Palki and I had broken up ten years ago.
Which is why I was surprised to get a message from the man she had left me for on Valentine's Day 2023.
A man I had once considered my best friend.
Vinay had sent me a text out of nowhere: “She is gone, brother. I am so heartbroken. If you can find forgiveness for me in your heart, meet me at the following address.”
I threw my phone on the couch and sat quietly at the dining table.
Palki. Her raven hair and her kohl darkened eyes haunted me to this day.
Those lips had once murmured poems into my ears. Its taste was reserved for me and me alone.
I had nibbled on her ear lobules under the Gulmohar tree. They were delicacies reserved just for my mouth.
It was mine till suddenly one day, it wasn’t.
That treacherous bastard snatched her away from my loving arms.
Now, according to the message, she had left him too.
I laughed cruelly.
My initial reaction was to ignore the message and go on with my day.
But then the darkness in my heart tempted me to respond to his request.
After all, it would give me great pleasure to witness Vinay suffering like I once did.
I changed clothes and jumped into my car. The address was only an hour’s drive away from my place.
In the car, I played all the songs I had associated with our time together. I could hear Palki’s laughter in my ears.
She was probably laughing the same way in another man’s bed now. Poor Vinay. Poor me.
The shabby house was in a poor part of the town, right next to a railway line. I could see why she had left him.
He clearly had little to offer her. Another dark smile blossomed on my lips.
It was close to 8 pm when I knocked on his door.
Through a partly opened door, Vinay’s dishevelled, gaunt form greeted me.
I peered into the room. Black soot covered vast sections of the wall, and peeling paint adorned the rest.
“I am glad you came,” he said.
I nodded expressionlessly.
He didn’t invite me in. Instead, he stepped out of his home and closed the door behind him.
I assumed he was embarrassed to invite me into the dilapidated home.
“I am glad you responded to my message. Come. I need to tell you something. Show you something,” he said.
We exited the compound via a rusted gate and stood next to the railway line.
It felt like he was about to tell me a dramatic story. This would have made a great scene in a movie featuring a tragic love story.
“So, who did she leave you for?” I asked without a tinge of compassion.
“Left me?” He asked in surprise.
“It’s only fair that you are punished for your betrayal,” I added.
“I am about to confess something I told no one,” he said as a forlorn train horn rang in the distance. “Not even the police.”
I looked at him, shocked.
“What happened to Palki?” I asked, concern creeping into my voice.
“Our relationship had been on the rocks for a while. We had grown apart. Then my drinking and gambling turned me into a monster. We had a big row one night,” he said.
In the distance, I saw the train’s ominous shape approaching us. There was something unusual about that sight. It looked like something attached to the locomotive was on fire.
“Things got out of hand. I couldn’t control my temper.”
“What happened to Palki?” I asked, grabbing onto his collar, my eyes still fixed on the train approaching us and the odd flaming phenomenon.
“I doused her in fuel and lit her on fire. She was in so much pain she ran out and jumped in front of a train,” he said.
Sobs racked his body as he faced the train.
“Now I see her every time a train passes by,” he said.
The train was closer now and the mysterious object revealed itself to be a spectral female figure on fire.
The horn of the train became her screams.
“I can’t bear it anymore,” he said, shucking off my hands and shoving me. He was smiling as he leapt in front of the train.
I thought I saw the ghostly woman embrace him for a split second, a rictus grin plastered across her scary face, before the crunch of bones and the squeal of metal on metal filled my ears.
Warm blood drenched my face.
Palki giggled gleefully, somewhere, beneath a gulmohar tree.
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