“Did you know they caught him?” I asked Sharma, walking down the road back to our respective shanties. It was dark.

“Caught whom?”

“Hanuman.”

“The God?”

“No! the murderer. Don’t you read the goddamned papers? The guy who was killing us monkey catchers…”

Sharma shook his head. Moron.

Truth be told, I am relieved it’s over. I can go about my business. Monkeys have become a menace in Delhi. We are contractors hired by the metropolitan corporation to catch the monkeys. Technically we have to hand over the ensnared monkeys to the animal shelters or the zoo. But then, we sell the animals to pharmaceutical companies. We make a quick buck and no one’s the wiser.

Except the killer. He took offense. He wore a stupid monkey suit with claws and a spiked tail, armed himself with a mace, called himself Hanuman after the monkey God and went about killing monkey catchers.

They were violent murders. Limbs torn apart. Heads ripped out of the body. He must be a brute. Not at all like the man in the newspaper. Imagine, he used to feed his victims chemicals that made them go blind or for their facial muscles to fail. What kind of a beast would do that to his fellow men whilst killing them?

“The idiot killed many of us,” Sharma said.

“Yeah, if you can call twenty of us in three nights as just, ‘many!’ Thank God they got him.”

It happened without warning. We felt the presence more than saw the man behind us. The impression was of an immense shape. Like an elephant. I whirled around…

…I don’t know where Sharma is. I heard him screaming a while ago. I am on the ground. My legs have been torn from my torso. Hands are crushed like twigs. Hairy fingers press hard against my cheeks. My jaw slackens. My mouth pops open. A vial. With milky stuff in it. He’s pouring it into my mouth. The taste is terrible. Worse than death.

“Who are you?” I ask. The hairy face peers at me. He is old. Age old. His eyes though are fiery.

I know who he is.

“Hanuman”.

It’s getting dark, too dark to be night.

About me:
I am a lawyer by profession and a writer by passion. My excitement as a storyteller led to Shatru, Kronikles-1, my first book in the world of fiction. When not tackling law and concocting stories, I am painting, writing poetry, watching movies, playing my favourite sport or simply enjoying nature’s bliss.