Obscured Glimmer

10. A diabolical piece of mess

An Unknown Place 1: 00 PM

NANDINI :

Unbelievable. Unfathomable. Implausible.

Seriously?! He had freaking locked me inside a diabolical piece of mess!

So what if I didn't answer his questions, it was my choice whether to tell him or not. Perhaps, I wasn't a nincompoop to answer anything and everything he asked, especially about my 'Plan'.

Manik had proved what a sumph he was as he didn't tie me with a rope. Sometimes, I couldn't understand why he trivialized me so much. Wasn't it possible that I might run away from that messy darkroom breaking the pathetically substandard wooden door?

As he left, when there were no signs of him, I tried breaking the door for one long hour, lamentably all my attempts rendered nugatory.

Being infuriated I started throwing different gubbins here and there, which were properly methodized in one corner earlier. I broke many items, they shattered and their pieces scattered in the room. While hurling different things kept in that corner I came across a mini-door that was hidden previously due to the huge mountain of different objects, it resembled those surreptitious postern doors used as an escape route from huge historical forts.

Within my two-three attempts to break the door it burst open, the place inside seemed to be unused for decades. The immensely grungy atmosphere, some out of reach small broken windows, the omnipresent spider nests, the arachnid arthropods crawling everywhere, the foul smell of some rotten dead animal like a mouse, the walls with reddish-brown spots of dried blood here and there made me cringe my nose as I closed my eyes feeling awful.

After contemplating all the probabilities that might upshot if I step inside, I trudged through the ghostly dark passage with utmost consciousness, in order to get rid of my so-called captivator. As I walked for some ten minutes, I saw another small door which was latched.

Opening the door very meticulously, I observed the outside place while peeping my head slightly. It was well lightened but the similar huge old walls and small windows at the top which could only be used for a little ventilation proved that my conversant-acquaintance-cum-friend-cum-captivator ensnared me in some kind of enormously huge old wrecked building.

Stepping outside I choose one of the three diverging paths from that place. Sauntering diligently, I kept an account of any movements in the surrounding.

Suddenly I saw a goon, the one from last night's gang, he wasn't aware of my presence nor I wanted him to know. As I realized he was walking at a very fast pace coming in my direction, I felt sweat beads oozing out of my sudoriferous glands. I tried hiding somewhere which seemed quite an impossible task in that unknown place, preparing myself for facing the upcoming danger I was ready for one more fight with the goon even in my wounded state but his act confounded me when he left in the same speed taking a turn without bothering about my presence.

Why was he there? Wasn't Manik the one who saved me from those goons the last night or saving me was also a pretense? Was Manik somehow related to the goons?

Trying to contemplate the sequence of all the uncanny events, I walked in the direction from where the goon came. I stopped as I saw a room. Its door was half-open. Sliding myself through the door I entered inside. It was very much similar to the room in which Manik had locked me, equally dark just that there was a chair, a rope which was lying below it, a large wooden rod lying in a corner. While I was discerning the arena in front of my eyes, I felt some movements. Some human movements. A person was trying to stand up, I could say he was badly beaten from the way he was struggling to get up, his face wasn't visible properly due to insufficient light.