Chaotic Tangles!

23|| Cacophony

"Nothing ever ends beautifully. It just ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful, it was always just red"

-Kait Rokowoki

Nandini rang the bell and waited, her hands sweating real bad given the kind of anxiousness she was feeling. Her heart had been thudding a bit too loud against her rib cage, she could almost hear her own heart beats. The wait only added to her nervous energy and to curb her impatience, she ended up ringing the bell multiple times continuously.

He wasn't sleeping, right now, was he?

Or maybe, deliberately ignoring the bell? Or the visitor?

She was about to ring again when the door opened with so much force that Nandini gasped and ended up taking a few steps back in shock before her eyes met Manik Malhotra's. He was about to swear or shut the door on her face, or both - she concluded from the rage and vehemence in his eyes. Sheer anger was radiating off him - she could read that in the way his pupils were dilated, and he had a fist clenched too tight.

"What the fuck do you want now?", Manik spat, extremely annoyed.

The last thing that he could ask for right now is meeting Nandini Murthy and he didn't even had to ask, she had herself come up to his door step.

"Excuse me?", Nandini immediately retorted back with a crinkled nose, her face drawn in a frown. On some other day, when Manik was in better control of his situation, he would have found her cute, or tried flirting with her, but right then, breathing heavy and raging like a bull, the otherwise epitome of calmness Manik Malhotra felt more infuriated. Lately he had been on the loosing side of his battle of handing himself anyway.

"Get yourself a hearing checkup if you have a problem. What are you doing here? Why are you here?", Manik demanded, his right hand still clutching the door, his knuckles had turned white.

Nandini saw him and then she saw his state, sighing and shaking her head, she took a step forward and freed his door from the tight grip of his hand, rubbing his fingers.

"Why are you being such an angry young man today? Just yesterday night you were so stressed -", Nandini was cut off by a visibly irked Manik who immediately pulled his hand back from her, making her slightly flinch because of the force, yet again.

"Yesterday night was my mistake. I was too vulnerable. You don't have to rub it in my face", he stated, turning his back to her, deepening the frown on her head.

Nandini used the opportunity to enter inside the house and close the door behind her. Having an argument in the hallway of one of the most posh buildings of the city wasn't something she wanted to be a part of.

Manik turned around at the sound of the door closing, raising a brow. Nandini tilted her head, and crossed her arms in front of her chest, raising a brow too, almost like challenging his stare.

But before he could speak something, her eyes roamed around the living room for a split second and she gasped.

Nothing was really out of place but she had had a bad feeling since the moment she had placed a foot inside. And now, watching red stains all over the mahagony floor, her heart was indeed inside her mouth.

"What the hell happened here Manik?", she exclaimed, and without waiting for an answer, walked past him towards his bedroom - following the trail of the spots, only to be more surprised, for though not a hair looked out of the place in the drawing room, his bedroom was a huge mess.

Her hands went to her mouth as she took in the visual. There was a huge dent in his floor to ceiling glass window that separated the bedroom from the balcony, a vase lying on the corner. The huge mirror of his dressing table was in pieces - and blood smeared.