MYSTERY: Distance Hours - Walking alone: (Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Series ) (ADDITIONAL BOOK INCLUDED ) (Mystery & Suspense, Suspense Thriller Mystery Collection) (3 page)

21/3/2005

Dear diary,

I am sitting in my warm bed in the hotel around the corner of the street with a cup of tea at the side table. I have just eaten a delicious breakfast of bread, butter, scrambled eggs and an orange. My room is small but looks rather roomy because of the use of cool colors for the paint and minimal amount of furniture. There are two windows in this room. One is in front of the bed and the other is westward from the bed. The front window shows the busy streets and the city as the humans have developed it, but a single glance from the other one takes my breath away every single time. From there you can see how God had made the beautiful city, green, blue and golden.  I can see my half-unpacked luggage in the corner beside the cupboard. I never unpack completely because I never know when I would leave my accommodations for the next journey.

I have seen so many places now. I don’t belong to my hometown only, anymore. If I must be compared to a tree than I am this  giant one with the trunk protruding out on the surface, but my roots have spread all over the world. I am a traveler and love what I do. I have witnessed so many cultures and made so many friends but more than the people and their ways, what has inspired me really is the beautiful and varying shades of nature which despite differing so much still shares a commonality. In the versatility, I have experienced the universality.

Yes, I am different from other people around me but no so much. While other people are slaves of money, knowledge and lust, I am a slave of my wanderlust. If I can resist from scoffing at their desires, they should do the same for me. How is it possible that society defines our wishes? I cannot make myself love the things that are desired by a majority only because it is the norm. So I keep moving around the world and even when I am at a place I am also somewhere else too.

This is me and I am comfortable with it.

Love,

Samantha

Xoxo

She was standing on the gallery of an old mansion in front of which were grilled. It was around 1:00 AM and all the valley was engulfed in the darkness. The weather was not in its senses today. The wind was blowing making such strange noises as if it is a wounded animal unwilling to die or ready to kill. There was a thunderstorm and the rain was falling on the wet leaves continuously as if the fire has been opened and there will be no way out for anyone. The light was striking illuminating the dark sky as if it would snatch the light out of one’s eyes. She was wearing a black scarf that covered her face except a slit through which her large green eyes were protruding out.

Perfect weather just according to the forecast, for a change. She thought. This was the only time the weather was supporting her. Otherwise, it had always hindered her in her plans. She knew it was necessary to carry out the business right now. It was now or never. She had never liked her missions very much lately, but this one was interesting. It was last! It was personal!

She could not help but remember the face of her savior. She had always loved how that smiling calm face comes in front of her eyes whenever she was about to set the right what was wrong in this great world. He was handsome, too old for her but still appealing. She would have died that night and if she did survive, she would have been broken and bitter which would be even worse than being dead, but he had calmed her.

She smiled at the thought and checked her pockets for her revolver and her boots for her favorite weapon; knives. She loved knives. It was a host of knives that had attacked her in the valley on that dark night. It is all about sides, she knew. Being on the right side of the weapons makes all the difference. She loved to use what had been used on her.

The lights in the sky were a distraction, but she knew how to distinguish between a real and an artificial light. She recognized the signal; a green light deeper than the shades of her eyes as her cue to come into action. She turned around and checked her image in the puddle of water at her legs; a woman of mid-forties all clad in black stared at her with her sharp green eyes. Are you ready? She asked her and found the willing approval in the image.

*------------------------------*-----------------------------------*---------------------------*

His orders were to shoot at sight, but he had himself to answer to before anyone else. A conscience is a terrible, terrible thing, he realized. So many times he had been told to just follow the orders, but it did not work for him. He just couldn’t bring himself to shoot people. It was his preference was to catch them. Sometimes, it frustrated him. Why can’t I just let it go and make life simple for me?

Today, his task was even more peculiar than usual. This time it was a woman, a young woman of 25 who he needed to kill at the spot. She was supposed to be very dangerous. Actually he had been looking for her for a while and though he is sure he had encountered her a few times but did not dare touch her or even confront her at those occasions because he was never sure it was her.

She was reported to roam around in different disguises and he had suspected about three women to be the criminal. This time it was confirmed that she will attack this place. He was not sure if he even wanted to stop her. He had been posted here to protect a famous social worker. Until recently, I had respected him a lot too. Although some of his ideas were different from what he had believed but he did not dislike him, but his posting here has shown him the real face of this man who was considered as an icon of love, peace, and mercy among the people. This man was corrupt and lived off the money of innocent people, but there was no evidence against him because he was protected by the government.

It was strange for him to feel for a nation that was foreign to him. His stay here was only for the purpose of catching the woman who has been involved in killings all around the world because she was reported to be a citizen of his own great country, the Great Britain. The people here was so different than his own people, but it was okay for him to adjust as he had been trained for this.

He was Augustus Hemsworth, the most adept undercover officer to be found in the whole wide world. He had been responsible for the catching of a variety of criminals from different countries. This woman had been a particularly difficult case for him, though. He understood her psychology enough to know that all her victims had been hypocrites. The kind of people praised by the world but in reality were monsters were mostly her targets. He saw that green light in the sky as well, illuminating it which could have easily passed to be a stroke of lightning. He knew it was the cue and alerted his team as well.

He did not start the alarm though which would have alerted everyone, including the killer as well. His team members knew what to do and he himself went straight for the bed chambers of the target. He crossed the threshold of the house and started moving towards the central part of the house. He reached a portion where four pillars were attached and in their center was a garden in which white roses were planted. He spotted the staircase moving from the center of the garden and started climbing them. It led him to a corridor at the end of which was the bedroom. He tiptoed towards it, careful not to make a single sound. The door was not locked and he entered the room. There was nobody inside and the social reformer was soundly sleeping in his bed. The tightened muscles in his body relaxed and he decided to return but then thought better of it. He sheathed his revolver and marched forward to examine the sleeping figure when suddenly he heard a small sound that came within the room as if someone had tried to move. He went towards it and found an open window, but nobody was around. As he was about to return, he saw a black cloth at the railing of the window and went to examine it. As he looked out of the window, he found the figure of a woman dangling from it through that piece of cloth he immediately grabbed it. Nothing of her face was visible but as he clutched the cloth, her eyes widened and she tried to jerk away the cloth, but he did not let go. She tried to tear it as he tried to reel he in through it, but the cloth came out in his hands revealing only her eyes as she fell down from the window. 

He gasped as he saw those deep green eyes and alerted a member of his squad to find her. He was sure that she would not have survived the fall. He went to check on the old guy sleeping in his bed and found him dead as he had expected. Unlike her other victims, this one was not killed brutally. A glass of milk was set on the bedside table and Augustus suspected that t was poisoned.

He explained the situation to his chief on the phone and went to see the dead body. What he found was beyond amazing, the woman had not only survived but had also disappeared.

He felt dismayed, dejected and suddenly he felt an emotion he had not felt for a while; hateful anger!

15/04/2005

Dear diary,

Today I had a close shave. I went to this enigmatic museum today. It was a dark mansion, a very famous place and a reason for tourist attraction for this city. I had heard a lot about it and felt stimulated to visit it. It is beautiful, no doubt but I spotted someone familiar there, my crush from school, you know. I could not bear to think what he would say if he recognized me. I knew I would be embarrassed. It was a rather funny story. At the school, I had a great crush on this guy and my oaf of a friend told everyone about it and he heard it too, of course. Oh my, God, I had to beg my mother to have my school changed to save me from painful life it would have followed. My mother had to leave that place as she had lost that job and my Uncle had called her to live with her so it turned out to be ok. I was shocked to see him today. He had grown to be even more handsome than what he was back at school. I knew he would hate me and will never approve my way of life but who needs his nods, it is my life and I have the right to live it the way I want it to.

Anyways, forget the stupid conversation, I have something important to write. I am feeling rather lonely these days. It is rather strange, but I have a recent itch to go visit my mother, but it would be so awkward. I don’t know where this thought is coming from. It must be that Mrs. Madeline. She looks so much like mother and always talking about her daughter, she reminds me of the mother. I guess I should just let the feeling die on its own.

I will one day tell you all about my childhood and you will know the real me. My struggles, desires, hopes, and dreams. Why some other day, though? Let me just write it for you now.

I was brought up in the small town by my mother who was a single parent. My father had died in a road accident which was a hit and run scenario. I went to school and my mother had some friends and then there were some neighbors, but I never felt comfortable around people. It drove me nuts to be with them for long.

It was a few years later that nature took its course and I found a way out.

It was in my teenage years that the fantasy had taken shape in my mind. I had read an article somewhere that triggered my imagination. It remained a fantasy for many years until the cutting of the same article presented itself to me while I was sorting out my books.

I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom, carefully making piles of books and papers and stuffing them into appropriate cardboard boxes when a paper clipping suddenly fell from my old textbook of biology. I was about to throw it away without a second glance like I had thrown many other such papers but then decided to have a look at it.

It is human nature to get nostalgic, people like to revisit their past. The things a person does in younger years always stay somewhere in the hearts of the emotional people and in the brains of the skeptics.

I opened the twice folded paper. It was all yellowed and there was a red stain on it, of strawberry or blood I couldn’t remember. Somehow, after all those years, I could still recall the memory attached to this piece of paper. I read: 

“The idea of a home is very diverse. It will be different for different people at different times. I am not sure what home really is. I think if you are comfortable at a place then that should be a home for you. Now you may be comfortable at a place at one time and not at the other times. Home is a dynamic concept in my opinion.  Most people are comfortable with their families and so the idea of a home means where your family is. Although, there would be people who will only be comfortable when they are alone and still others who are not comfortable even in their own skin. Often people feel comfortable while reading a book or playing a game or some other such thing. It doesn’t mean that a book is a home for everybody who enjoys reading.  For some people, it would be just a hobby or a stimulant or it may play the role of a tranquilizer but it’s not their comfort zone. While for others it would be a way of life. A person can have multiple comfort zones and hence multiple homes.

It is a usual understanding that nomads have no home but actually they have multiple homes. Their way of life is comfortable to them and that is their idea of a home..........”

I had stopped at this point and suddenly I realized it; the significance of this paper. The article I probably never finished reading but the article that made me dream and also made me a part of the only row of my life.

I had known that then was not the time. I was too young and stupid.  The idea had seemed only an illusion then, even to my stubborn, determined self.  But not now! ‘This’ I had thought with a joy in my heart, “is the time; the right time”

Every fiber of my body had become active and thrilled. My whole being wanted what my heart had devised and my brain approved too. The best desires are those which insinuate tranquility and unity; the desires which do not cause conflicts. Six years ago, there was a lot of struggle going on inside me. Only my heart had spoken then, but now there was no battle to be fought. I had a perfect desire.

To look back at that time, I feel amazed. I still can’t believe that I had taken the great step of living my life the way I had desired. Not caring for anybody else for once. I was 20 when I had left home. It is seven years now and there was no looking back.

Love,

Sam

xoxo