Hey, please walk slowly. I’m unable to walk so fast as you.” Shyam heard a female voice among the chaos of girls cryings and winding up the fire in the butcher house. He couldn’t identify the voice except it was of a female.
He turned back to see. He had just come out of the butcher house and was climbing hilly lane. Back to him were three ways, one leading to his right side and ending in a cottage. The second led to the left side and the third on which he was climbing with an infant of a year.
He remembered his dream. Is he again in the dream?
He turned back and saw a female but before he could identify who was it he heard a loud laughter. He looked at the infant. It was trying to escape from his hands.
Blood was oozing from Shyam's chest in the left side and from his right shoulder. He wasn’t in a dream at all. Dream can’t give you real blood while he was feeling the warmth of his own blood. The child was mute, it hadn’t laugh.
Then who?
Such a laugh can’t be of a child.
He turned his eyes in the orientation of the sound to see Victor. He was standing yards away from him, laughing his cruel laugh.
Victor had a gun in his hand. There a crashing laughter. In that split second, Shyam made his decision. Shyam had no time for a return attack. Victor raised the gun and Shyam turned and threw the child at the lady hearing whose voice he stopped. The woman did two things simultaneously - she threw her gun to Shyam and caught the child.
He saw the bullets go into her thigh a second before she caught the child in the air. He watched the blood spurt out of her thigh, then he felt a bullet tear into him, and then another. When Shyam felt another bullet in his back, the woman in front of him was on her feet. Now he saw her face, faintly through the mist. She was Charmi.
“Get down.” She cried. Shyam made the calculation in his mind. One bullet in Charmi’s thigh, two in his back. Still, Viktor had three bullets in his gun. If he would get down Viktor would kill Charmi and the child.
His dream had ended, now he knew the girl in his dream wasn’t Archana. She was charmi. The child in his dream wasn’t of him. It was of Anjali. Still, he felt worried for the child. No matter he had no relation with the child in the real world but in dreams, he had spent too much time with the child. He couldn’t let the child die.
He knew he loved the girl in his dream. No matter she is Archana or charmi. He was unconditionally in love with her.
Charmi was the girl who had saved him from the dark cellar. He couldn’t let her die. He felt a strange feeling for her. Archana was past which he had lost somewhere. He couldn’t save her but charmi…?
He was able to save him and he had a bad habit which is very hard to find in anyone nowadays. He had a habit of paying debts as soon as possible and he wanted to pay the debt of Charmi.
He didn’t get down. He stopped the way of Viktor’s bullet. The fourth bullet pierced in his back, he lost control over the gun. It fell from his hand.
Till now charmi was on the ground she had pressed the child strongly to her breast. She wasn’t able to stand up as she had fallen to the ground to save herself from Viktor's bullet and that time her head had hit with a loose stone of the road.
Again Viktor’s gun roared. For Shyam's back it was forth and for the gun, it was the fifth bullet.
“Get down...” charmi was shouting constantly, trying to get up from the ground but all in vain. In a split of a second, all her movement stopped.
He saw Charmi lying on the ground, no this could never be it’s not in Charmi’s character to give up only after death could she quit, so what was this? And Shyam did not know which was the greater agony, her death or his.
Shyam heard Viktor’s gun roaring for the sixth time and then He felt the hammer blow of another bullet. The darkness covered his eyes. For an instant, Shyam's mind cleared. He had come from Gujarat to Chandigarh in search of a dream but the destination of the dream was on the verge of the unknown. Somewhere he hadn’t expected.
Shyam knelt to the ground. His eyes were watching charmi. She was covered in blood, her eyes were closed, the child was trying to escape from her hand but it couldn’t. He chuckled to himself. What if the child was of him? Was of their – Shyam and Archana's child?
But he knew it was just imagination. Archana wasn’t alive. Preetu was mad with memory loss and charmi was dying in front of his eyes. Three girls had come in his life and he had lost them all due to one person – Viktor.
Charmi was gone.
Archana was gone.
A feeling of blessed peace began to steal over him. Soon there was no more
PAIN.
He forced his eyes to open and saw Victor was going. He remembered the faces of Archana and Charmi, he heard the voices of Shlok and Rani unborn to this world cry out for revenge. Victor will also die alone he thought. He fumbles around him to find his gun. He half-stood as he got it.
His hands were trembling, his eyes were obscure.
Shyam was alone. In the end, everyone was alone. Each person had to die his own death. It would be easy to die now. He hadn’t any complaints about the death though he had some complaints about his life it was another story for another time. The matter on the hand was he wanted to help Viktor. He wanted to help him die.
Everyone should die his own death but Viktor was kind of people who shouldn’t allow living. If he did he would kill innocent people and Shyam couldn’t let him on loose to kill and ruin the lives of people like Archana and Anjali.
Shyam checked the magazine. It has just a bullet left. Luck or bad luck he couldn’t decide. The magazine was of eight round automatic gun and had just a bullet.
He looked at Viktor. The distance between them was increasing with each step of him. Shyam aimed gun but the faint vision was disturbing him. he had full trust in the gun but over his eyes, he couldn’t. he took out cigarette pocket and pressed the last cigarette between his trembling lips.
The last cigarette, the last shot and the last act. he thought and lit the cigarette with lighter. He closed his eyes and took a deep puff. It made his blood rush fast. When he opened his eyes the blurriness from his pupils had gone. His eyes weren’t obscure now.
He aimed the gun and pulled the trigger. Firing pin hit the point twenty two calibre cartridge with full pressure and sent the bullet out the muzzle with great velocity.
It caught Viktor’s head, shattering his skull in many pieces. Again he thanked charmi in his mind for the training.
Again his sight blurred, allowing him only darkness. He fell to the ground. His breathing grew louder and louder, his heartbeat blocked his ears and the blood started to fill his lungs, making them burn with pain. He spat the blood out his mouth, waiting for the death.
*
He could hear the noise of helicopter rotors blades from the high in the sky. The far sirens of the police vehicles were disturbing him and then he felt so many hands, trying to scoop him, trying to pull him away from the death. He tried to open his eyes but couldn’t.
“Don’t go unconscious. You are brave, Shyam please fight back.” It was the last words he heard.
***
To be continue...
