Reading - Part 2
The old man was holding the lantern, just standing behind me. He touched my left shoulder. His hand was quite shaggy. I could feel his thorny palm on the skin of my shoulder. It was obvious as to seeing him working hard for years in this cemetery. When I turned back, I randomly made an ugly grimace after he spit out. How could he be so nasty acting like some nerd?
“I'll teach you how to use the book of exorcism”, he shrugged.
First, he offered a rotten banana that I refused to eat because of the long black spots on its peel. I could not trust him and dubious to me. Loud cries and voices raced my mind feeling anxiety. I was doomed to nexus my ears to the rhythm of voices even panicking the walls of the cottage; lost an appetite, and skated to the cave for the innocent souls. They were crying – ‘leave us, don’t eat us.’ The old man was not there. Perhaps, he went to the room. I kept positioning my stare on one hand. My leather boot soles were warm and melting. I stepped aside and saw a mere reflection of an old man playing with a knife in the mirror. His walk resembled a jungle animal ramped on to hunt. I closed my eyes. My assumption cleared me to have been stabbed. I risked my life for the sake of my father’s escape training. I stood in the same place for five minutes and slowly opened my eyes to notice what he was doing. He was cutting something under the silver paper. I didn’t know what he was exactly working on having a sharp long knife similar to the knife of a killer. All I could see was a heavy material wrapped in silver paper. A white stuff, I supposed. I felt tickled eying his right elbow lifting forty kilograms of red meat. He took the meat to a small kitchen for cooking. I was sure he would convince me to eat, but I had been swallowing vegan since childhood and my guardians taught me not to taste animal meat. Before he pampered his feet to the kitchen I pressed my backbone suffering from chronic pain and sat on a ghostly chair. The time he moved to the kitchen, the round plate of meat fell from his hands. My teeth clenched. I stood up to help giving him the meat plate on his hands. My hunger led me to ask him when would he come out of the kitchen. I wanted to go home eating raw vegetables. It might be worthless to call him a man of knowledge in the concept of exorcism. I had to get back, so I kneeled in wait for him jaunting out from the dusty kitchen. I could smell the food he had been cooking since morning. The invisible smell of delicious food shelving through my nose holes. Suddenly, it was peace all around. My mouth was all wet, but what worth I would do to have vegetarian food here? He was noisy in the kitchen preparing meat to serve himself and his black shepherd dog. Nothing vegan there to cook. If he had I could have cooked for me. The dog was cleaning the nose with the sticky tongue. What if he would have sat next to my chair, I imagined for a minute. The dog could have bitten me off. Moreover, he was stout in size.
“The old man left himself busy with other things”, I thought.
The dog once more rubbed the tongue on both claws and was in the proper mood to eat at least two kilograms of meat. This took one another hour to view him getting out. It was like water rinsing from clothes. I clicked the left-hand finger on my chin; having an idea to root out broccoli from a nearby farm. The old man said it is time-consuming to scissor broccoli at someone’s farm. A thing he uttered disgraced his image in my mind.
“The meat I’m going to taste was once a healthy man”, he told me.
I didn’t believe - he was a cannibal. He must not have confessed to God for being so merciless and eating human flesh. I should’ve slapped him right there. The other thing he murmured was he had been enjoying cannibalism from the day he joined undertaking the corpses. The dog snatched the human skeleton from the old man’s hands. My body shivered. The dog ate three kilograms of human meat in five minutes. The lunatic mindset of the old man left me wordless. What could I have defined him?
I regretted, how I ate my words by calling him a ruthless man. He deserved an execution in public. What was the fault of people dying every day by the devil’s curse? The old man took no responsibility for this. I punched on the table which shook him.
“I’d never seen a human as mad as him, eating human meat.”
The cries from the cave seemed like someone throwing stones at my ears. All those pathetic souls had to be freed, otherwise, more people were to die and gifting their souls to the devil galloping them as soft bread. One day I was to face the devil. Right from the age of ten, I was mindful of ending the devil for the social welfare of people under the control of supernatural powers.
“Jesus, bless our people and tear apart the negative energies that had been destroying the masses”, I prayed.
I wanted to leave this place where I was suffocating and breathless smelling the dead humans stored in the kitchen including number of skeletons gathered on a table. My nerves moved and anxiety increased to see human bones kept in a rack. This showed him as a villain who dramatized burying people in pits and once the funeral process finished, they were taken out to become part of the old man’s kitchen recipe. What a business he ran to fill the hunger. I found no reckless man in his comparison.
The tiny drops of mucus spread on my handkerchief the time I sneezed. He could have been hungry for days. His robe pocket was shining; the possibility of a ball inside. A round ball made of real diamond. My legs curling up and exhaustive. I felt as if I was crumbling left to the right. A piece of meat he gripped on his fingertips, said to me sit and take a ride. He was experiencing the other world, not sure. All of a sudden, I sweated. The heat of that cave was warming the cottage. I didn’t understand why was he living with the devil. At least I had known, he was janitor to the devil, providing him the souls. He gave me a bottle to look into. Souls were crying out having been captivated in a bottle with magic and spells. The skin of my face reddened to anger out on him. He stopped the path of souls flying to heaven and forced them to face the cruelties of the devil. I was frustrated thinking how God would justify such souls and punish the devil for sins he had been committing for centuries. The dog came to me with the skeleton fixed in the jaw of sharp long teeth. He placed it on my feet and walked back with strong and muscled legs.
“Why I didn’t die watching this all?”
The old man’s black shoes made crunchy sounds withering and a finger in his hand cranked me. Before he told me to put the finger in my mouth, I left the cottage.
The fastened souls warned me not to visit here the next time because the devil was far more terrible. Walking lamely to the home, I was reminded of ‘the book of exorcism’ given in the hands of an old man. He might misuse the script handwritten in this or he thought to hide the book somewhere. I had bogged my people in danger. Now, the book was in the wrong hands. The souls will never forgive me for this blunder. No vegetables were in the kitchen. I had a beer that night and hit the bed to dream of the souls jerking to have told me a secret last night.