|the naive rebel|
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xlvi | call the ambulance
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word count - 1917
Yes. You all love me, i posted it early. but do not forget to read & vote in the previous chapter.
I have read your reviews, thank you for filling it. There's gonna be action- but of words (don't ask me how), more mystery, Ishaayat scene (highly demanded), also, __theprocrastinator you are going to get a scene like that. There are going to be two planned bonus chapters before I mark the book complete. Thank you for all your reviews. 🤍🌝
As for my update schedule, I suggest you follow my Instagram page - @ the_clumsygirll
I post teasers and my schedules there.
This chapter is a little bit different, I hope you all like it. *fingers crossed*
I loved reading your comments in the last chapter, do drop them, at the end of this chapter telling me how you felt about the storyline.
*Happy Reading*
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Third Person
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Let's rewind a bit, the tale in Inaayat's life has been no less than a rollercoaster ride. From the hazy night at the club to the seriousness of the headquarters, then the sweet-soft- possible romantic endeavour and then?
The first suicide (attempt) of 2020.
The last suicide that had taken place by falling from the terrace happened in October, and yet again this year-the suicide was about to take place in the month of late October.
The night is starry and bloodcurdling. Haunting and daunting their life. The eeriness increases by a level of a hundred when the wind starts whistling and striking and crushing the old dried up leaves.
There's cold and there's tepid. The transposing febricity is so confusing and baffling and mystifying all at the same time.
Inaayat tries holding Mishti's wrists, but she keeps chanting and murmuring the same thing. 'She had to die,'
Why the hell was she supposed to die? The thought keeps stirring her.
Inaayat is so petrified and anxious, bemused and nervous. Thoughts and thoughts running in her mind, puzzling her and testing her.
She knows that Mishti is drugged, but why? She connects the dots, concluding and deducing that she being the latest drug abuser can be the reason behind her this condition. The killer is here, was in her room.
Forced Mishti, hit her, drugged her and hypnotised her. LSD. Everything in her fucking hostel room, the room she has been living in.
Mishti's condition is bombed and dizzy, her heart fuzzy and her body soaring high. There's a layer of perspiration layered on her forehead, where a fresh wound also lies. There's dried blood and trembling and shivering lips.
Suddenly, Mishti loses her consciousness and she falls with a thud. Inaayat tries picking her up but fails. She squats next to her, trying to rub her cheeks, to bring her back to her senses.
The night is drowning silence, and then there is a sudden noise, footsteps. Loud and heavy, slow and measured. The sound so casual feels even creepier.
Inaayat pats her jacket carefully but realises that she had forgotten her knife in the room.
Shît.
She swallows and gulps, and she stills. She allows Mishti to rest on the tiled cold flooring of the terrace. She senses a brooding presence behind her. Her skin dives into goosebumps and the small hairs on her neck tickle her-scaring her even further.
She shuts her eyes, biting her lips-way too hard when she turns around but a loud and heavy sigh leaves her mouth, in return.
"You scared me." She comments when Ishaan walks towards her, his eyes quickly glance at the unconscious Mishti, who is lying on the floor.
"How.." He murmurs so soft, so low. Inaayat tells him that before they discuss this, they should take Mishti down to her room because if anybody else finds about this incident, they'll lose their chance to find the person behind the murders.
Ishaan nods understanding her point and without wasting any time further, he bends down and picks Mishti up. He instructs Inaayat to follow close behind him, with that he leaves towards the same door they had come from. Inaayat decides to follow him, and moves her legs but stops abruptly.
The moon is beaming over them, maybe sarcastically laughing and taunting them at their situation. The coldness, the dryness, the goofiness and the eeriness, everything blends into a mixture which seems bad, wrong, probably even the worst.
She takes a deep breath, trying to understand how did everything happen so suddenly, so shockingly. Mishti was buried deep down in the shore of her afflictions.
Inaayat feels pathetic, poignant and plaintive thinking how Mishti couldn't even rely on her, trust her enough to share the pain she has been drowning in.
Did she fail as a friend, too?
She had made sure to be with Mishti, every day, every second of the week. Talked to her, tried making her laugh, trying to instil some amount of positivity in her.
How foolish was Inaayat?
She knows that Mishti wasn't happy, but what she had never thought was how did she, her Mishti, take the route of drugs to relieve her pain, her miseries.
The feeling that is brewing, mashing and stewing within Inaayat is of a failure. She failed has her friend.
She feels sad, dejected, disapproved. Even though, she had reached on time, and had managed to save Mishti from the death trap she was being pushed into..but why..how did Mishti even land herself in this situation.
Her soul is throbbing with an irritable emotion of agony, and distress. The dereliction stabs her, and she shudders and quivers. The lacrimal ducts suddenly feel heavy and full, her eyes well up. She gazes at the darkened, gloomy and uneventful sky who enjoys the sparkly glint. Her tilted head manages to stop the flow of the water droplets.
Still, some traitorous droplets leave the corner of her eyes, tracing and tickling a path down her cheeks and then her neck.
Moments pass, but she still stands there. Alone, and silently. Allowing the emptiness to torment her, but she knows she has to go back. To go back to her best friend, who needs her...whom she has to provide her due to justice.
More than anyone else, she wants Mishti to be free, secure and safe again.
She turns back, her shoulders slumping, her fingers jingling, and her face shouting and reflecting the pain that she is experiencing. Her eyes roll on their accord trying to stop the tears, as she suspires breathlessly, aimlessly.
Maybe, there is a plan. Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe her luck finally decided to show its presence. There's a glint. A shine, a bright light contrasting the dullness of the sky.
She knows something is off, something that can change her life. Something, that takes her even closer to the psychopath.
And then she is walking, treading towards the shine. A path leading her to moksha, hypothetically. She is on a path opposite to the terrace door, walking towards the gate, the entrance that has stairs leading her to the activity house, she remembers how Ishaan had shown her this route.
So the person escaped using this route.
She perches on the white shining tiles, picking up the lustrous clue. Holding it between her fingers, examining it, turning and twisting it, and there she knows who it belongs to.
Sometimes even the best criminal, leaves something behind. A piece of evidence that can destroy the plot completely.
The start, the build-up, the hard work behind the planning, everything can be destroyed, damaged, demolished with the help of a single mistake. A single mistake can ruin a person.
You can say it's a stroke of bad luck or a silly mistake or the person's overconfidence. Sometimes, they leave a clue behind them, because what they forget is sometimes they are walking on sand instead of a cemented road, and that the sand soaks their footprint, even when they are least worried about it.
Inaayat knows that whatever happened, had a reason behind it. What if, she never came up to the terrace, what if she had never spotted the drug packets, what if she had never traced the blood spots.
Everything is coming together like a jigsaw puzzle, piece by piece. The entire frame is being formed, the entire picture looks so clear and so mesmerising.
She knows, so very well, about the clue. She had seen it, recently. That day flashes before her eyes, fuck her ignorance. The person was right in front of her, with a mask hiding the true personality.
Right in front of her.
She drops the evidence in her pocket and follows the path back to her hostel room.
The player wanted a game...
and she will now weave a story around the person.
The words she has loved all her life is now helping her frame a plan. A plan that can wound and capture and encircle and entrap the person, so well. Like a cobweb, thin and sticky and white and transparent. The person won't be able to escape it, even if the person is dying too.
To Inaayat, Words and Science never felt so good together.
So fucking good together.
And there she has found it, the reason why all of this happened. She knows exactly what exactly happened and how it happened, and only she could have deciphered it. Only her.
A tiny, small, lowly person who loves literature.
Literature and Crime are now like her wand. A magic wand, that can cure her problems, that can help her punish the person.
She knocks at the door, her sight taking in all the CCTV cameras, that hadn't been working since days now. It had been already planned. She should have thought about it the very moment, she had discovered about these cameras.
The person is playing a fully planned game, every move and motive are organised neatly and are uniform and crisp, hiding behind one another, so easily.
Ishaan opens the door, pulling her in quickly. He is already stressed and Inaayat's absence made him think about all the worst possibilities. He takes a sigh of relief once Inaayat is inside the room, with him.
"Where were you? I told you to follow me!" He questions exasperatedly but Inaayat only focuses on the sleeping Mishti. She softly turns her neck to face Ishaan, her brain working continuously, rapidly.
Her eyes flutter close, as she exhales and blows out the air. Deducing and calculating and planning and noticing and thinking, she utters.
"Ishaan, call the ambulance."
And she is smirking, and for the first time, the chess game has an opponent, a well aware opponent.
An opponent who knows how to play the game amiably, distinctively.
An opponent who knows how to win the game.
And now, she knows the person is threatened and cornered, with the move she has played; and with the move, she will play.
'Check,' Inaayat thinks for the final time before she announces the final chant of 'Check- Mate'.
The wall clock hanging in their room ticks,
and the final countdown has started.
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Ahh!!! Don't worry you will be getting all the answers!! What she found, what happened to Mishti, why is Ina so confident, how Ina will be the one plotting!!
Everything...
I hope you all liked this chapter!
Do not forget to vote/ comment.
It will mean a lot.
Until the next time,
keep dodging the bullets
ऊ.