Grimoire - Vol 1. Revelation of Rakshas

10 - Home Sweet Home

So, guess what, the place I escaped from? It was barely an hour away from my place.

Shocking right? Who knew? I mean, what are the chances for that?

What a small world!

You can never know who ends up as your neighbour.

Still just an hour away.

I mean, I ran so it was even less than that but the moment I saw the bus stand with that torn-up poster of some actor—god knows who but someone, not me, drew on the torn-up portion so now it looked like the actor had the face of a cow—I felt relief wash over my body.

...And then dread right after it.

It was just an hour away.

Shit on a dry cracker! What if they find me? Or, or, place a tracker on me? I mean, do they use any trackers? Judging by their place, I doubt they can even afford a happy meal.

What if I was followed? That's possible too.

...Damn, if only you all could speak and tell me if they were following me or not. You're useless in such a situation, you know that?

No offence, ofcourse.

With suspicion clouding my mind, I took the long route back home. I deliberately took turns that went in the opposite direction, walked in small alleys, jumped through walls of other's houses, nearly had my leg bitten off by someone's dogs—like seriously, what happened to people taking those sweet little cute dogs that fit inside their purses instead of the large and scary hunter breed? As if they're gonna go on a hunting trip here!

All the shops had closed down too, except for the medical store whose owner was more interested in playing some mobile game and smoking his cigarette instead of manning the shop. Although, in his defence, there were no customers. Still, it felt a little ironic to see a medical place owner smoking cigarettes.

The point is, the setting was creepy.

The whole journey it felt like my heart was near my throat, about to jump out from even the tiniest of jump scares. I constantly looked back, wondering if anyone was following me, wondering if that humanoid looking shadow was one of the monk guys or, worse, one of the disguised monsters.

Turns out, it was just Vijay. Our local town drunkard whom you'll spot at night no matter what part of town you were in at any given time. It was almost like magic. To be honest, we're not even sure if his name is Vijay. Me and my friends just call him that because...well, I don't know why we call him that. Easy name to remember, I suppose.

Anyways, after another hour or so because of my deranged movements, I reached my home—dripping and smelling like sweat, trying to catch my breath. Suddenly the hot weather in the morning felt cold at night. Not that it went below 20­oC. Even during winters it barely went below 15oC.

The streets were empty minus the two cows sleeping on the footpath, swatting the flies away. There were stray dogs too—seemingly having some kind of turf war among themselves. Usually, I would be annoyed by them. Rascals never made the sleeping process any easier—like geez, do you have to fight every day?—but today, those annoyingly loud barks were reassuring.

Not that they would come to my rescue if I was attacked. Chances were they would be the attackers.

But it felt nice to know I wasn't...alone in the empty street.

Walking up to the front door, I searched for the key in my bag and unlocked it.

Our house, like all the other residences in this colony, was a single duplex residence. With two rooms, a kitchen, a guest room—that my uncle uses to keep his book collection—and a hall, we were happy with it.