Chereads / THE FOREST FIRE / Chapter 6 - BACK SLASH

Chapter 6 - BACK SLASH

It was 4.30 am when Ramaiya discovered the article; he came towards my room and he banged my bedroom door as hard as he could. The loud noise woke me up. I opened the door, he shouted, "You asshole! What have you done?"

He ran towards my father's bedroom, he woke everyone in house up and started panicking, my father exclaimed on discovering the article, "We are devastated, they will kill us all!"

Everyone got worried because of fathers words. It was interesting how they are so worried about the outcomes of few words. My brother ran towards me and gave me a tight slap across my face, "You have any idea what will happen to us now?" his voice was weak. I could clearly see he was scared. But I had no expressions. My father said hurriedly, "Sashi! Ramaiya! Inform all the paper distributors and bring back every paper you can, we need to get it all back! We can't afford the news to reach the Rohas!"

Few trucks had already left, few were preparing to leave, and we stopped all of them. Still we lost one, the one transporting to Sabanagar. The whole day we tried calling people with higher posts, trying to apologize and convincing them that the article was to be deleted but was technical issue, my point was that we are a type of journalism, we can sculpt people's opinion so why not, why do we need to apologize and justify it as a technical issue.

The newspapers of Sabanagar and nearing villages clearly said, "Rohas are demons!" I knew they won't stay quite on reading that. The day went in a rush, everyone was worried and to add to the situation at 7 o'clock evening a man comes running towards our office, whenever someone comes running into our office that means something is going to happen, something huge, something bad! The guy entered in rush and said,

"They are coming! They have guns!" trying to catch his breath.

Ramaiya pulled down the shutters are fast as he could, everyone in the office ran away hurriedly, we ran inside locked, the huge wooden doors of our house. When we were completely isolated I stood in the middle of the lawn starring at the door, Ramaiya came running besides and said, "This is what you wanted right? Well congrats, you have succeeded!"

The same moment we heard a motorbike stop just outside our door and a glass breaking, yellow right emerged from outside the door, it was fire, I was able to see it from the low area below the door. Ramaiya screamed, "HIDE!" he ran to the inside, I heard the doors of rooms getting locked inside the house. I stood there firmly, when I heard another glass breaking on the door and flames crawling up the door. The wooden door was on fire, no one was visible except me suddenly I heard someone kicking the door loudly and in a whip the burnt wooden door fell with a bang. Flames roared, smoke covered the scene when I saw two men with a shotgun waiting on the door.

"Welcome, I was expecting you." I said to myself. I wanted to see how far the Rohas can go and how long can I last. I stood there, looked in their eyes.

One of them loaded his gun; the empty bullet shell got thrown out of the gun and hit the ground as he pressed the trigger. It went past my shoulder giving me a cut,

"Is that all you've got? Pathetic" I said to myself and giggled a bit.

I ran the very next moment from the lawn, hopped onto the verandah and ran into the kitchen, one of them shouted, "Stop you motherfucker!" I went into the kitchen and grabbed a knife, the one used to cut meat. Ran through second exit of kitchen reappearing into the verandah, by now the men had started open fire but hell I cared about it now! I ran into my bedroom, one of them pointed his hand towards me shouting, "There is that bastard!" they started running towards me. I hid in the bedroom and watched one guy running towards me through the slits in the window. As he stepped into my bedroom I hopped in front of him and before he could move a muscle I moved the knife swiftly across his neck making sure to slit his throat.

Blood gushed out, some drops on my face, the knife colored red. The blood pouring out of his throat felt satisfying to watch as he fell in my feet. I walked over his corpse as the second guy stood near my room few foot away trying to reload his gun but couldn't; I walked towards him when he was still struggling to put the bullet in its socket. I looked him dead in the eye, I was already standing in front of him when he reloaded his gun and pointed it towards me, 'Too late.' I said softly as I stabbed him with the knife in his stomach, after the first stab he dropped the gun, I went ahead and stabbed him eight times, till he couldn't breathe anymore.

There was blood everywhere; my entire palm was red with blood. I placed the knife inside his stomach. I dragged both the bodies out to the door, the door was burned mostly, and it was glowing red now. There was a huge crowd outside the door I displayed the bodies in front of them, pulled out the knife from the guy's stomach and pointed them towards the crowd, and said, "Listen people, we have lived under oppression for decades now but no more. They will send more two thousand people to silence me, Vikrant, but they can't! It's time we stand up as one against this system and stop living like insects in our own country! We need to fight united against this evil and make them cry blood tears until we get our freedom back! We will bring back Ghatbor's dignity. We will rise and take back what is rightfully ours! And for this I need your help, we will kill the Roha dominance! The countdown has began!"