No Way To Escape | Novel

CHAPTER 26: A NASTY MORNING

The sinister has begun... Not now Liam. There's enough time for us to spend... You're going to be the next... It's you now. It's your turn!... There's No Way to Escape! --

I woke up from my slumber gasping with exasperation with all those words juddering around in my mind. I groaned a bit in a fit of shoving those phrases away and then got up from my bed. It was a bright weather with the sun shining brilliant in the vast sky as if it were the conqueror of the universe who had just claimed the authority over his throne after dethroning all his counterparts. As a habit, I picked up my phone to check if any messages had come. Expectantly, there were not much though.

Bob had texted me that his father was going to sell his age-old property because of certain legal issues. My colleague Alex was planning to go on a trip to Boston next Tuesday and at last -- My Boss! He wanted me to prepare drafts on the Trench club. He had moreover stated about his dissatisfaction over the ruining of files and wanted me to prepare them again as soon as possible.

'Fuck you!', I exclaimed with a grimace and banged my phone onto the bed, rubbing my palms across my face in frustration. Then I walked across the bedroom to reach the washroom and then picking up my brush and applying my favorite clove-flavored paste over it, I started brushing my teeth.

Having brushed my teeth, I proceeded to the kitchen to have some slices of bread with peanut butter. It was almost my daily choice for breakfast and I loved to have them. But that morning I didn't know something strange was just going to happen.

As I reached the kitchen, I arranged the plates and spoons in haste as I knew I had to get to my office early that day. After making the arrangements I trotted to the refrigerator but when I opened it I startled in shock. Supreme terror ran across my body when I saw that all the vegetables in my refrigerator had rotten and an awful smell ran out into the kitchen as I opened the door.

But the reason for my terror was not that. It was the lone cabbage which was placed at the centre of the uppermost tier of my cooling machine. It was burning.

'Holy Shit!!'

First of all I removed the plug in hurry and then I flunged myself to the dining table and got the water jug. Then running back to the refrigerator, I threw the water onto that now-blackened and destroyed cabbage, burning with a diminished, not-much-harmful flame. Thankfully, the fire was put out in time.

Then I threw the jug down on the floor and lunged myself forward to collect the vegetables and started flinging them out of the refrigerator one by one. All had been rotten. Even the fresh ones bought the previous day. Then I got the cabbage. It was looking like a small black football of a two-year toddler. I put it down on the floor with a frown.

At last scratching my forehead in disbelief and bewilderment, I laid my hand back into the fridge to get the bread packet. And alas! They weren't rotten, but all of those had been half-eaten.

Removing the packet, what I saw baffled me. All the breads were exactly half-eaten and were reddened at the edges. Having a closer look at the slices made me realize that the red marks were nothing but blood.

I shrieked and backed away in fright throwing the packet and the half-eaten bread pieces away. It appeared as if I could sense them glaring at me with all their anger mustered up, red as never before. The eaten-over part of the bread -- as if it was grinning at me.

I scurried out of the kitchen, grasping my head in anguish.

No! It can't be possible. It can't --

It was just when I noticed a stinky smell, a smell which was just difficult to bear. It was also a rotting smell -- but not of a vegetable or any other eatable. It was the smell of a decomposing matter -- body matter; that too not few, but many. Covering my nose with a hanky, I started searching for the source. It was coming from the utility room. I followed the smell, making a stinky face at the same time, almost on the verge of spewing. On reaching the utility room, I opened the door. It swayed open with its characteristic faint creaking sound.

'Oh My God!!', I screamed and could not handle my spew anymore. About 20 mice lay there in the room, dead and with their neck and head in the opposite direction and their eyes goggling up at me. A dozen of them lay their outstretched. The scene filled me with extreme horror.

I backed away, retched and ran to the washroom to continue my spell of throwing up. I called on Blake immediately to get all the carcasses cleaned as soon as possible. Before he arrived at my flat, I walked up to the utility again, trying to hold on to all my sanity at that very moment. The mice lay there as still as they had been for some hours, or atleast for the time I had seen them like that. The smell was getting more and more unbearable and I had to get out of my house and wait for all the mess to be disposed off.