Collection of Short Stories by Rokesh Kapali - HTML preview

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8.

 

I was returning back from my workplace, suddenly, three gunshots and a lady in front me, got slammed on the ground as a shooting star. I was the one who approached while everyone divagated. I was yelling when I approached her. With the longest breath I have ever taken, I awoke on the same floor where I got unconscious the day before. My head ached like nothing before. I noticed that, in the last dream I wasn't holding the gun anymore.

My recollection fed me with some part of what occurred in that alley. Before I forget everything and go numb, I quickly dialed the hospital after bouncing on my couch. I could feel my heavy head touching the top of the couch. After a while, a nurse came to see me. At that moment, I felt, maybe they are not as bad as I thought they were. When she opened the door I was surprised that I forgot to lock it yesterday.

She was doing what she normally did and I wasn't even looking at her when she was saying something. I guess she was yelling at me, maybe, because I had taken some alcohol the day before which I was restricted to. I didn't care.

“I want a proper medicine to cure this shit”, I yelled at her grabbing her on the collar and shouted, “Who killed my wife?” She got scared and ran away. Fortunately, she had already injected me with some sort of medication. With that medication I was able to walk properly and the next thing I remember was calling Braxton.

He apologized to me saying he will be busy all day and can only visit me at the evening. That evening, he didn’t show up.

March 18th, I tried my best to look cool and acted as if I didn't know anything about the letter and went to my work as usual.

I had my own separate office room partitioned by glass. Upper half was translucent so that no one could see me directly working inside. But I could easily identify who was walking around by looking at their legs and shoes. I was going through my list to see if something might spark my memory. I couldn’t figure out anything. All the people inside the office have unfamiliar faces. I was drowning in the conundrum about who the writer of that letter was.

I knew I must dig deeper otherwise this thing will not let me live. I wrote a letter to my boss saying I am going to a meditation camp for a month, for that, I needed a break. Surprisingly, I received an approval letter the next day, which said, I was granted the vacation if I took it a week later as the company had to manage someone in my place.

Braxton was regular at my house but nothing unusual occurred. But surely I noticed something different in his manner when I told him that I took a break from my work and was thinking of going to a meditation camp to cure my head. He gave a fake laugh and with an approved smile he complimented on my decision. He responded, “I wish I could go with you but I cannot.”

After he left, an idea hit my brain. I decided to rent a new room, further from the city, so that I could operate by myself securely. I made slight changes in my appearance.

Couple of days later, since my vacation started, I found a room few miles away from my house.

Then my target was to dig deeper into all the operations in GGD that they, deliberately, had hidden from me. The best way to do this task was to hire some clever kids, like in old movies, to track the current workers in GGD. I introduced them my new room as our meeting room.

After all setting, my next topic of case study was my dear old friend-Braxton. I wanted to know everyone who he was dealing with behind my back. So tracking Braxton was the task I assigned to myself.

We began our journey and remained active throughout the course. In just ten days, I had accumulated vital information about GGD except about the one who had sent me that anonymous letter.

It was 8th April; I was following Braxton in one of my hired car when I witnessed something baffling that it shook me off the ground. He stopped by a house. I saw him approaching the door of a house which was opened by one of my colleagues from work. After about ten minutes, I heard a gunshot fired twice. I was baffled and scared, at the same time, but I was eager to know who was shot. To my surprise, Braxton jumped from a window, rolled on the ground and tried his best to run towards the woods. I followed him in my car.

I saw another car waiting for him. Banging and buzzing, the car leaped and after a few seconds it disappeared. Without staying there for a moment, I also took a flight from the place thinking the cops might be arriving and they know me well.

I went to my own house as I felt Braxton might come for the visit. I kept waiting for him. But he didn’t show up. Not even a single call I received from him.

So far, I had formed a team of seven people. Following are some inferences I have drawn from our investigation:

  • The company I was working for was a software company at the front and behind they were still smuggling some sort of plant or insect I don't know but they call it “Yarsagumba” imported from a country called “Nepal”. The selling price was five times more than the market price. People use it for some exotic reasons and those reasons were none of my concern.
  • And surprisingly, my boss “Mr. Daniel Taylor” was struggling to establish an organized criminal world to produce his own farm for the cultivation of that plant.
  • Braxton has his own Motorcycle workshop who is also a hired assassin working for one of my colleagues, who was funded by Mr. Taylor.
  • Braxton killed one of the colleague from GGD, cold-blooded, for some unknown reason.

The progress was moving forward, but still I hadn't got what I was searching for- The killer who was responsible for the death of two women.

It was a windy Monday, as I could see the limbs of the tree blowing about, constantly, in the same direction, almost touching the ground. For two days, I had not gone to the city or my house.

I was dwelling on my thoughts, sometimes, in the shimmering freezing veranda, and sometimes in front of the small hearth, in my researching apartment. I preferred the veranda most of the time when I was alone. Feeling the touch of vigorous wind, I could feel the countryside air has a different quality than my hometown. The natural abundance seemed quite captivating. My focus was diverted when one of my boys came up with a video taken by a surveillance camera. He told me he was able to hack it. I couldn’t do anything except springing out of joy. He inserted his flash drive beside the TV and, finally, the show was on.

After a moment of silence, both of us transfixed our gaze on the screen. Suddenly a gunshot followed, in a crowded street, and we could see a lady lying on the road while the pedestrians disappeared from the scene. A guy seemed to be running towards her. That guy obviously looked like me. Slowly the crowd gathered. The woman's face was covered with blood which couldn't be recognized even after zooming and focusing the video. But my face was clear enough to justify why the cops were trying to hide the video from me and they weren’t giving me any results.

Finally, I had a solid evidence to prove myself not guilty.

Now the last topic left to investigate was “Who killed my Wife?”