The Executioner

It is the year 1624. The kingdom of Haleri is under the rule of King Virarajendra Krishnavarman. Under his just yet iron-fisted rule, the kingdom fared very well and flourished with natural and material wealth. The happiness of the citizens of Haleri spread vibrant colors all around. But for me, the world had just turned grey and gloomy.

My name is Pawan Kumar Navyogi, son of Bhairav Kumar Navyogi. I descend from a family of royal executioners and my father held the position until his death six months ago. Soon after his death, I was made the royal executioner of Haleri at the age of 26, much against my wishes, as I could not express my refusal to the king for the fear of incurring his wrath. I spent every day loathing my profession and praying that I would never find myself in a situation where I have to actually execute a person. I wanted to become a medical healer and save lives, which has been my dream since childhood. I never could hurt anyone, let alone behead a person.

But the godforsaken day came, and soon at that too. It was the day after Amavasya when the woman was brought before the king for trial. Kadambari, which was her name, looked beautiful and elegant like a lotus flower. Her oval face radiated a divine grace, that anyone would wonder how such a celestial being could ever be put on trial in front of the king. Her husband Mahadevarajan, a wealthy influential merchant, accused her of adultery and betrayal, having caught her in a passionate embrace, lost to the world, with another man in his garden the previous night.

Enraged, Mahadevarajan had raised the alarm for his servants to arrest and bind them both, but the man had by then escaped into the dark wilderness behind the palatial house. He was never seen nor caught. Mahadevarajan seethed in anger at Kadambari’s betrayal though he knew, in his heart, that he had made her his second wife much against her wishes, by forcing her father for the debt he owed him. His anger had turned into a blinding madness and he wanted Kadambari to pay for her betrayal, with her life.

Under King Virarajendra’s rule, crimes of murder, banditry, rape and adultery are punishable by death. The king believes that the fear of a strict punishment would prevent people from indulging in serious crimes and the cultural tradition of his kingdom would be preserved. The king had always wanted the justice system of his kingdom to be the pride of his rule and an exemplary example to other kingdoms. He was not a person to be emotionally swayed; in fact, he lacked emotion totally when it came to meting out punishment if the crime was proved. However, he was just and fair enough to provide an opportunity to the accused to defend oneself, before the guilt was proven.

Kadambari stood trembling in front of the king, knowing well what fate awaited her. After Mahadevarajan finished narrating the incidents of the previous night, Virarajendra asked Kadambari if she accepted the crime that was being leveled against her by her husband. He also let her know that the crime, if accepted, was punishable by death. She nodded silently, never uttering a word. The king asked her to name the man with whom she had betrayed her husband. He gave his word that he would spare her life if she named the man, under the consideration that the man had enticed her into the crime of adultery by taking advantage of her loneliness and gullibility.

But, Kadambari never spoke a word. It seemed like she had silenced herself to the whole world. The king looked at her silently for a long time and she too met his gaze, unfaltering. The king lowered his gaze and, with a heavy heart, ordered her to be executed the next morning. Mahadevarajan was happy with his anger being sated by the verdict, but my world came crumbling down.

My first execution, it dawned on me, was going to be that of a beautiful woman that I would have cared for like a flower, only if life had done me that favor. I could not sleep the whole night and spent it thinking about Kadambari and what had transpired in court that morning. My next morning came with a sense of dread and sadness. I could not eat anything as I did not have the stomach for it, and hastened to the gallows in the wee hours. I carried my father’s sword, a shining talwar, which he always used for his executions.

The prison guards had already readied the prisoner and brought her to the gallows. A priest performed karma rites in a systematic yet detached manner, praying to the gods to forgive her sins and accept her soul into the heavens. I rather felt that it was the others that needed forgiving by the gods that day. Kadambari stood silently, her red-rimmed eyes looking down; it looked like she had been crying the entire night. But, her calmness gave away no emotions now. She was brought forth to the execution block. Her hands were tied behind and she was made to kneel down. I stood beside her as she knelt. For a brief moment she looked up at me; her eyes haunt me to this very living moment. Tears welled up in her eyes, as well as in mine. It took all my strength to control my emotions in front of everyone. Just before she bent her head forward in the block, I saw a slight smile form in the corner of her lips; she was done with this world and ready to move on to the next.

The execution was swift. Though my heart weighed heavily and my hands trembled, my sword came down fast. I wanted to ensure that she had a quick death so that she was relieved of all agony soon. After the deed was done, the king went back to his royal duties with the satisfaction of having upheld justice and culture once again; Mahadevarajan went back to his selfish life, looking forward to his hunt for another wife. But here I am, sitting in the darkness of my room the same night, crying myself hoarse, thinking of Kadambari and her eyes when she saw me for the last time.

Kadambari could have easily mentioned my name in the court when questioned, to save herself. But she chose not to. She instead chose to protect my life by sacrificing hers. But, what was my life worth without her? I was just an executioner who killed people at the king’s bidding. In my dull grey life, she had streamed in like a guiding lamp to lead me out of my darkness into the rainbow. I do not even remember when or where I had first met her, but only remember the ecstasy I felt deep inside when our eyes had met. Also, for the first time in my life, I had felt a sense of purpose. Pursuing my objective of getting closer to her with a singular focus, I soon came to know that she was married against her wishes and detested her life until she had met me. Our situation soon made us find ourselves within each other. Our love grew day by day, blossoming into an almost utopian hope of happiness and togetherness. We wanted to live every moment in its entirety, not knowing how many such moments would come in life and how long each would last.

We soon reached a point where our life was meaningless without being together. So we decided to elope away into the night, to some faraway place, never to be found again. We made our plans for the fateful night of the Amavasya; little did we know that it was a different fate that awaited us. After Mahadevarajan caught us on that cursed night, I wanted to stand and face him like a man. But Kadambari forced me to disappear into the night, convincing me that she would manage the situation and we would soon be together somehow. I was a fool to have believed her and run away. Had I known that Mahadevarajan would put her on trial in front of the king, I would have killed him that very night, to save her, and we would have disappeared forever.

Instead, I sit here all alone now, having taken the life of my sweetheart with one swipe of the sword. I would have come forth to accept my crime to the king in the court. But I realized that, even if the king had spared Kadambari’s life, she would still have led a life of ridicule and hate and would have suffered in the hands of a hypocritical society till her last breath. Hence, I remained quiet and decided to end her misery.

As I sit here thinking over the happenings a resolute calmness is coming over me. My hand is gripping the sword tightly even as it is inches towards my abdomen. I have no more use for the body; it is only holding me back from going to my Kadambari in heaven. I feel no remorse, or anger, not even towards Mahadevarajan whom I would have killed for destroying Kadambari’s life and our dreams. But then, I could not risk him troubling us in the next world as well. So I let him be; leaving him to his own fate.

As my life is being drained slowly out of my body, and I am being embraced by a welcoming blackness, I look at the blood stained sword and cannot control my feeling of exaltation at being united with my Kadambari in blood.

As for the king, he can find another executioner for I have resigned now. With each passing gasp, I am leaving the world with the lingering hope that there would be no more beheadings, in the name of culture and tradition, and the sword would be put to rust.

The Beast of Dervaig

The village of Dervaig stood in eerie gloom, bathed only by the light of the new moon. Nestled on the Isle of Mull along the west coast of Scotland, the smell of salt and sea filled the land with a unique fragrance. Cold breeze drowned all ambient sounds by its heaviness. The empty streets were covered in mist making it impossible to see anything beyond a few paces. All living souls had taken safe refuge inside their little abodes. But, neither the dinner on the table nor the quilt on the bed offered them any comfort that night. It was not a night to be feeling hungry or sleepy, but one to be filled with a single intense emotion: dread.

The entire village had gone into a self-imposed curfew an hour before sunset. All the houses were heavily barricaded, like its inhabitants wanted to keep out an army. Only a small group of brave armed men stood guard at specific places around the village, waiting for the onslaught to begin. A fenced enclosure near the village border held cows and sheep that grazed lazily, unaware of the grisly fate that awaited them. In the silence that immersed the village, only the occasional sounds of the animals were carried forth by the cold breeze that chilled the bones.

With a population of just over a hundred, the families of the village had always lived as a close-knit cluster; where everyone knew everyone else. Life had been uneventful for the villagers with their days spent in farming, cattle rearing and trade, and the nights spent in eating, drinking and making merry. Barring a few random incidents of cattle theft at night, here and there, life had otherwise been uneventful for the villagers, until two months back.

The first time terror struck the village, the villagers woke up to blood and gore everywhere, in the morning after the new moon. Cattle lay dead in their sheds, their guts and organs ripped out. And this evil was not one to spare children. A couple of families found their little ones missing. A search was launched and they soon found the bodies in the thick vegetation that bordered the village. The necks were snapped from where the blood had been sucked. The spine had been broken and the organs, including the brain, had been pulled out from the back. The half-eaten organs were found next to the bodies. It was a gruesome sight to all that bore witness to the scene that day. The grief-stricken wail of the mothers was heard far in the next villages.

The villagers never recovered from the shock of the first attack. They did not know what evil had besieged them; never having heard of such incidents before. For the next few days, the villagers shut themselves in their houses most of the time. They remained silent and paralyzed, not making a sound, for the fear of drawing the evil to them. Nature calls were taken care of within the house itself, which only made life more miserable with all the suffocation, as the windows and doors remained firmly shut.

As days went by, they saw or heard nothing, making them wonder if the evil had left their village in peace. As they could not be sure, the curfew continued. But as supplies ran out, some of the family members ventured out to get food and other necessary things, out of fear of starvation. They went everywhere in small groups, carrying sticks and stones to protect themselves. They never ventured far and returned quickly to their houses after they had gathered the bare minimum supplies for surviving the next few days before having to venture out again. Thus, life went on.

It was almost a month since the incident and life seemed to be returning to normal, with no sign of the evil returning to their village. Thus, gaining a little confidence and courage, the villagers began going about their work during the daytime. However, by noon their courage gave way to mortal fear and they went into their curfew by sunset. They had by then built proper barricades around their houses and cattle sheds. All livestock were now locked up safely within their sheds.

It was the night of the first new moon since the attack. The families had finished their dinners by the candlelight and were preparing the beds for slumber, when they heard the unearthly howl for the first time. The howl that shredded the air with its shrillness belonged to no human. Everyone stood petrified in their spot, listening to the sounds. All candles were immediately extinguished and the houses were drenched in darkness as they waited for the attacks to begin. The howls had approached nearer by then.

Children and women, and some of the men too, began to whimper and sob quietly. They could hear the thing, whatever it was, right outside their houses in the street. They heard labored breathing and a low guttural growl as the beast prowled the streets, in search of prey. No one dared to open the windows even a slit, to have a look at what terrorized them. As they sat in agonizing silence, the villagers heard the beast crash through the shed in one of the houses. The villagers spent the rest of the night listening to sounds of cattle howling in pain, the crunching of bones and the slurping of blood, while the beast sated its hunger.

The next morning, the village was gathered around the shaman who spoke to the gods to find a way to free the village from the beast. The only way to quench the blood thirst of the beast, he said, was to feed it willingly, thus creating an allegiance of trust with it. The shaman opined that the beast would not hurt anyone that it considered to be trustworthy and an ally. Since the beast seemed to attack only on the new moon, it was decided that every household in the village would volunteer to sacrifice one livestock every new moon to keep the peace of the village. The villagers also decided that a group of able-bodied young volunteers, armed with sticks, crossbows and spears, would be positioned at specific vantage points around the village to protect the families while hoping that the beast would accept their offerings and leave them in peace. This decision brought a feeling of confidence and a sense of direction among the villagers which gave them some peace of mind in the days that followed, until the next new moon.

The village woke up to the new moon day with a feeling of dread and anxiety, despite knowing well what they had to do. By noon, all the animals chosen asofferings were herded into a rickety fenced enclosure just outside the border of the village, nearer to the dense vegetation. Late in the afternoon, armed men took up positions in the chosen spots around the village. They stood in groups of four at every spot. Not knowing what fate awaited them that night, they had already said their love and goodbyes to their families, and steeled their hearts to face any eventuality. The rest of the villagers comprising of men, women and children locked themselves up in their houses. The whole village waited for the sun to set, with bated breath.

As the night fell and darkness set in, Calum sat huddled in a corner of his shack, his face sweating profusely, more out of fear than heat. All windows and the door of his shack had been barricaded for the night, by Keith, though it would have seemed so inadequate against the terror that had taken grip of the village. As he sat alone, left with his thoughts, he drifted into memories of his turbulent life the last few years and all the pain he had to endure, much against his wish. Tears rolled down his cheeks as the memories hit him harder than the beast possibly could.

A young man of 18, Calum worked as an apprentice for the village blacksmith. The only child to his parents, he had lost his father at the age of ten, when he was killed in a hunting accident. At the age of 16, Calum had been afflicted by a disease of the blood, as the physician diagnosed. For many days, he had lain in bed, unable to walk and writhing in pain; wishing that he would rather die soon. His mother tended to his illness until Calum recovered. A few months later, almost when life seemed to have returned to normalcy, tragedy struck the family again. Calum lost his mother too; she was found dead in bed one morning; eyes glazed over; the face pale and devoid of blood. There was no sign of struggle of any sort. The physician opined that she had probably died of the same illness, having contracted it when tending to Calum, who had recovered from the disease miraculously though. Her body was given a quick unceremonious burial.

Calum could not recover from the loss of his mother, the only family he had left in the world. Most of the nights, he woke up sweating, his sleep broken by lucid nightmares. He was filled with guilt that he was still alive and his mother had died on his account. His gloomy life, in which Calum wallowed in self-pity and guilt, was brightened only by the presence of Keith, his best friend. A year older than Calum, Keith had himself been a loner most of his life. He had lost his entire family to the plague long ago. When he had nothing to call as home, he had travelled across villages ever since in search of work, before settling down in Dervaig three summers ago, and finding work as a farm-hand. He had met Calum around two years back at the blacksmith’s workshop. Keith liked the gullible Calum instantly and, as days went by, found out that they had a lot of things in common. Soon, they had become the best of friends and spent a lot of time in each other’s company. He had come to love Calum like a brother and always kept an eye out for him.

When Calum had fallen seriously ill, Keith worried himself sick over it. He did all he could to support Calum’s mother nurse Calum back to good health; he worked hard to earn the bread for Calum and his mother as well during those days of adversity. On his part, Calum valued Keith’s presence in his life very much and thought of him as an elder brother whom he would always listen to.

On that night, Keith had beseeched Calum to remain in his shack, locking himself in till morning. Keith feared for Calum’s safety and wanted him to stay away from all the terrible events that would unfold that night. He foresaw that it would be a bloodbath, as armed men positioned across the village prepared themselves to face the beast, and possibly kill it. Not wanting to stay away from the action out of fear though, Keith decided to take the risk of venturing into the night.

Elsewhere in the village, at that very moment, Isobel had just finished breastfeeding and placed the baby over the quilt gently, still humming the lullaby in a low voice to put the baby to sleep. Her husband Alistair had volunteered to be part of the watch group to safeguard the village that night, much to Isobel’s chagrin. With Alistair away for the night, as she sat in the darkness of the shack, she lit a candle, against her husband’s caution, to keep the insects away from the baby. As she waited quietly for the night to end and her husband to return home safely, unknown to her, a pair of bloodshot eyes watched her through the cracks in the wall of the shack. The beast had been drawn by the candlelight that could be seen from far away in the clear dark night. Circumventing the perimeter of the village, the beast approached the shack from the other side, to avoid the villagers that were waiting for it. Once near the shack, the fragrant smell of the baby’s fresh blood incited an intolerable bloodlust in the beast and it waited in anticipation of the right moment to strike.

After it made sure that there were no humans nearby, the beast sprang forward in giant leaps and broke into the house through one of the windows. The barricades crumbled like mud cakes under the impact. Isobel screamed in horror as the beast stood blocking the now open window; the door was still locked. Isobel had no escape. Before she could think or scream any further, the beast swiped at her with its claws, tearing her face completely off the skull, revealing the dull yellowish bone underneath. She died instantly, even before she fell to the ground next to the baby. The beast lashed out at the body with its claws, ripping and shredding the skin and muscle. Blood splattered everywhere. The beast lapped up the blood greedily from the face, or rather from where the face had been. It then turned to the baby that lay on the quilt, crying. Bending down, the beast smelled the baby all over, filling its large nostrils with the fragrance of its ‘meal’. Just as it was about to bite into the baby’s flesh, it stopped in mid-motion, hearing sounds outside the shack.

Isobel’s scream had alerted the villagers who came running to the shack. They broke open the door only to find Isobel’s body, torn to pieces. The baby lay crying next to its mother and the beast stood nearby, its face and snout covered in blood. Standing over eight feet tall, the beast’s thin muscular body was covered in pitch black hair; so black that it would blend perfectly into a moonless dark night. Each of its claws was razor sharp and over a couple of inches long. It looked at them with bloodshot eyes, baring its fangs that dripped blood. The villagers stood rooted to the ground, petrified. Alistair who was overcome with grief seeing his wife’s mangled body, turned mad with rage when he realized that the beast was about to kill his child as well. Letting out a bloodcurdling cry, he charged at the beast at full speed with his spear raised firmly. The others recovered from the shock and they too charged the beast that now sprang out of the shack quickly to run to safety.

Calum, bathed in the moonlight, ran through the streets searching for Keith. Hearing all the commotion and Alistair’s shriek that split the night air, he had come out of the shack to find Keith, fearing for his safety as he did not know what was happening outside.  Running fast, he reached the street by the dense vegetation that bordered the village. Soon as he entered the street, he saw a group of villagers running towards him from the other side of the street. He saw a primal rage on their faces that was contorted with gritted teeth. Before he could stop and react, the villagers attacked him with sticks and spears. Heavy blows were dealt to all parts of his body and soon he was down on the ground, bleeding from his snout, ears and the head that had been split by a heavy blow. Even as he felt his life draining out of him slowly, he saw the ecstatic villagers jumping with joy, their spears held high, and crying out in a happiness that almost bordered on insanity,

Hurray, the beast has been killed. We have nothing to fear anymore.

With only a few moments of life left in him, Calum thought about his mother who had sacrificed herself for his sake, thinking that her blood would cure him off his disease of bloodlust. Until her death, to keep her son alive and well, she had fed him with animals that she could manage to lay her hands on without getting caught. He remembered how her eyes had radiated love and warmth even as he sucked her dry. Only two reasons had kept him going despite the extreme guilt that overcame him after her death – the lust for blood which made him want to taste it again and again, and his love for Keith whom he did not want to leave all alone in the world. He felt a pang of sadness as he thought about Keith. With this final thought, Calum gasped out his final breath and died.

Keith sat hunched in the dense overgrowth, tears welling up in his eyes as he watched his friend die. His bloodshot eyes were filled with hatred for all the villagers that were dancing in the street.  It was his grave mistake, he realized, to have turned Calum into what he had become. But he had done it only to cure him off his illness and make him immortal so that they could remain brothers forever. Had he known that such a fate would befall Calum, he would never have turned Calum into someone like him. Now he was all alone in the world once again, and this very thought made him bare his fangs as he looked at all the prey that danced in joy in front of him. Just then, he remembered the baby and the fragrance of its blood, and he licked the blood that still dripped from his snout. There was only one thought running through his mind. Blood had to be spilt once again now. Calum had to be avenged.

Things would soon be normal, he thought, smiling to himself, as he quietly stood up eyeing the villagers.