The Misfortune Cycle: River Desert

Chapter 9

Torun got home at ten the next morning. The Shakhchunni was a heron as soon as the sun had come up. It sat on the boat, unmoving as a garden statue. Ashraful was accompanying Lanka to a hospital. Lanka had insisted on touching down near a different dock from the one they had departed from the previous day. Ashraful had insisted they seek out professional medical counsel, from the community clinic. Lanka resisted, until she tried to raise her arm and winced at it. Torun was glad they went. His own skills at bandaging wounds was questionable at best. And though he couldn't see her bruise, Torun suspected Lanka might have had a cracked rib or two. However, seeing them off to the hospital took Torun two more hours. Two more hours that his body yearned of the cold floor of his apartment.

Every step up the stairs to his apartment was like dragging his feet through loose sand. The sound of multiple voices shouting came from above. The fourth floor, probably. The land owners teenage son lived there. Locked in there, really. The standard practice of hiding the mentally challenged child behind closed doors instead of getting them help. Sickening. The man would often find it necessary to go up there to shout at his son. As he had evidently found today. A whining, trailing weep let away that the mother was there as well.

Torun tried to decipher what was being said, but his sleep derived brain did not allow him to do so. So he turned the keys to his apartment and went in.

He had taken the time to tidy up the place before leaving the previous day, and so he walked into a tidy, uncluttered house. His front door opened into the small but adequate dining space, and he rubbed his feet on the cheap, bristled doormat and went inside, taking off his shoes. Torun hated to have dirt on the floor.

Dropping his bag in his bedroom, he slipped out of his clothes, grabbed a towel and went into the bath.

Thirty minutes of rigorous scrubbing later, Torun came out of the bath, rubbing his head with the towel, looking for his clothes.

He looked around the bedroom and remembered he had moved the closet to the dining room last week.

Keeping the towel on his head, Torun walked out of the bedroom and into the dining room.

And Mohona was standing there.

And Torun was naked.

What he did was akin more to flying than jumping.

It happened so fast that he didn't even scream. In an instinctive second, the towel was clutched infront of him and he was hiding behind the half closed door.

"What the—" then he saw the eyes. The pitch black holes with a red, glowing dot in them. Not-Mohona wore a white dirty Saree and she stood by the dining table, hands dropped down as if they had no strength in them.

It had followed him home.

"Fuck are you doing here?" He hissed at it.

If that made it feel anything, it didn't show. It's lips moved preemptively, as if practicing the words that would come out.

Then it said, voice still inhumane and diseased, "I haven't anywhere to go."

"Well, you can't come here either," Torun replied.

It scowled, then smiled a wide smile, then scowled again. Then it just stood there, scowling.

"Go to the kitchen," Torun ordered it. It looked up at him, as if not able to hear him properly. "Go!" He yelled again, pointing at the kitchen door.

It hesitated but obliged. Torun came out from behind the door, and with quick, leaping steps he reached the closet, got out the topmost pair of pajamas and stepped into them. The t-shirt went over next.