Onirique

Annette, that's my name. It's actually a French name which translates to 'gracious' in English. My mother gave me that name.

My mother.

Long, black almost brown under the sun, hair flowing freely into the afternoon sun, is all I remember of my mother or rather it's the only good memory I have of her before she died. Drug overdose was what they whispered to each other when they came to take away her body.

Red dilated pupils, hollow cheekbones, tongue yellowish due to cocaine eruption inside the mouth, blood dripping from the edge of the shattered glass table where her once beautiful face laid after heavily suffering from the self-inflicted blunt force trauma. That's all I could see before they took her dead body away. I was old enough to ask the police to receive the body myself but being at the tender age of 14, I was still considered a minor according to the Indian law. Since my father was absolutely not in the picture, the responsibility of the dead body went to the next of kin, my uncle. But honestly, he was no better an option for he had just turned 18, with a penchant for illegal smuggling. So as luck would have it, I stood beside my dear uncle as he faked his tears and his painful moans for the loss of his beloved sister while pocketing all the consolation money. Occasionally someone would direct their pity towards me, for losing my mother at such a young age but then again no one was willing to take my foster responsibilities so eventually my uncle was the last resort.

I had noticed no one ever mentioned my father but the prospect of being an orphan for the rest of my life on top being poor and undernourished and staying with a self-acclaimed criminal really kept my mind occupied. Soon it was time to go home with my uncle, his one room accommodation in the congested slum area of Mumbai.

I did not fear going to such a place, where the water was polluted enough to appear black and it was almost as if even the air came with a price tag large enough for the people to willingly choose to suffocate themselves. Rather I was scared to leave this place. Ironic, isn't it? It was the same house which took away everything from me, forced me into a world full of unknown without any support or guidance and yet I was scared to leave it. Afterall it was our house, my mother and me, it was where I spent my entire childhood, baked Shor Bhaja for my mother on the weekends and played with abandoned puppies under the broad highway of Dhapa Bypass overlooking hotel JW Marriott when I wasn't washing dishes at the local restaurant. Located in the small but friendly housing area of JBS Haldane Avenue, this tiny one-storey house with dust covered furniture and blackened walls held the memories that I would cherish forever.

It was almost as if yesterday that mother smiled at her food because I made Dimer Dhokar Dalna, or gave me pat on my head when I massaged her forehead skillfully enough to make her fall asleep without having to resort to snorting cocaine, then there was that time when she took out her faded pink and white striped sweater to wear, it was her favorite piece of clothing she told me once without me asking. You see, it was gifted by my father when she was pregnant with me. She never told me about my father, who he was or where he went as if he was someone I didn't need to know about and I never bothered to ask, but sometimes she would tell me something very insignificant about him and I would find myself imagining of how he must have looked like, or how he came to meet my mother or how mother came to like him. And now she's gone along with all those days I spent in her company and I was set to live with a stranger with fake tattoos on his arms and a shallow gaze that convinced people of trouble and to stay out of his business.

"Annette", "Annette", "Annette", the voice kept getting louder.

Mother?

"Annette" followed by huge jerk on my arm and I woke from a seemingly momentary paralysis in broad daylight. It was my uncle.

"Yes"

"Where is your mind? In some other dimension? I was calling you so loudly for the past 2 minutes that it must have woken half of the city by now."

Silence.

"I'm speaking to you, madam. Can you hear me or not?"

Silence again.

It's not like I hate him or he did anything bad to me except giving me couple of glares when any of the visitors tried to put their consolation money in my hands and after they would be gone he would snatch it from my hand as if it was most precious thing in the world and I would lose it. But then again he decided to take me in when no one else would so I guess I could overlook his obvious lust for money. But then there was only so little that you could expect from a girl, when it's not even been a day she lost her mother and was supposed to leave her own home with a stranger in a different corner of the country, except for silence.

"And tears", a voice in my head said. I chose to ignore it.

Suddenly there was a piercing noise in the air followed by a stinging feeling on my cheeks. The taste of copper filled my entire mouth. He slapped me. My uncle who was supposed to care for me after my mother's death slapped me so hard that the inside of my mouth bled.

"Speak when you are spoken to, bitch. You know your mother was a fucking whore. She left me to rot on the streets while she left with that son of a bitch for whom she whored herself out. Well now that the whore herself is gone I have to take care of the shithead she spawned? Why should I? How is it fair that a young man like myself take the responsibility of a mistake that his whore of a sister made?", he said. I noticed his eyes were red, suggesting that he was smoking something weird. I recalled Mother used to smoke it too but she preferred cocaine over all else. It released her from thinking she told me once, when I had looked at her with questioning eyes.

I kept silent and wished that he fell asleep before we had to board the train tomorrow for Mumbai. Suddenly, Uncle came closer to my face and looked into my eyes. I don't know what he saw in them that made him so rageful but he hurried into the toilet though not before spitting on my face. I crouched in one corner of the room while he finished his business in the toilet and got up to drink some water only after he got into his bed.

Maybe it was all that emotional turmoil or the lack of sleep in the last 24 hours or both, that guided me into a heavy sleep and I was fast asleep in just a mater of a few minutes, unknowing of all the things that I was destined to experience or all the dangers that were to come.

There was huge jerk on my back followed by a painful pull on the right side of my head and that was what brought me to the land of the living back from the darkness behind my eyes. Usually the waking up in the morning is not my favourite part of the day. Delicate threads of my own consciousness being intricately woven into the first threads of the living force bringing back the sense of reality in me. But this day was proving to be much worse since now I had to board the train to Mumbai leaving behind my childhood home. The bags were already packed if you could say just one duffel bag full of clothes and possessions of both mine and Uncle could be any difficult to pack. For the last time I looked into the drawers filled with all the drawing I made for my mother. She never looked at them twice or particularly encourage me to make more but her silence made realize that she approved of them, much like the blue blouse I brought for her birthday or the needlework tablecloth I did so that she could put her ashtray or display her favourite pouches of snorting powder.

Uncle had asked me if I wanted to take anything else from the house but I had declined. I thought it would be waste of space and labor to take all those things that had memories related to a person I was never going to meet again. The house was already put on sale so when the new owner comes, he might throw them out because why would anyone want to keep some silly drawings that some bright-eyed daughter made or the shawl she bought in exchange for her only shoes for her mother who left her all alone to fend for herself. I spared one last look at the house and ran behind Uncle to get in the cab.

We boarded the Mumbai Mail from Howrah at quarter past 8. Uncle didn't really speak to me at all but I wasn't exactly upset because all I had to do just follow him. We took our seats when Uncle left for a call. I could barely make out what he was saying but I understood he was having a meeting with someone, judging from the occasional "Saalam Bhayaji" he used to greet whoever was on the other side of the call. I laid back in my seat and waited for the train to depart which it did at exactly half past 8. Uncle sat in front of me and kept texting someone on his phone and occasionally glanced up to look at me. After a long and excruciating ride of almost 40 hours we reached Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus. From there Uncle called a mechanical cab and ten minutes later we reached Mahul, my new residence.

Mahul is one of the most congested slum areas in all of Mumbai city. It was known for its high levels to pollution and very dismal condition of living of its 72 building units of slum resettlement colony. Uncle guided me past the enquiring eyes of his neighbors into his 224 sq. feet unit. It was a basic unit with one bedroom and bunk for a child, one bathroom and the smallest kitchen I've ever seen. The windows were soot covered, the floor was sticky and walls were moss covered. I made a mental note to wash the accumulating dishes in the sink and the blackened bedsheets when the water was available during the day.

"Annette, I will be leaving now. Unpack all your stuff and don't you dare touch any of my money. I will go and receive the body from the terminus." With this and some cash Uncle left. The police were going to transport Mother's dead body here in Mumbai on Uncle's request since he wanted the funeral here. I started with the dishes and then unpacked all my belongings taking extra care not to touch any of the envelopes containing the consolation money. There was nothing of interest in the house to keep me occupied so I went into my bunker cabinet to get some much needed sleep.

I reckon it was really late at night that I woke up from a loud squelching noise. I recognized that it belonged to something sharp tool cutting and piercing into something soft but fibrous, hence the struggling noises. I got up from my bed and pressed my ear on the door separating my eyes from whatever was going in the living space. More cutting noises and struggling groans. Unsatisfied, I mustered up the courage to open the door and see for myself what was going on. What I saw was beyond anything I ever imagined or thought was possible.

Three men. Two dangerously thick men with stout hands and feet and Uncle with a kitchen knife in his hand. One body. Dead body. Hardly recognizable from all that blood sputtering around. Kept beside the body was 8 boxes full of ice. The heart was already cut out and kept inside the first box. The second box had the lungs while the third was supposed to have the kidneys which Uncle was currently in the middle of cutting out from the body. The men were so concentrated in his handiwork that they didn't notice me. Finally, Uncle freed the second kidney from its tissues and kept it with the first one in the third box. Suddenly one of the men moved and hand of the body suffering this torture even after death, came into my clear view. A silver ring with a bow design gleamed back at me in the light of the dimly lit apartment unit. It finally struck me who the body belonged to.

Mother.

Tears fell from my eyes uncontrollably while I gave out a cry of agony and despair and then suddenly darkness embraced me.

I woke up with stinging pain on my skull and piercing pain on my limbs by all the ropes that were used to tie me to the chair. The two men looked at me with disturbance while Uncle looked as if he couldn't care any less. Tears burned my eyes and bile rose in my throat. The excessive need to leave the place replaced all other thoughts.

"We have to kill her. She cannot go to the police. We are already on their radar since August."

"And where are going dispose her at? The municipality is strictly keeping an eye on any disposal into the ocean. The garbage disposal ground is already under Kankasher. And last month, 3 of our men were arrested due to the brawl with his men over the Girishraj petrochemical plot"

"And whose fault is that? I told you that we could kidnap his son to ask for the permit to buy drugs directly from the city border. But you had complicate things by killing his mistress."

"Stop it". Uncle said and came to sit beside me. "She's my niece, she's just new to this but she's smart enough to understand what's good for her." He picked up his knife and started wiping the blood off it.

"You are old enough to understand what's going on and that you shouldn't breathe a word of this to anyone if you value your life, enough to not undergo the same treatment as your mother."

"What are you going to do with the organs? ", I asked.

"Sell it in the black market."

"But she was your sister. How can you do that to your family?"

"Money doesn't seek family or friends. She might have been my sister but she's dead now. She's no longer coming back. But those organs could be sold for very high prices. Greed is a nasty bitch, Annette. It never lets a man be satisfied. But we do what we do to put food in our bellies and money in our pockets." Everyone kept silent for sometime.

"How much for each of them?" Everyone seemed to be surprised by my question and even my uncle stopped wiping the knife and looked in my eyes.

"I told you she was smart, didn't I?" Uncle smiled at the men and gave me pat. He gave me a rough overview of the selling price for each of the organ. The highest selling price was of the brain since neurology was still not quite developed in the area of medicine. The entire sum could get us by for at least 3 months with ease.

"What are you going to do with the body?"

"You can decide that for yourself." The men nodded among themselves when Uncle proposed the idea.

"I want to burn her body for a proper funeral."

"But we cannot take the body to the municipality incinerator."

"Then we'll burn her on the rooftop among the fish scale waste."

Uncle and the men approved and covered the body with paper and put it in a in a cloth bag. Then they released me from the chair and we went to the roof where a few fishermen were making a fire to burn fish scales. Uncle spoke to one them and he allowed us to put the body in the fire in exchange for some cash.

Back in the apartment the men left with the ice boxes while Uncle and I sat to determine the terms of my stay with him.

"You will work at the tea stall at the other side of the street and bring back food distributed at the community center two blocks from the laundromat while returning. You will take care of your own chores. Water comes twice a day at seven. There's no cooking gas so if you forget taking food from the center you will have to stay hungry." I nodded. It was my turn to state terms.

"You will return the silver ring that belonged to my mother. You will always tell me before you bring anyone to the house. And you will get me admitted to a night school." It was Uncle's turn to nod. With this, Uncle left for work while I held the ring in my hands, tight enough to draw blood.

"I will avenge you, Mother."