The Coffin

A man was creeping slowly towards her bed. She was awake, yet unable to move. The face of the man was blurred but as he drew nearer and nearer she could see his facial features unfold neatly in front of her. Her blood turned to ice. He was the convict who was executed few days ago. “He’s dead, how come he’s here?” She wondered. The man was heading towards her. Loud footsteps followed his stride. There was an evil laugh playing on his face. “I said I’d come back for you didn’t I?“, he growled. “Just because you took away my life, you thought you won?. I’m back to get my revenge!“. The man drew very close and gripped her neck and tightened it. She was suffocating and her breath was failing. His horror laugh was ringing in her ears. She battled against the rouge as much as she could.

Rita woke up gasping for breath. Yes, it was all a dream, but it had felt so real. She let out a sign of relief. She was drenched with sweat from head to toe. Sunlight was peeping amidst the gaps between her curtains. She got up and drew the curtains and opened the window. A gentle wind was rustling the leaves and birds were flying hither and thither looking for food. She felt better in the embrace of sunlight and regained her confidence. Feeling more like herself, she went to freshen up and shower. An hour later Rita emerged from the bathroom. Her pet dog Irish sat wagging it’s tail. “You need a bath too, don’t you?” Rita said affectionately and returned to the bathroom to give her pet a bath. Then she went outside, her potted flower plants looked a little wilted. So, she watered them all, humming a song she had heard recently. Her stomach gave a loud rumble. Feeling hungry she walked past her flower plants into the house. In half an hour she had made herself some bread toast for breakfast. She was setting the table when her phone started ringing. It was her fiancé, calling from abroad. She answered the call and started eating. They went on about the usual hustle and then he asked, “madam, no any new cases yet?, my moon’s face looks dim”, and she went on like, ” yeah Akash, see will you, I’m eagerly waiting for a new one”. Then they went on a bit and the phone call ended.

Arya was a girl in her late teens. A well-built, good-looking girl. She was sleeping peacefully on bed, cradled by the golden rays of the sun. She opened her eyes, stretched and yawned. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was disheveled and her curls were sticking up at odd ends. She had to get ready to go school. So, she entered the bathroom to brush, freshen up and to get changed. She had finished dressing and was putting on her shoes when her mom called, “Arya dear, it’s time to have breakfast”. She went to the kitchen gobbled up some food and ran out saying, “Already late for school mom, bye!”. She reached school seconds before the bell. The school time passed in a blink and the school was over. She gave a parting wave to her friends and took the usual route to get home. As she was walking by the Morrison’s Lane, she saw a fresh toffee lying on the ground. A close peep at it told her that it was her favorite toffee ‘fruity’, the one that she usually buys. She bent down and picked it up. As she was concentrating on the toffee, she was dimly aware of a creepy shadow advancing towards her. When she felt someone’s presence behind her, it was too late. The man behind her, gripped her tightly and injected something in her neck, which, instantly, made her dizzy. The toffee, still concealed inside its wrapper fell to the ground. The man led her to the middle of the road, she had no strength left to fight back but she had strength enough to prevent herself from falling. As she was standing and stumbling in the middle of the road, she could hear and also see a blurred image of a car speeding towards her.

“Accident in Morrison Lane, teenage girl found dead on the spot!. I repeat, accident in Morrison Lane, teenage girl found dead on the spot!” the pager buzzed in the CBI office. Rita, along with the other officers, was speeding towards the accident scene. The police had already cordoned off the accident area to the public. Rita went near the girl’s body by lowering the police tape and crossing over it. It seemed that the girl was knocked off in one hit. She bent down to check for pulse, but there wasn’t one. The girl was clearly dead. She got up, started walking around the body studying it thoroughly. The girl’s face had been smashed such that even her identity couldn’t be recognized. Even Rita, who had always been a woman of iron, now stood shattered unable to look at the girl’s face. She asked an officer to cover the face. The body, apart from the head, didn’t bear much severe injuries. The were only few bruises. Rita was having a small gut feeling that this might be an intentional murder rather than an accident. There were no tire marks to be seen. She looked at the nearby by surrounding. Nothing suspicious. The was a heap of litter nearby, she went near it. Everything was as usual. She was about to turn back when a fresh toffee wrapper caught her attention. It looked as if, it still had the toffee inside. Rita went near and picked it up. Yes, it did contain the toffee inside. Who in their right mind would throw an unopened good toffee away? Rita thought. Just then her assistant came running to her, “Madam, an urgent call for you”. Upon answering the call she got told that the one who caused the accident had surrendered at the office. This drew all the news about the toffee away from Rita’s mind. She unknowingly pocketed the toffee and said the officers. Send the body right away to the hospital to get the medical record. On her way back to the jeep she spotted a CCTV. She asked her assistant to collect all the nearby cameras CCTV footages and meet her in her office. “ Yes madam!” mouthed the assistant and drifted away.

Rita got on the jeep and sped towards the office. She got stuck in the traffic jam. She sounded her horn impatiently and somehow reached the office after a few minutes. She asked an officer to bring the person in and went straight to her desk. When the assistant turned up, he was with a minor!. A teenage boy stood beside him. Rita couldn’t believe her eyes. Those brutal injuries, caused by this boy!?. Hiding her surprise Rita asked, “ So, you intentionally killed her right? Why?”. The boy went on saying that he had been proposing her for a long time and she always kept ignoring him and that he recently saw her with another boy. It had broken his heart so that today he had gone to her, spoken about it, it had turned into an argument which finally ended in him killing her. The boy was saying this without even a glint of fear on his eyes. It felt like he had practised it and now telling it like a story taken out from a novel. “Where were you all this time?” Rita questioned him. He went on saying “I didn’t mean to kill her, the argument heated up and I did it without my consciousness, after realizing what I’ve done, I couldn’t bear it and thought of committing suicide. Then I thought of surrendering and I came here”. Right then her assistant came with the CCTV footages, and Rita asked the officers to guard the boy and went to have a look at the footages. “Unfortunately madam, these cameras couldn’t capture the exact spot where the accident took place, but they have captured the girl walking back home”. Rita motioned her officer to become silent and asked him to play the footages. Yes, in the footages she could see Arya walking along the road, the after few minutes the boy went past on a motorbike. “Could a motorbike cause this much of injury?”, thought Rita. But as the evidence was solid, that the camera hadn’t captured anyone except those two going in that direction at that time, Rita dismissed her thought. Rita went back to her office, “currently we have a solid evidence that he’s the one that caused the accident, but still we have to wait for the medical report, so, till then, lock him up inside”, she said to the officers. Then, after they left, another officer came in saying that the girl’s name was Arya and she was a Christian girl. They had found her student card inside her school bag and had informed her parents. “Okay, you may go”, said Rita, she didn’t give much attention to the victim’s details as the culprit was already in their custody. She called to inquire about the medical report and was told that it would take at least an hour to produce it. So, feeling hungry she went out to have lunch.

She was chatting with her assistant while she was having lunch. “The case got solved so quickly, that rascal, look at his size and the brutality of the injuries caused by him madam, nowadays we can trust anyone, not even these minor boys”, commented the assistant. Rita too acknowledged with a subtle nod. In a matter of minutes she had finished eating and had started washing her hands when her mobile started ringing. She answered it, “Madam, the medical report is ready, shall I send it to the office?”, asked the doctor at the other end. “Yes doctor, send it to the office now, I’ll too get going”, said Rita and resumed her commute to the office. Upon reaching the office she saw the doctor standing with the report. She called him inside and went into her office. The doctor followed her and handed over the report. “Were there any suspicious chemicals or anything in the body apart from the injuries caused by getting hit doctor?”, inquired Rita. “No madam, she had suffered a heavy blow on the lower part of her brain, the cerebellum, which had induced leaking of cerebrospinal fluid, causing death. No other materials found in the body madam”, replied the doctor. “So her death is solely because of getting knocked down by the motorbike”. “Yes madam, we handed over the body to the parents, they were very heartbroken after looking at their daughter’s face, even my eyes welled up with tears when I heard them wail, hugging their daughter’s body. I got to know that they are going to bury the body within the next few hours. Her parents can’t bring themselves to look at her face in that state. She’s their only child it seems”, said the doctor and left shortly.

Next day, the boy was escorted to the court by law enforcement officers. They produced the CCTV footage and the medical record of the girl’s body as evidence before the judge. After going through all of those, as there was strong evidence against the boy, mainly due to the CCTV footage, the judge announced a one-year sentence in juvenile detention, his voice echoing through the courtroom like a final verdict on a broken childhood. Thus, the case was closed and the boy was sent to the juvenile detention center.