The Bystander (part-2)

(contd from previous blog)

Tina looked up and realized that the man who handed her the cell phone had left the room. She was terrified. She picked up the landline to call for the police. The landline was dead. Gathering some courage she rushed towards the backyard of the Chemistry building to see Maria.

The corridor was always filled with students. This was the first time Tina was alone there. The bats hanging on the arches frightened her. The only thought in Tina’s mind was that would it be safe for her to go there alone. Should she just leave for home? After much contemplation she decided to go because she simply couldn’t let a dead body rot in the backyard of the college. Also, she’d seen in the video that the three men had left the place.

She reached the backyard. There wasn’t a sign of Maria. She looked around and found nothing. At a distance she saw a man walking towards her. He was holding the same machete she saw in the video. She panicked and turned back to run towards the main gate. Her hands were firmly caught by two hands which appeared mysteriously from the dark. The machete man came closer. He had blood smeared on his face. He closed his eyes and pointed his knife towards the moon covered behind the clouds, and shouted a staccato of words in a language she failed to recognize. Tina hysterically screamed for help.

From a corner of her eye she saw that a man was walking towards her. He’d worn a hat and a tattered blazer. She recognized him. He was the man she met in her office. He stopped at a safe distance from her and he removed his cell phone from his breast pocket. And he stood there recording everything using the camera of his cell phone.

She helplessly looked towards him and pleaded to help her from this insanity. She felt a strike on her neck. She could hear her voice dying out. She looked down and saw streams of blood violently oozing out of her arteries. She could feel the entire world blackening in front of her eyes. Her white kurta was now blood-red. The last thing she saw from her peripheral vision was the man was still standing there recording every second of the insaneness with his camera.
A minute later her mind dived in blackness.



This year’s winter isn’t as cold as last year’s. And everybody has left Wilson College for their Christmas vacations, except Miss Snehul, from the Physics department, who is still waiting in her office for her student to return to collect his lost cell phone. And a person wearing a hat and a tatty linen blazer enters her office…