Crimes of Love: First Two Chapters

For mature audiences only. This story includes several triggering themes including murder, suicide, infidelity, rape, minor abuse, etc. Please do not read if you are likely to be affected by such themes.

Unhinged is the second and final novella in the Based on Lies series and Based on Lies: A Sinister Psychological Thriller is now also available as a combined book.

©This work is protected by copyright and copying or reproduction in any form, in part or in full, without the express permission of the copyright holder is strictly prohibited.

When the pretty woman first walked in and sat on the chair across from mine, I thought my dreams were about to come true. No, a romance wasn’t on my mind. I only thought that after the lull that had lasted months, my private counseling business was finally about to take off.

When a pretty woman in her thirties walks through the doors of a psychotherapist alone, chances are she wants to talk about her love life. Sometimes her gripes are about a partner who just isn’t cutting it for her anymore while other times it is about the stresses of her professional life which hasn’t allowed her to have a truly fulfilling relationship in several years. Those conversations were right up my alley. I knew that the last fifteen years had prepared me to counsel people through those kinds of problems.

Fifteen years ago, when I first decided to become a psychotherapist, I had visualized being in situations such as these. In my mind, this was equivalent to the damsel in distress needing to be rescued by the knight in shining armor. Maybe, the gorgeous lady comes to realize that her man doesn’t really listen, not like her shrink does. Or she is blown away by the ease with which her therapist understands her feelings. I could make up ten fantasies in which the lady realizes that her shrink is essentially the man of her dreams but she just cannot have him and that makes him even more irresistible. A few of those fantasies flashed by my eyes each time I snuck a peek of the tip of Aditi’s cleavage while she sat on the chair across from mine.

Fifteen years ago, I was too bright eyed and bushy tailed to see how unrealistic each of those fantasies were. Ironically, the guy I was fifteen years ago would have had a much better chance of turning one of those fantasies into a reality.

I used to be self-assured, articulate, not shy of strutting my stuff, not wary of walking up to a stranger and striking up a conversation. I spoke eloquently and with sharp wit. Fifteen years of non-recognition, fifteen years of underappreciation, and fifteen years of having to keep my intelligence aside and regurgitating lame scripts in lieu of having real conversations meant that Aditi met a jaded and lost man grasping at straws, hoping to rediscover the path to heroism on which he had once set out.

After fifteen years of a career bereft of any bright spots, I had accepted the verdict that I was just incompetent as a psychotherapist. Aditi, of course, didn’t know any of that. She didn’t come to console me for my failures.

A pretty woman had walked into my life offering me a chance at redemption and she had come to talk about Anurag. And when she left that day, all I knew was that Anurag had written a diary that sent Aditi running to my counseling chair, scared.

When she left, she left me with Anurag’s diary. And I started reading.

It’s been three years now, I think. A married man, mourning the death of his lover? Has it been three years already? No, I think it’s been four. Aditi must have wanted to experience motherhood by now. She has never asked for us to take that step, nor has she ever complained that we’ve not even tried. But she must have wanted it on some level, would she not? What woman doesn’t want to become a mother one day? Well, Niharika didn’t. She used to have too much fun in life. A child would have meant that she had to rein it in. And Niharika was not the kind of girl who would rein it in. But Aditi isn’t Niharika. No matter how much I try to convince myself, Aditi isn’t Niharika. And Aditi must have wanted to become a mother by now. I’m sure of it. How many years has it been, really? Everything seems like a blur. I wish Aditi was just a manifestation of Niharika. But we can’t always get all our wishes granted, can we?

It's 3:23 in the morning. And I cannot sleep. And this is my truth; my recurring truth.

Very often, I cannot fall asleep at night. I don’t think there’s anything unusual about it. It seems like this is a common problem with our generation. A generation of laptop-smartphone-wielding night-warriors! I just wonder sometimes, are all these other night owls also battling with similar thoughts and emotions to what I am dealing with every night? I suppose that’s a yes, we’re all just aimlessly scrolling through Facebook and Instagram feeds most nights anyway.

Today, however, I had chosen not to be at the mercy of technology to pass my time. I wanted to wrest the control of my mind back from technology and from my fears. Today, I let my brain wander into those memory lanes you keep hearing about. It's a fascinating place; at times it is a beautiful place and at other times, it can be a dark, haunting, excruciating place. Tonight, it seemed like it was the latter. My problems were never the kind that the world would heed. So much for seizing control of my own mind, huh?

I am not sick, nor dying. I have a job, and my parents are still together. Or was that just a little while ago? No, no, that’s what it is, this is who I am. Isn’t it enthralling how memories start out like these beautiful dreams until they aren’t? And those memories from college will always remain beautiful dreams in my mind. Nothing will ever change that. If a student seemed to be depressed in college, it'd usually be about the lack of attention from a sexual partner – but I never even experienced such cause for heartache.

Niharika was beautiful, and hard as it is to believe, she loved me. Her flowing, wavy hair would often brush my face in the wind, and time itself would slow down for those moments and feel the velvety touch. Her eyes weren't big and wide, but those hazel eyes had a twinkle in them that could make you fall in love with the selfish white clouds amid the night sky that hid the silver moon from your evocative glances. She wasn't the brightest of apples to have ever fallen off the tree, but I was no Newton myself. We built a cozy cocoon around our limited existences.

If ever we ran into a dark night, she could just smile at me, flashing her perfectly imperfect teeth and absolute disregard for those imperfections, and it would be sunshine. I always knew how lucky I was to have her. The other boys at my hostel at the time were jealous of me – they didn't have a clue what a goof like myself could offer her. They all wanted her, and they all envied me for having her. This was just another recurring truth I had to deal with – they all wanted to take her from me and it was my responsibility to either incentivize her to stay or de-incentivize her leaving to the extent that she wouldn't want to go.

Young men are generally bubbling up with various types of hormones – testosterone, adrenaline, and desire! And I was too young and stupid, myself, to have learnt to live with that. I didn't want her to leave me. Of course, I didn't! I loved her. I brought her flowers, kept her happy, gave her gifts, and listened to her problems. I made gentle love to her when she was melancholic, had animalistic sex with her when she was in the mood, and went six, seven grueling rounds on days when some insignificant incident had made her feel a little undesired for a moment. She knew how much she meant to me, and because she knew that, she was happy with me. One day when she was in the mood to tease, she asked me with a smirk on her face, “Anurag, I know you always try to be the perfect boyfriend who does everything right by me, but what if I meet somebody someday that does all these things, is more handsome, and is rich. What if I can't resist my temptations and leave you? Will you feel bad? Will you pursue me, try to convince me, and try to win me back?” She loved to see me flip out in my insecurities; she took great pleasure as she observed my reactions to that pain. She was a little sadistic in that way. However, wiping off the worry on my face and my visibly enraged look, I calmed my nerves enough to be able to respond.

I said “Niharika, if you ever do leave me, I will kill you”, and she burst into a laughter that, under different circumstances, would've made me feel like seven suns were shining over the earth and glaciers were melting on every mountain and clear streams of sweet water were coming singing down the valleys. But I was still dealing with the insecurities eating away at the insides of my gut and dealing with the uncontrollable pounding of my heart.

So, I continued, “First, I would track you down and find out who you're with. Then I will shadow this man. When the opportunity presents itself, I will hack him off with a lumber axe, and sever his arms, legs, head, and torso, one at a time. I will let the lacerations take their own sweet time to bleed him out to death and once he has exhausted his last breath, I will go back to living my life as if nothing had ever happened.

“I will make no contact with you at this time. A few days after your beau goes missing, you'll remember the other man who used to worship you and could have done anything for your happiness. You'll hesitate, but eventually, you will call me, just to share your misfortunes. I, as always, would try my best to make you a happy woman again – so I'll soothe you, console you, and comfort you. Once you've become more comfortable around me again, I'll tell you that I have a small cabin just outside the city – which I do, I really do – and offer you to come spend a few days there just to change the scenery.

“You'll hesitate initially, think about it intermittently, but refuse eventually. But after a few days, you yourself will ask to come spend a few days at the cabin. I know you're thinking you won't, but trust me when I tell you that you will - you will ask and you will come, because you will want to. We have shared too much and gone too deep to not seek one another out when in distress.

“Once you're there, I'll let you freshen up. I'll make you a hot cup of tea and onion rings fried to a crunchy texture, just the way you like it. We'll spend the day together, lazing around, laughing about old times, and cuddling. Upon nightfall, we will have sex so wild that you will feel like you wouldn't have felt for a day since you’d have left me.

“By the turn of dawn, we would both have moved on from the tragic incidents that had hurt us so badly in our own, seemingly separate, lives. You'll wake up the next morning with that familiar smile that can make the flowers bloom. I will likely still be asleep then, because it would have been my first night of sound sleep in a very long time. You'll feel like you need to make it up to me for ever having left me, so you'll head to the kitchen thinking you'll wake me up with some breakfast in bed.

“You will make the tea with the flavor of tea leaves, the taste of milk, and with an overpowering aroma of love. You'd suddenly have remembered that I take a tablespoon of sugar in my tea unlike your bland, sugarless variant, so you'll turn around to open the kitchen cabinet behind you to get the jar of sugar.

“To your surprise, you'll find that the jar of sugar has nothing but a severed finger from a human hand. You'll let out a short but unmistakable shriek and stumble back two steps; your fall broken by the frame of my body. In that moment, you'll feel a pinching or stinging sensation in your left arm, probably too dazed to realize immediately that you are being injected with a very potent sedative.

“When you wake up, you will find yourself resting on a bed. The tea table will have been placed right in front of your bed, and it will be the first thing you notice once you overcome the daze induced by the drugs. When you do, you will shriek and scream for help for the next minute, maybe even five. This may have something to do with how neatly there will be laid out on that tea table several of the severed body parts of the man you had taken for your lover after you left me. After those few minutes of shrieking and screaming, you'll stop, realizing how futile your squeaks and squeals are. By this time, you will also have realized that your arms and legs are chained to the two ends of the bed and perfectly secured.

“On realizing your hapless situation, you'll look up at me blankly, at the corner of the room, while still weeping irrepressibly. I'll inform you that my cabin is separated from civilization by fifty miles, at least, in all directions. I'll then inform you that the cuffs on your wrists are doubling up as saline injections, to ensure that you do not starve to death for at least another two, maybe three, weeks. Then, I'll pack my bag, wish you a happy honeymoon with your lover, and leave.”

Man, what a strange day it was. Perhaps, I shouldn’t have scared her that much. That conversation had ended there because I had suddenly looked up and caught a glimpse of Niharika. I would have just carried on speaking if the tears that kept streaming down my eyes hadn’t made my face a swollen heap and blurred my vision to the point where I felt like I was a blind man. I had only paused to wipe my glasses dry, and when I put them back on and looked up, I caught a glimpse of Niharika. She just sat in her place, still. Her body had gone stiff except for little bouts of trembling every few seconds. And she looked at me like I was some psychopath.

Few things disturb me as much as the guilt over what I put Aditi through. And few things perplex me as much as the reasons why she still chooses not to walk out of this marriage. It is 1:21 am on the clock. It didn’t take me long to get the notepad open tonight. The promptness in reaching for the notepad is unsurprising. There was something inexplicably satisfying about letting those memories bleed out last night. I was in bed with Aditi just twenty minutes ago. For a relationship falling apart as terribly as ours, it is a miracle that we both go to sleep together in the same room, on the same bed, even if it isn’t on every night. But that’s where the lines of pretension are drawn. We each have a lampshade on our side of the bed; it is meant to aid reading in bed. Aditi does read a book every once in a while. I generally go through the stock market trends on my mobile phone, scan Facebook to get the pulse of the country and the world at large, or watch porn videos if I suspect that Aditi has dozed off. Backs to each other, dim lights at the bedside, we each deal with our insecurities in our own inefficient ways. Tonight, I had left the phone to be recharged in the living room. Finding no distractions at hand, I lay flat on my back on the bed, observing the blades of the fan rotating slowly and noisily. The fan is probably one of the most annoying necessities of modern, urban life. But there is only so long you can watch the rotations of a fan before realizing how bereft of value your time has become. So, I eventually looked away and looked vaguely in the direction where Aditi lay still, but for the movements caused by her erratic breathing. She had been weeping. Honest to our nightly ritual, she had turned her back on me, faced the dim light around the lampshade, opened a philosophical-seeming book, and embraced the silence that was being engulfed by the noise of the fan. But she probably forgot something, there was no other light in the room and the only rays of it were falling directly on her face and reflecting right back on to the black-painted glass lampshade. Her reflection on to the side of the lampshade was a sight to behold. It was poetic, almost. It was a reflection of a beautiful face dulled by shadows cast around it. With her thick, black hair carefully tied behind in a braided ponytail so as not to find them entangled on waking up, the face became the only object of notice. I could discern, not for the first time, that she has a forehead that is larger than usual. I could appreciate the sharp cut of her cheekbones. I could clearly see that annoying little mole on the far left of her left cheek, which she astutely tries to hide with a few stray strands of her hair. I could see that her beautiful, wide eyes were wide open, pupils dilated and affixed at a specific point on the purple wall three feet away, and a narrow stream of water trickling ever so slowly down her cheek while the other eye welled up to the point where the floodgates were just about to be breached. I thought for a moment. I considered asking her what was going on. But how could I ask that? Didn’t I already know the answer? Did I really want her to recount all the ills I have done toward her? Or would she have even answered, had I asked? I considered the idea for a good two minutes before I gave up on it. Then suddenly I found myself filled with apathy, disgust, and a passive rage toward her. I hated her for putting me through this guilt trip. There were so many easier alternatives. In times gone by, when we used to argue and fight, she would never miss a chance to remind me that she is an independent woman who doesn’t need to tolerate my nuisance any more than she chooses to. But it has been five years, and she continues to choose to endure this life with me for reasons I will never be able to fathom. She earns a lot more money than I do and has family wealth to fall back on, so her reasons can only be emotional, not financial. Would it not be so much easier to just walk out? I couldn’t deal with my frustrations within the confines of the bed anymore. Especially with Aditi lying there only a foot and a half away in all her inexplicable, wrath-evoking endurance. So, I finally decided that I had had enough. I sat up on the bed like a zombie or a man brought back to life from the gates of imminent oblivion, looked at my slippers down below, reconciled with the annoying rotations of the fan, and stepped down from the bed. I glided my feet into the slippers and took a few steps toward the bedroom door. As I was about to open it, Aditi spoke. “I remember when you were sensitive and caring. You used to shout at me when I took the public bus home at late hours after office. You would tell me to call you so you’d come pick me up.”

For a moment I was transported back to the days when Aditi had me love-struck. For a few months, she was the only girl I thought about. I missed a couple of words lost in memory lane as she continued. “… That time when we went to Sikkim. I know we will never be like that again. But the heart is such a delicate thing. It gets crushed by every little bit of disappointment yet it never lets the last semblance of hope fade away. And thus, in my foolishness, I imagine that maybe we will get a little bit of what we had shared together back one day. But you murder that dream bit by bit every day, and every day you turn me into someone I am desperately afraid of. You do not know of this someone I am becoming, but maybe you should. The reason I can’t sleep today is not you or your disinterest in me, it is because of something I did this evening while cooking dinner. I killed a cat! I walked into the kitchen to find that a stray cat had found itself a way to enter our kitchen. It had cast the lid aside from the bowl and started taking bites off of a piece of that fish. I knew I couldn’t eat that fish anymore, but I didn’t scream. The cat stopped and looked at me expecting to be shooed away, but I didn’t. And strangely, the cat did not see the need to run away. I went to the refrigerator, brought out a piece of cooked fish, and put some milk in a small bowl alongside. The usually unloved cat seemed to take a liking for the care afforded to it and switched over to the cooked fish and milk. It was gracious, and grateful for the meal. I am certain it would have come back tomorrow evening. But it had stolen what was rightfully mine. Rightfully ours. It had to pay a price. I wrapped my hand around its neck and gradually tightened the grip. At first, it probably didn’t understand what was going on. It stretched its neck forward, probably thinking I would scratch its throat, it made me feel that it was probably a beloved pet to someone once until it became unloved. In a few seconds, it started to gasp for air. With a tight strangle around its throat, it couldn’t make much noise. So, it started clawing and scratching around. There are long bruises all over my right arm. You didn’t notice. The bruises are deep claw cuts, and they hurt like hell. I didn’t make a single noise about them, but couldn’t help the tears rolling down my cheeks. As that cat left its last breath and collapsed on my lap, I started realizing what I had just done. I figured I needed to bury the cat somewhere, but wasn’t sure I could physically dig a grave for it. I decided to take it out to the backyard, poured mustard oil all over it, and set it on fire.” I wasn’t sure whether she was being honest or imaginative. I figured I needed to go to the backyard in the morning to inspect the evidence that could support her claims. Aditi continued, “This is not the first time I had killed an unaware animal. It started about three months ago when I stabbed that spider to death with a dagger from your dagger- showcase. The dagger wasn’t meant to be the choice of weapon for that hunt. In fact, I had brought that dagger out to put an end to someone else altogether. Myself. Yes, I had been suicidal for a while now, at that point. So, I had finally decided that if I had to end my life, I’d do it with one of your beloved daggers, by slitting my throat while sitting at your study table. As I was about to bring the knife to my throat, I saw a garden spider lazily crawling across your study and a flurry of thoughts came rushing through my mind. My life was not so unimportant to give away over your fickle essay and lack of conviction. In all this time, I had not really done anything to deserve to be in the position that I was in. My situation is not the outcome of my actions, but is induced by the very existence of others. And in this moment, the existence of this spider was one of the causes of my despair. So, I brought the knife edge down with great force, an unleashed vengeance, and uncontrollable wrath, over the back of the spider. It trembled for a number of seconds before it became still. It did not change the way you and I behave with each other, but I felt a weird satisfaction from the act. From there, my kills would move on to lizards, rats, and a squirrel, and now this cat. And strangely, I feel no compassion toward any of these animals nor regret for the things I have done. The bruises just hurt, that is all!” Aditi was telling the truth, I knew. I didn’t feel the need for inspecting any evidence in the backyard any more. For a moment, I felt weak, then I felt like I cared, then I felt a sense of responsibility toward her mental wellbeing. I thought of telling her, ‘Let’s go see a doctor. I know you need help but you will get better. I will be right here for you through all of it.’ But they would all have been hollow words that I knew I would not have followed through on. So, I paused for a moment and asked, “Did you throw away the fish that the cat started eating?”

“You ate it!”

We kept staring at each other hoping the other person would say something.

Aditi just repeated, “You ate it.”

Interested to read more? Get your copy of Based on Lies: A Sinister Psychological Thriller from Amazon or Notion Press.

If you wish, you may also pick up the Kindle versions of Crimes of Love and Unhinged separately.