Samsaara : Devadoot

Survival of the Worst

The person crawling on the floor begged, "Please, don't kill me. Let me go, please."

The tattooed person took off the bandana from his head revealing the tribal tattoos where his hair once used to be.

"OK, I won't kill you. If you can hold your breath for 10mins, I will let you live," he said as he walked up to the person.

He sat on the persons back and pressed his face into the wet mud. The person struggled for a while before he stopped moving altogether.

There was a loud crack of thunder behind him, accompanied by a purple flash. He turned around to see an obese lady, standing with three men carrying a sickle each, ahead of her.

She spoke, "You have done well to survive. Now you have the honour to be a part of my minions. Accept your reward."

A gust of purple mist rushed out of her mouth and into the survivor's mouth. He fell down to the floor screaming in pain as every vein in his body pulsated and protruded with a glowing purple. His wounds healed, his weariness went away and he stood up with the rock in his hands. With his bare hands he crushed the jagged rock and it crumbled under his immense strength. When he reached close to the others, one of the three men handed him a sickle. He took it and swung it in the air a few times, and then smiled, satisfied by its speed and manoeuvrability.

The obese lady asked, "Tell me, what is your name?"

He replied, "I used to be called Arshad."

*****

I remember putting Arshad to death with my own hands on the beach by the mangrove. I never expected to see that face again.

"Yes boy, it is I, fate has once again crossed your path onto mine," Arshad announced and laughed.

"What?" I asked.

"Fate has once again crossed your path onto mine," Arshad repeated.

"What?" I asked yet again, to irritate him more.

"I said, fate has once again crossed your path onto mine," he said yet again, clearly frustrated this time.

"Oh, yes, that. Missed me?" I asked him.

He must have lost his marbles at that. His face contorted into a furious expression and he pulled himself out of the ground. Plumes of smoke began to emerge from his hands and within seconds he held a sickle in his hand with a chain attached to the handle. The other end of the chain was tied on his wrist.

As I reached closer, he began to spin the sickle by the chain. He launched the sickle in the air towards me. Perhaps, it was the lack of gravity that allowed the chain to move fast. It flew just inches away from my shoulders.

As I was about to laugh, I saw Arshad smile, and I realised my mistake. He grabbed onto the chain tightly and tugged on it aggressively. The chain began to draw back towards him and the sickle started coming towards me. Fortunately, I was not unaccompanied.

"Cherry!" I spoke.

Just before the sickle hooked onto my neck and lopped it off, Cherry pulled me downwards.

"Evasive manoeuvre complete," she announced.

I took Cherry to the other side of the tree to avoid any more chances of getting hooked by his sickle. Once I was close enough to the island I felt the warm comforting grasp of gravity, albeit not as strong as back home.

Once I was firmly footed on the ground, I began to wonder how to stop this fight. All four of them came out from the ground just like the one who attacked us at Mahabalipuram, a while back. So I assumed they all (including Arshad) had the same superhuman strength the other one did. I clearly didn't have the strength to fight these four alone.

My only chance was to buy time until Krodhaksh gets to amass some strength. What better way to stall someone than to talk, I thought. By then Arshad had already bunny hopped around from the other side of the tree.

"Hey Arshad, let's not get into a fight. We can let bygones be bygones," I said.

"Do you think this is funny?" Arshad asked.

"Oh no, not at all. By the way, how have you been? You seem hale and hearty," I said.

"You know what bothers me about you? The way you keep yapping, like a little dog. Everything is so casual to you. You have not seen true suffering. People like us, we rarely get second chances. So when we do, we have to make it count," he said.

"Hmm, I understand," I said.

"You don't understand. You don't understand anything and you never will. You did not have to see your drunken father wailing on your mother with his bare hands. You did not have to pull your mother's dead lifeless body off the noose and see her head lopsided. You did not have to stab your father in his sleep when he started hitting you and your younger brother in a drunken stupor. You are just a privileged brat and nothing more," he shouted.

I stood there dumbfounded. I felt small. So much so, that I could not say a word. All I could do is look at him getting angrier and trying to quell the tears that formed in his eyes.

He continued, "Speechless? Oh, there is more. I spent most of my teens in the prison getting bullied and beaten into submission every day, until one day a man had mercy on me. He was far more dangerous than my father but he was a fair man. I respected, feared and cared for him, more so than I did my father and I swore my whole life to him. He gave me a second chance, which was something I never got before. My whole life took a turn for the better because of him and I continued to serve him. That was until you came and ruined it all. You killed him, destroyed everything that I had done in my life and finally killed me as well. Or so you thought."

"Look, I'm sorry about what happened to you as a child but--" I tried to speak but he interrupted me.

"You thought you killed me. But no, I wouldn't let you have my death. I found my gun in the mud and I shot myself in the head to finish what you couldn't. I would die on my terms I thought. You see, Lady Nyx here, she rules over this realm and everyone who has taken their own lives. Their souls are trapped here forever suffering in pain or she uses it for herself to get stronger. Only we four are left with their own bodies and minds. When I asked what happened to the one whom I was replacing, they told me all about the fight and even before they described it, I knew it would be you. Lady Nyx has not only given me a second chance at living, but also to defeat you" he said as he pointed his sickle towards me.

The rest of Nyx's minions had also come out on this side of the ground, by now. They remained with their feet slimly buried inside the ground to gain a firm footing. I saw a flash of light at a distance and knew that I had stalled long enough.

Wait! Wouldn't it technically be a third chance at life and not a second one?" I said with a smile, knowing that it would irritate him.

"He is mine, do not interfere," Arshad told the rest of the three super-deadies.

Arshad lost his temper and ran towards me with his sickle ready to strike. I saw him hopping like a bunny and I burst out laughing. There is nothing menacing about a person hopping about in low gravity. Unfortunately I forgot that I would be in the same condition. Running away was just as unmanageable.

I began running for dear life and couldn't really make much of a distance between him and me.