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Twenty Four Little Hours

Posted on February 28, 2007
Filed Under The Stories |

She was terrified. All alone, in the dark and suffering from a sore throat, she was certain there was no way out for her. For one fleeting moment free of terror she thought nostalgically of that morning, not so long ago when none of this was even a hinted possibility. Her name was Aarti and she was very, very fucked.

It had started like most other days, with breakfast, a train ride and the short walk to work from the station. She had traded barbs with Vishal while waiting for the elevator, ignored him with a smile while in the elevator and flounced off towards her cubicle after he’d held the door open for her without a single backward glance. As she waited for her computer to come on she knew that things would have to go beyond their current riffing soon or one of them would lose interest. As soon as her computer came on the desktop wallpaper she had installed the night before reminded her that it was Priya’s birthday. She swore to herself, cursed for not being able to retain a single thought overnight, smoothed down her skirt and hurried over to the corner cabin to knock on the glass door.

As usual Priya was in the office and had probably been there for at least an hour. It was possible to tell how early she’d got in by the number of crumpled coffee cups lying in her trash can. She cleared her throat, “Happy Birthday Priya.”

Her boss swiveled around in her chair and mortification stained Aarti’s cheeks pink as she realised that Priya was on the phone. The woman in the chair never once changed her expression but Aarti knew that she was displeased. Everybody always knew when Priya was displeased because Priya was almost always displeased. Few things made her happy, fewer things brought her joy but she always carried a few extra shots of displeasure to slip into everyone’s morning coffee even when they were at their most alert.

Being terrified of the boss made her employees do crazy things. On that particular day they were going to shower her with presents and inflict a cake-cutting ceremony upon everyone at lunch time. To pretend that anyone actually liked Priya was to pretend that people across the office had turned into masochists who enjoyed being demeaned at every possible juncture in their careers. She wasn’t a very old woman but she was definitely the kind of woman who would morph into a dragon, or ogre, the older she got. Nothing scared her, little impressed her and everyone was convinced that the family she was supposed to have at the home she never seemed to go to were actually cadavers she had exhumed from the nearest cemetery so that it wouldn’t appear that she was as much the soul-sucking corporate bitch everyone knew her as.

That was the favourite theory about her in the office anyway. Aarti didn’t have to deal with her directly on a day-to-day basis which was both a good thing and a bad one. It was bad because she committed faux pas like talking to the woman when she was on her regularly scheduled telephonic conversation with her youngest child. It was good because she didn’t spend every working moment in a state of constant terror while awaiting the next fear-inducing declaration from her boss.

One of the rumours about Priya’s child was that the kid was actually a wolf; another presumed that the kid was simply the result of her union with the Devil. The theory that drew the most sniggers and was also the most popular theory was that the person on the other end of that telephone connection was a fully grown man who had to wait at home for Priya all day, every single day, dressed up as a baby.

It didn’t make the greatest amount of sense to Aarti but she was reminded of it in that moment while she stood pressed up against the door, pinned by Priya’s glare. Though a part of her brain realised that she would do well to shut up and leave she heard herself saying, “Aarti, I work in the art department.” The woman in the chair, who had continued speaking in the lowest of voices stopped, for just a moment and the look in her eyes caused Aarti to flee with all the speed that she could muster.

When lunchtime arrived, surrounded by staff members who had plastered on their best smile and were clapping along to the off-key Happy birthday being sung by everyone, Priya managed to look more displeased than ever. Aarti liked to sing, or rather she liked to shout over a tune so she let rip with all she had and by the time they were done with the second go around, she could feel the ability to speak leaving her. When the final smattering of applause had died down, Priya tossed the knife onto the table where it clattered noisily and as she sauntered back to her cabin she said, “Don’t make a mess.” She hadn’t even tasted the cake.

That’s when the main doors flew open and Mohan Srinivasan walked in. Everybody who was en route to the table to help themselves to a slice of cake turned around and almost immediately seemed to lose interest. No one cared that it was the little man from Accounts who had just walked through the door. One of his colleagues whispered, “You’re late Mohan…”

He was the first to go.

So unimpressive was Mohan Srinivasan’s presence that no one had taken the time to register the machete in his hand. If anyone had, they might have sensed that something was wrong. The guy who commented about Srinivasan’s being late never got the opportunity to register anything because Mohan planted the machete in his head, and yanked it out a moment later as if he was simply trying to get inside a coconut. The first ten people didn’t even see it coming as he hacked and sliced his way through them as if he was South Indian Jones and they were the jungle he was trying to get through.

Vishal was the first one to be able to get a sound out before the sharp metal blade opened a fountain of blood in his throat.

As he passed the spot she felt rooted to, Aarti realised he was humming under his breath. He had favoured many more people in his path with a slice of his machete before she realised that he was humming Happy Birthday. No more than two minutes had passed by the time he got to Priya’s cabin and painted the pristine white walls of her workspace with the blood of her employees and her own.

When he came back out of the cabin he saw Aarti, their eyes met and that’s when she realised that his machete had found her left forearm and the reason it was feeling so numb was the blood that was flowing freely out of the vein he seemed to have sliced. Their eyes met and in the moment before he would begin charging towards her, Aarti found the good sense to start running.

That had been several hours ago. She was holding the wound in her forearm as hard as she could but she had been floating in and out of consciousness for so long that she had no idea if the crazy accounts guy was gone or still around.

She stuck her head around the corner and found herself staring directly into the crazed eyes of the man who had most definitely murdered everyone else in the office. He smiled at her and all she could do was hoarsely attempt to ask, “why…?”

He came around to face her, the machete dripping blood and his eyes flashing wildly, “Why? I’ll tell you why. Today is my birthday also. Where’s my cake?”

Aarti’s face crumpled, her mind caved in and the man with the machete swung his arm one last time.

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