Love and Hate

  • 27 Mar - 02 Apr, 2021
  • Salaar Laghari
  • Fiction

I showed Martha the gun and said,

“I am going to Rita’s house. You will know what happened further through the police.”

“Oh, God! No!” she exclaimed.

I turned and walked towards the exit. Martha however, rushed towards me and held me through my right arm.

“You’re out of your mind Brad!” she exclaimed.

“Leave me; I’m very much infuriated at the moment. And I might shoot you.”

She got terrified and left me.

I left the house.

Next minute, she was dialing Carl’s cell number.

“Come on, pick up. Pick up, pick up….” she uttered in stress.

Carl answered the call after a while,

“Hello?”

“Carl, where are you?” she yelled.

“I’m out of my house. What is it? Why are you talking like that?”

“I am very worried. Do something right now, please.”

“What is it Martha? What’s going on?”

“Brad just left with a gun. He is headed to kill my mother.”

“Oh, dear! Well, that was very much expected.”

“What?”

“I mean, I knew he was going to do that. Look, I have talked him into this, he is not listening to me.”

“So, what are you saying? You’re not going to stop him?”

“No.”

“You’re going to let him do this?”

“No! Listen to me…”

“Are you the one who provoked him to do this in the first place?”

“No! Just shut up and listen to me. I’m going to your mother’s house. I will stop him.”

He disconnected the call.

Several minutes later, I reached outside Rita’s bungalow. My hand gun was loaded with three bullets and after I stepped away from my bike, I took out the gun from my pocket and entered inside. The gate of her house was open as usual.

An old man with long white hair was standing outside and was watching me go inside.

I knocked the door inside. After thirty seconds, she came and answered the door, with a cup of coffee in her hand.

That moment, when I looked at her face, my heartbeat ran faster than ever before.

“Yes?” she asked as she looked at me.

“Have you ever heard of Richard Cruise?” I asked with enraged eyes.

“Who?”

“Richard Cruise!”

“Don’t raise your voice like that. I have not heard of any such person ever.”

I showed her the gun by pointing it towards her forehead.

She got a little terrified and the cup of coffee dropped from her hand.

“What do you want?” she asked me moving backwards.

“You witch!”

As I got inside her house, I reloaded the weapon and said to her,

“You are a murderer.”

“What do you want from me?”

“You killed my father.”

“Who are you talking about?”

I then, took out a hard yet small sized picture from my pocket and showed it to her. It was my father’s picture.

“You killed this man. He was my father.”

She gave an expression that proved that she understood that she had killed someone in the past who unfortunately turned out to be my father.

“I’m going to kill you today.”

Her expression of regret was still there on her face.

“You killed my father. Do you have any idea about how much I hate you?”

“Do whatever you want with me,” she answered. “But please, do not harm my daughter.”

“Do you remember whom I’m referring to?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t. But I want you to listen to me.”

“Raise your hands!”

She raised her hands up to her ears and said,

“I understand that what happened with you must be really hard for you. But I also want you to understand that as a police officer, I was just doing my job. I had no evil intentions at all.”

I did not pay attention to any of her words and so I said,

“You will pay for what you did. If I kill you right now, your daughter and my children won’t be in any trouble. I will continue living with them as before.”

“You do know that there is a CCTV installed at my gate right. Whatever you’ll do, will be captured there. The law won’t spare you obviously.”

“I’m not afraid of that.”

“Do what you have to do…”

Now, it was my chance. I had to kill her. I kept my finger on the trigger and shut my eyes for a few seconds.

Kill her. The voice inside me said.

I opened my eyes and aimed straight on her face.

I could see Martha’s face on her face. I tried to avoid it but it wasn’t easy.

“Brad, listen to me,” she called me out.

To make it easy for me, I remembered my father and how I spent my life with him. I got some courage and placed my finger again on the trigger.

“Kill me!” she said to me. “But please spare my daughter.”

I don’t know what happened, but I felt weak. I was a sensitive person as the way my father made me.

I kept the gun down. I couldn’t look at her face realising that I was not really a murderer. This was the difference between me and that cruel woman.

We both got distracted as someone came inside the house from the door. It was Carl. He probably came to stop me.

“Brad!” he called me out.

I turned and looked at him.

*************

Later that night, I returned back home. Martha who had discovered all through Carl talked to me while standing at some distance,

“Brad, I am glad that you gained some perspective.”

“I did not,” I responded to her.

She didn’t feel like arguing and so she simply said,

“You are a good person Brad. You are not cruel towards anyone. Not on your family and neither on your enemies.”

I sat on the sofa and said looking at her,

“I’m weak. Be thankful of the fact that your husband is weak.”

“No Brad, you’re not.”

She came and sat next to me.

“I was really close to pressing the trigger,” I said to her, “but I remembered you. I could see your face in her face.”

She held my hand. After a little silence, she said,

“Look Brad, I promise you one thing. Regarding your father’s murder, whatever the injustice that has been done, I’ll stand by you.”

I shut my eyes and took my hand away from her hand.

“I will not convince you to let it all go, I promise. We will approach the law. The court will decide what has to be done on this matter.”

“At the moment, I want nothing more than a quick and instant death.”

“Brad, don’t say like that. We will sort out a way for sure.”

“I can’t even accept myself as a human. A woman coldly murdered my father, and I simply could not avenge my father’s death.”

I started weeping.

“You are a better person Brad,” she said to me.

After a moment, she said to me,

“Who knew after all these years, our marriage would end up on a situation like this?”

“You are right. I absolutely agree. We should never have gotten married. It was all too hasty.”

Meanwhile, Carl and Rita were having a conversation at Rita’s house. Rita said to Carl while holding a hard picture of my father,

“I remember now. I know who this person is.”

“Why did you kill him? What happened between you two?”

“That morning, I was very frustrated and angry. I was in a twisted state of mind. I just had to ventilate somehow… So, I was leaving for work when one ordinary but poor woman accidentally hit me.”

“Wait, a woman hit you?”

“No, no, what happened was that she bumped into me, accidentally. I was hit really badly… you know what I did?”

Carl listened to her impatiently, she continued,

“I slapped her on her face. She pushed me back. The two of us got into a fight until I used my power and arrested her.”

“Oh!”

“That moment, this man walked by…”

“This man, Richard?” Carl asked showing the picture to her.

“Yes, anyway, I had arrested this poor woman with her hands tied behind her back. With handcuffs… Richard tried to stop me. He argued, it got me enraged and I deliberately broke that woman’s arm.”

“Oh, God!”

“Richard did something that he shouldn’t have done at that time. He degraded me by spitting on my face.”

Carl said in his heart,

He did absolutely the right thing.

Rita continued,

“As he spat on my face, I got really mad. I took out my gun and followed him. He ran away as fast as he could, but I caught him. My entire anger from the morning finally ventilated over him.”

“And you shot the guy?”

She nodded sadly.

“Oh, God!” Carl spoke, “you are colder than ice.”

“I completely lost my self-control that day. I accept that I was wrong.”

“Just wrong?”

Carl angrily left her house that instant.

*************

One Week Later

I woke up one morning and for no reason I felt some sort of peace. I wasn’t feeling uncomfortable as usual.

It’s time to move on. The voice from inside me said to me.

I got up from my bed. I walked straight towards the kitchen and saw Martha cooking lunch.

I called her out,

“Martha!”

She turned and looked at me. She left everything and came closer towards me.

“In five minutes, please come and sit at the dining table. I need to talk.”

“Okay.”

“And don’t worry; you won’t be upset this time.”

Around ten minutes later, as the two of us were seated face to face, I said to her,

“Martha, the thing is that our life is not getting any better this way. I think we should move on. But it won’t be easy.”

“I’m very glad that you are thinking of it.”

“You have always been very supportive and understanding. You are the mother of my twins… I think hurting you like this would be a big sin.”

“Your anger is however, very much justifiable.”

“I’m just proposing that we should move on and keep this messy stuff behind us.

But I do not want your mother to be around us.”

“I understand.”

“I will not approach the law, nor will I take any actions against her. But I want us to be really away from this city.”

“We can move to some other city,” she added. “But what about the fact that I am the daughter of your father’s murderer? Won’t that bug you in future?”

“I don’t think that it would.”

She smiled at that moment.

It felt as if she was really glad on my decision.

*************

Two Weeks Later

I had very much moved on from this tragedy. Martha was not really talking to her mother. Although, she had once asked her to surrender herself to the police. Rita was an arrogant person who felt insulted on this which was why instead of approaching the right way, she simply scolded her daughter and asked Martha to never call her again.

I knew that things would not get better if we would stay in touch with Rita, which was why I planned on shifting to another city with my entire family.

One ordinary afternoon, while I was packing some of my clothes, my house doorbell rang. Martha went to answer the gate. As she opened the door, she saw two police officers standing outside.

“Yes?” she asked.

I came out of my room and saw the two officers.

“Is this Bradley Cruise’ house?” one of them asked.

“Yes, yes it is.”

“We are here to arrest him.”

“What?” she asked getting surprised.

Twenty Four Hours Earlier

Rita was at some road, where there were hardly any civilians or general public. She was walking all alone, when someone came from behind and shot straight towards her head. The bullet pierced open her forehead from the front side and splashes of blood came outside.

She fell forwards and died.

“Why do you have to arrest him?” Martha asked the police officers. “Has he done something wrong?”

The police officer answered,

“Police Inspector Rita was found murdered yesterday; she received the last death threat from your husband Bradley. We have to arrest our suspect.”

I came by Martha’s side. She fell on her knees as she was in a state shock because of learning about her mother’s sudden death.

“I am Bradley,” I said to the police officers.

to be continued...

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