Strangers & Secrets

by Jai T J

  He steered along the curved path as the gate slid away. Both sides of the path were illuminated by tiny silver lights. He turned the car slowly toward the left and there came the majestic house into the view. He literally dropped his jaw when he saw the piece of work standing in front of him.

  The house was asymmetric in its design. He couldn’t figure out the number of floors since one side of the house was taller than other. The tall plate glass windows were displaying the spacious room inside, lit with warm lights. The dots of circle lights along the edge of the angled roof high above the porch looked like the five-star hotel he once visited.

  He turned off the engine and got out. “You live here alone?” He asked tracing both ends of the huge contemporary glass house. It wasn’t just taller but very wider too.

  “No” She walked toward the big wooden door in the front. Before he could enjoy the rest of the naked beauty she called him from the porch.

  “Who else are there?” He asked with new-found enthusiasm.

  “One step at a time, Devin” She said and knocked twice on the door.

  The electronic lock on the other side came alive with a blue blinking light. Her father came to the door from inside and knocked twice mimicking her action. The light turned yellow. “It’s me.” She said after the knock came from her father. The light on the machine turned green and the door unlocked with a clacking sound.

  “Welcome to my home” She said pushing the door open.

  Just like how he imagined, the interior of the house was more orgasmic for the art lover like him. The house turned bright and crystal clear with all the well-arranged couch and the soft colors of the wall.

  “Would you like something to drink?” She asked throwing her bag and burka on the couch.

  “Just water is fine” He said gawking at the grand glass stairs reaching to the next floor.

  “Have a seat and save your questions” She said before vanishing into the kitchen.

  He sat there admiring each nook and corner of the hall. On his right, he saw his parked car through the wide glass.

  She popped open the wine bottle and began to gulp directly from it. She kept the bottle on the island and took the glass of water. She sensed her father entering.

  “Are you sure, you want to do this?” He asked.

  “I don’t want to continue this forever. I want to see the end result”

  “Just remember, this might change the course of your life”

  “So many things have changed. I don’t want to wait anymore”

  “You always loved the wolf as a child. It’s too late to save the wolf I hope”

  “Let’s hope that doesn’t happen” She said and walked out of the kitchen.

  Devin wasn’t there in the couch when she came out. She saw him standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking at the photo frames on the wall.

  “Do you know why they sprinkle water on animals before beheading them on the ritual purposes?” She said handing over the glass to him.

  “Oh, kill me already” He said taking the glass from her. “What are these?” He said pointing toward the bunch of photos hanging and few empty frames along with it. “Is this your photography collections?”

  “These are the things I wanted to do. It’s like my bucket list”

  “So what is this one? You want to buy this car?” He said pointing at the picture of red, roofless car.

  “That’s a shot from Selena Gomez’s ‘year without rain’. I want to travel like that, with four strangers in the middle of desert just like she does in it”

  He nodded taking a sip from the glass. “The famous Arlington cemetery, an abandoned church what appears to be in the middle of an island, and what is this building?”

  “That’s the rolling hills asylum. That one is on you actually”

  “How is that?”

  “You said you wanted to work in a psychotic asylum. That’s when I put this up the wall”

  “When exactly I said that?”

  “To your boss, from our first meeting place. You were quitting your job and you told him you want to start fresh”

  “Yeah, yeah. I forgot about your insane mind readability”

  “It’s actually lip-reading but with the advent of directional laser mics I don’t have to waste my time on menial tasks” She sat on the stairs.

  “You are freakingly rich and why do you work on that hospital?”

  “It’s called passion”

  “That’s one crazy passion. You know your passion is making you sacrifice your sleep, I don’t think that’s a very good passion”

  “That is the very definition of passion. If you are not ready to sacrifice your sleep then it’s no passion”

  “Your house is really beautiful and so – so big” He said stressing the last word.

  “Would you say my house is more beautiful than yours?”

  “Oh, no. I can’t say that. Mine is a home to me but this is your house”

  “My father built this. Before this, I grew up in a safe house somewhere on the classified location of eastern India. He was more like the ambassador of the intelligence world and the Iraq-Iran war was the reason how he got this acre of money to build this house and everything.”

  “This state-of-the-art tech around your house doesn’t invite some unwanted parties?”

  “He knew how to handle them and more than that it’s always some political big heads who cause troubles, not any local sidekicks. That’s where Hiranya cleanses the place”

  “So a friend with ‘Benefit’, huh”

  “He is not just a friend. He is the protective brother I always wanted”

  “You are a highly private person. You don’t even share your number but why did you reveal your secret home to me? Is this like the last wish of the prisoner before executing him?”

  “I wanted to show you something.” She said walking toward the couch. “You should know I respected your privacy and I hope you will return the same. It’s better for you.”

  “Okay” He said suspecting what outer world stuff could she possibly show him.

  “I chose to do this and that too today, hoping this will be our last day”

  He nodded patiently waiting for her to open the suspense.

  “Devin, I want you to meet my father”

  “Your father?” He stood confused. Was that another lie of yours?

  “We have to go somewhere and you cannot see the way to it”

  “You want me to cover my head?”

  “No, that won’t be necessary. The water you are drinking is mixed with a low dosed knock-out drug which will make you temporarily unconscious. So it’s better if you sit down first”

  Devin couldn’t remember what happened after that. He was lying his face on the hardwood table. His head felt so heavy, and he slowly opened his eyes. Everything around him was stark dark except a warm light flickering out of the candle to his left wobbling like the sunlight seen from under the sea. He was sitting in front of the oversized ebony dining table. Yuleika was sitting next to the candelabrum which changed its count of candle in his vision.

  He saw his bandage lying in front of him and his hand was submerged in the white bowl she held. The blood was flowing out of his wrist, filling the bowl. She dipped the spoon and drank the blood out of the bowl.

  He jumped back, pushing his chair behind. Everything around him appeared to be moving. Slowly he saw it wasn’t the blood but what appeared to be a cereal out of the bowl.

  “Are you OK now?” She asked taking a spoonful of dripping milk. Her voice echoed like the sound coming under the water.

  “What is happening to me?” He tried to get a balance with his swirling head. Her figure kept waving and overlapped with another figure of hers. Whatever she mixed in the water made his mind play game with him.

  “It will go away. You need to walk” She pushed the glass of water toward him.

  He pushed himself back, startled by the recent lesson he learned. “What is this place?�
�� He couldn’t see anything except the tiny sphere of area illuminated by the candle.

  “This is my father’s favorite place. We have dinner here only on special occasions” She said and drank the water from the glass she offered before. Her image slowly stretched backward and now she was on the other corner of the table, almost 50 feet away.

  “If you can walk now, then follow me” She took the candelabrum on her left hand and began to walk away from him.

  Devin had no other choice but to follow her. He followed the wobbling tiny ray of light. The light was bright enough to see her face but strangely its radius of illumination was very small. He kept seeing two head of her what looked like one face trying to come out from her side.

  He tripped blindly, almost falling forward. He realized the floor has turned into stairs, and he saw the light traveling in the curved path, spiraling lower and lower as she floated away. He stumbled without knowing what is under his feet. She was moving faster and finally, he felt the ground once again but it was hard and irregular with bumps.

  “You know I could just follow up the trails of your candle drops to trace out where I am being brought to. You are not that smart, you see”

  Just as he finished his blunt joke, she blew the candle with a single puff, made him stand blindly in the absolute darkness, regretting his statements. Even the darkness was flickering in different shades to his eyes. He heard her whistle in a slopey pitched tone and the room came alive.

  Lights after lights blinked and filled the room with loads of photons throughout the tunnel. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It looked like the secluded laboratory from the science fiction movie. The pixie glassed rooms, the jars with preserved organs, an electron microscope with a series of monitors attached on the wall.

  “Is this your private workplace?”

  She kept the candelabrum on the side and continued to walk. He followed her, as usual, keeping his mouth shut. The tunnel began to stretch in his mind, longer and longer, and he saw her reaching the end of it. He tried to keep phase with her. She turned right and a metallic door swooshed open with a burst of air spurting out of it. Devin felt a sudden drop in temperature as soon as he entered the room.

  “You know I never got to say goodbye” She echoed, standing at the center of the room.

  “I’m sorry?” He passed through the door.

  “To my father, after that”

  Devin paused, realizing what he was about to see. Oh, no. This is not what I came for.

  She turned right and vanished out of the view. He walked and walked and walked. It took him forever to reach the center of the room. The room was squeezing and stretching in his head. She was nowhere around.

  “Don’t just stand there” The voice came from above.

  He looked up and saw her standing around 30 feet high on the wall - horizontally on the wall, without any support. She began to walk upward and opened the door above her on the ceiling.

  He rubbed his eyes but the vision didn’t change. He reached the metallic ladder attached to the wall leading toward the door on the ceiling. He pulled himself up in the wiggling ladder and cautiously reached the edge of the door.

  She grabbed his arm and pulled up. The gravity did it work to pull him toward the ground, but she refused to let his arm go. Slowly the world began to shift along with the internal body parts when the gravity shifted from the ground to the wall he was standing. She let go of her grip, and he finally managed to stand on his leg. He turned back and saw the ground below. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “This is it. This is my father”

  He came behind cautiously and saw a large, white metallic cylinder almost 10 feet connected with tubes and wires. His vision began to sharpen slowly. The label on the cylinder read - ‘cryogenics’. The tubes connecting the nossils on the top were covered in ice and the constant beeping sound played from the display monitor.

  Devin expected to see a human body sunk inside the liquid jar but this was quite a disappointment to him.

  “You are keeping your father inside that cylinder?” He felt a sudden tinge of creepiness grew around him. It could be the medicine she gave or the truth she revealed.

  “This is Cryo chamber. It consists of liquid nitrogen and it keeps the tissue from decaying”

  “Why are you keeping your father’s body?”

  “Science is growing really fast, Devin. All I need is his brain but I didn’t want to behead him that’s why I am preserving the whole body”

  Devin’s stomach began to churn, and he felt like throwing up. “I meant why ‘YOU’ are doing this?”

  “As I said, I didn’t get to say goodbye to him. I don’t even know what happened to him. I have questions. I have regrets. I want to get absolution. Whenever I insisted on finding that man who did this, they all thought I was seeking revenge but my original intention was to find out what happened to him”

  “The only face you recognized as someone who is there for you as you grew up and that one face vanishes without a word. It’s not that easy. Since you don’t know him, there is no way you can understand why he is important to me”

  “Father is the first hero of every daughter. I know that much at least but what is your intention now?” He said jerking between his legs. He shook his head, but he couldn’t control the swirling motion inside.

  “I am waiting to transfer his conscious into a computer or something like that. So I can at least have one last day with him, the real him” She looked at her side and saw her imaginary father coming from behind. He reached his arm around her, holding her, he embraced her daughter.

  Devin saw her tilting her head, resting awkwardly on her shoulder. He didn’t know what to say. It looked really sad to see her at the same time keeping the body of loved ones under a basement looked quite creepy but more than that he felt like falling through the door.

  She continued to say something but Devin was submerged in his wiggling mind. Finally, the flash of realization came to him about something that he has been pondering over. The one reason - why she showed him her dark secret. The one reason - why she came into his house. The one reason – why he needed her and the one reason – why she needed him.

  He got an uncomfortable feeling and wanted to leave this freezing room as soon as possible. “Can we leave?”

  She saw him with surprised eyes. “I thought of showing you something else too. Are you sure you want to go?”

  Devin began to hyperventilate. He felt claustrophobic and the phobia that one gets when the girl keeps her father in the ice bottle on the private lab. He didn’t know what was happening. Before he could speak another word, he felt a jolt of pain hitting on his nape reaching toward his head and everything went black as he fell back through the door, racing toward the ground.

  His thighs were burning. When he opened his eyes, he saw the clear sky striking his legs through the windshield of Mara’s car. He looked around and saw his home on his left.

  His head was still troubling him. He tried to remember how he got here. Everything was so blurry and he remembered only a few things. He tried to connect back the memories, but he couldn’t pinpoint what happened the previous day.

  He pushed the door open and grabbed the bottle next to him. He poured the water into his palm and splashed it in his face. He washed his face, wiping off the dripping water with his hand. He heard the classic New Year song played in his neighbors home.

  Chapter 26

  QUID PRO QUO

  It was a new day. The birds were chirping around. Whole world was still under the effects of the fresh beginning of the year but nothing changed in her life. The clouds were Grey. She bid adieu to her temporary stalker. She was alone with her picture perfect, never aging father.

  They both were in the balcony. She was sitting on her legs in the white shorts with a tank top. Her father on the opposite side, in his usual navy sweater over the pale blue shirt. He moved the bishop toward her horse.

  “What should I do now
?” She asked looking at the board.

  “Just what has to be done”

  “Don’t play, father. Tell me. I don’t know what I am doing here. What am I supposed to do from now?”

  “How about meet someone, get a life and move on?”

  “If I wanted that, I would have picked Devin. My perfect type to control and scare him any way I wanted”

  “Then why did you send him away?”

  “Which is exactly why I sent him away. I do not want him to be my distraction” She moved her queen and took out his rook.