowering Ana.
“Shall we rip off her clothes?” Kevi asked, eyeing her.
“Nai!” Sanjeev said. “Here.”
They hurried over to him, took his arms and hauled him to his feet.
Ana glanced through the door. Two other men stood there, big Sikhs with their arms crossed on their broad chests, barring her escape.
“Chalo!” Sanjeev shouted, shooing his aides from the room. They hurried out, closing and locking the door behind them.
Sanjeev faced her. His enormous gut had slipped. His erection peeked out from the fatty overhang, its oiled and swollen end shining in the candlelight.
He grabbed a stick from where it leaned against the wall and waddled towards her.
She had assumed the stick was a walking stick, but as he advanced he raised it at her and
said, “Now, undress quickly! Quickly!”
She pressed herself against the wall, her arms tight across her breasts. He advanced, his flesh-rolls wobbling, his absurd cock bobbing.
He paused before her. His sudden closeness filled her with dread. If he were to reach out now he would be able to touch her. She made a feeble whimpering sound and was ashamed of her fear.
His face was drenched in sweat and he was shaking with lust.
He raised the stick again and said, “We can do this one of two ways, Ana Devi. You can come willingly to my bed, or I can beat you senseless. Either way, the end result will be the same. You will be mine, whether you like it or not.”
She shook her head, mute and terrified.
“But if you come willingly,” he said, “I will be gentle, and afterwards… the new, fine clothes will be yours, along with a hundred rupees. A hundred, Ana, think of all the things you could buy with a hundred rupees.”
She began weeping then, despite her best efforts not to.
“Never,” she cried, “never!”
“So you cannot be bought,” he laughed, “with money, but I wonder…”
He towered above her, a giant mound of flesh. His tiny, greedy eyes gleamed. “But I wonder if you would be more amenable if I were to tell you about Bilal?”
She stared up at him. She had doubted she could be shocked any more, or frightened further. But the way Sanjeev said her brother’s name filled her with fear.
“Bilal?” she said. “What about him?”
“You miss him, Ana. Oh, I know how much you miss him. My little spies… Rajeev, Kallif…” He smiled. “They tell me all about your dreams of the day when Bilal will return…”
She had wondered about Rajeev and Kallif, where they disappeared to for days on end, suddenly reappearing with rupees and bags of barfi.
“What do you know about Bilal?” she asked.
His eyes twinkled. “Take off your clothes, Ana, and let me see the perfection of your little body.”
“Tell me what you know about Bilal!” she demanded. “Where is he? Is he alive?”
“Oh, he is very much alive, Ana, alive and prospering.”
She felt hope beyond hope, even if it was being granted her from the mouth of a monster.
“How do you know this?”
“I have my spies, Ana, my informants.”
“Where is my brother?” she demanded.
“He is alive and well, but he will have forgotten his little sister, long ago.”
“No! No, Bilal would never forget me. Never…”
Sanjeev laughed. “Then why haven’t your dreams come true, Ana? Why hasn’t he returned to rescue you from a life of thieving and beggary?”
She shook her head, crying openly now, past all shame. “I don’t know,” she said in a tiny voice. “Please, tell me…”
“Bilal left Kolkata,” he said, amazing her. “He was plucked off the streets by the representatives of an agency which educates street kids like yourself. Eventually, according to my sources, he left India and was taken to America.”
But why didn’t he come for me…? she wanted to ask.
“Now, Ana,” Sanjeev wheedled. “Please take off your filthy t-shirt and shorts.”
She pressed herself against the wall and shook her head.
“Would you prefer the stick, Ana? Would you like me to take you the hard way?”
She wanted to lash out at him, push his fat bulk so that he fell over and bashed his head on the marble floor, but she was paralysed with fear.
Sanjeev raised the stick and Ana winced and closed her eyes.
A second passed, then two, three…
An agonising eternity seemed to elapse.
She peeped out between her fingers, which she had raised to protect her face.
Sanjeev appeared to be frozen, the stick high above his head. His eyes bulged and his fat arm shook with the effort of attempting to bring the stick down. She wondered if he were having a heart attack.
To her left was a shuttered window. She summoned all her courage and made a decision. She ducked beneath Sanjeev’s raised arm, ran to the window and pulled it open, knowing that it would be barred. Her heart leapt when she saw not bars but a flimsy fly-screen. She reached out to steady herself — and her hand touched something soft on the table. The pile of expensive clothing…
As Sanjeev gasped behind her, wheezing as he turned and attempted yet again to hit her with his stick, she kicked out at the fly-screen and, as it shuddered and fell out from the window frame, she grabbed the clothing and leapt through the open window.
She was in the riotous garden surrounding the house. She hesitated, looking right and left. Sanjeev’s strangled cry from inside the house galvanised her into action. She gained her bearings and stumbled to her left, through fronds and ferns towards what she hoped was the garden gate. Seconds later she came to the concrete path. To her left the front door of the house was still shut. She turned right and sprinted to the gate, reached it and hauled on the circular, wrought iron handle. She heard the door open behind her and an explosion of outraged cries.
The heavy gate opened slowly and Ana dived through, turned right down the alley and ran like the wind.
A minute later she came to the main road and the surging crowd, and with elation swelling in her chest she threw herself into the flow of humanity and allowed herself to be carried away to safety.
TWILIGHT CAME DOWN swiftly across the city and Ana made her way to Maidan Park.
She would lie low for a few days, allow perhaps a week or so to elapse before she returned to the station. Sanjeev would have his men on the lookout for her, eager to exact his revenge. To her knowledge no one taken into Sanjeev’s lair had emerged without giving him what he wanted, and many a child had met their deaths by denying him.
Perhaps, she thought, she should leave the city altogether?
And what he had told her about Bilal? Had her brother really, truly left the city, been educated and taken to America? But why would Sanjeev have lied about such things? Why would he have told her that he had been educated and taken to America — unless it were true?
Perhaps, she thought, something had stopped Bilal from coming back for her. Perhaps, one day, soon, he would do just that.
She came upon a crowd of excited rich people pointing into the sky, where the light of the emerging stars seemed dulled, and the sun, on the horizon, was bloated to fully twice its size.
She thought of Prakesh, and hoped that Station Master Jangar had let him off with a warning and a minor beating, and thrown him from the station. She searched the park, but found neither Prakesh nor any of her friends.
She slipped into the shrubbery where a few months ago she had concealed a bedroll she had found in a skip. Now she curled up on it and, using the silken clothing she had stolen from Sanjeev’s room as a pillow, settled down to sleep.
She was listening to the sound of the city, the roar of distant traffic, the tragic hoots of the trains, when suddenly all noise seemed to stop — and a sudden, eerie silence reigned. Above her, the branches of a tree, formerly moving back and forth against the moon, were still.
Then she was asleep, or assumed she was asleep, though it had come upon her suddenly, and she was visited by a strange dream — but not the usual one of vicious policemen and angry station masters.
She was lying on her back on… No, not on anything, but floating in a grey mist. She felt naked, and she thought she should be frightened, but a calming voice in her head told her not to be afraid. The odd thing was, the voice was not her own.
She tried to struggle, but she was paralysed. All she could move was her eyes; all she could see was the grey mist… and something in the distance, the head and shoulders of a man or woman, watching her in silence.
Then she felt something dancing on her chest, and swivelled her eyes to look down her body. What she saw sent a jolt of alarm through her. There was a big spider down there, on her belly and climbing slowly towards
her head, a spider with long legs as silver as the cutlery in the Howrah station restaurant.
She wanted to scream, but could not make the sound.
The spider approached her, its limbs tickling her chest. Then it was crawling over her chin, her face. It paused, pulsing slowly up and down, above her forehead.
She felt something touch the skin of her brow, as if the spider were applying a tikka mark to the centre of her forehead. She felt pressure then, and wondered if the spider was pushing something into her head.
She closed her eyes, and the voice in her head told her to be calm.
Seconds later she felt the spider skitter back down the length of her body. She tried to sit up but could not.
She awoke suddenly, and then did sit up.
She was in the bushes in the park, on the bedroll with the new clothes she had snatched from Sanjeev’s room. She remembered what had happened there, how she had escaped.
Her thoughts were interrupted by something in the bushes to her right.
She turned, gasping. She made out a golden glow, and a shape that was in some way familiar.
A figure was seated in the bushes perhaps three metres from her, and she recognised its head and shoulders from her dream.
The figure was golden, and featureless, and its interior swam and pulsed with light.
It sat cross-legged, watching her calmly.
“Who are you?” she asked.
The figure — man or woman, she could not tell — stared at her even though its face did not possess eyes, and said, even though it did not have a mouth, “Do not be afraid, Ana Devi.”
“How do you know my name?” She felt strangely calm. “What do you want?”
She had the impression that the golden figure was smiling.
“We want you,” it said.
CHAPTER FIVE
FOLLOWING THE KIDNAPPING, Sally spent the night at Mama Oola’s Guest House in the centre of town, a ramshackle Victorian building comprising bedrooms on two levels around a courtyard overgrown with bougainvillea and frangipani. Sally considered Mama’s a bolt-hole, an oasis of tranquillity in a noisy town and, on a metaphorical level, from the stress of her job. She often booked into the guest house when she had a couple of days free, to allow Mama Oola to mother her and to feed her up on the Indian curries that were her speciality.