Chapter 23: The End
"I don't know what to believe or who to trust anymore." Khushi rubbed her forehead. She felt every bit exhausted as she felt. It had been eight months since she had been institutionalized and everything she was experiencing had only muddled her mind even further.
"I am not sure why you asked me to meet you Ms. Gupta," Shukla said leaning back in his chair sans uniform. It had come as a surprise when he received a call from his boss that Khushi Gupta, the only surviving victim of the Punisher wanted to talk to him.
Khushi chuckled humorlessly. "Any other time I would have asked you to call me Khushi. But I have heard the name here being modulated in different way meaning different things and it is the last thing I am expecting - Khushi, I mean." There was a fixed time for visitation but since this was government business, the rules were flexed.
Shukla looked at her pity lacing his gaze. He had seen her before and even in dearth of situation she hadn't looked this - distraught.
"Are you planning on confessing the murder of your sister?" He asked anyway.
"It seems like quite a good idea, now I think about it." She replied carelessly.
Shukla looked momentarily stunned. "Are you serious?" He repeated.
She shrugged. "I don't see why not?" The ease in her voice didn't reflect the tiredness on her face. Shukla didn't like the way this meeting was preceding in the way Khushi was being evasive and seemed like she was - done.
"It's better to be living in a prison where I will be abused and beaten than living here in so called safe comfort." She shook her head vigorously. "It is folly to think that one can remain sane amidst insanity because after a while the mind cheats its host by seeing sane pattern amongst insanity. And there is a moment when the mind teeters dangerously close to lose all its power on reality. Do you know what makes the mind to finally take that leap?" She asked looking at the ACP.
Shukla could only shake his head. He was a little scared of opening his mouth at the moment.
"Of course you don't." She laughed. "Mind questions if everything that was seen, heard and felt till that moment was even real. A small seed of doubt gets planted and it grows, spawns across and questions everything you have come to believe as true. It's the worse place to be. That's when you know, you are going insane." She explained her thought process.
"Are you going insane?" He asked, startled at her admission or confession or whatever the hell that was.
Khushi didn't answer immediately. She placed her elbow on the table and rested her chin on the upward facing palm. "Dr. Akash Sampat, renowned psychiatrist kills a man who he presumed to have killed his family and fakes becoming insane. Arnav Raizada, a narcissistic megalomaniac sociopath who takes pleasure in pushing people over the edge and watch if they fall or manage to step back, has a strange obsession with me. Payal, subjected to extreme emotional abuse, hacked her entire family in one moment of intense rage now displays battered wife syndrome with extreme suicidal tendency. Dr. Shyam Jha, still reeling from his wife's death blames Akash for an unavoidable accident and continues to treat his patients, with his dead wife very much next to him and a part of his normal life. Dr. Malvika, who oversees this hospital has a track record of using patients for abnormal experimentation with a dozen of her patients gone missing in the past. I happen to associate more than half of the Punisher's known victims' to mine and/or Tara's life. All these people, Shukla, are somehow related to either me or Tara. Don't you find it strange?" She finished and looked at him expectantly.
"Ms. Gupta, I have no idea what you are on about." Shukla adjusted his collar and scratched his neck. His confusion was evident on his face while a small pulse throbbed near his forehead.
Khushi laughed. "And then there is, you."
"Why did you ask for me Ms. Gupta?" Shukla asked weary of her cryptic words.
"I asked for you to come because I wanted to tell you a story, a very nice story actually." She said leaning forward. Shukla stared at her eyes which dangerously glinted.
"It all started when Dr. Akash Sampat idiotically asked me to help him pull some files from Dr. Shyam Jha's house." Her grin was feral. Shukla maintained composure and didn't respond.
"Really, he should have been more careful when dealing with me. Haven't you warned him against what I am capable of ACP Shukla?"
"I don't see why you think that Akash and I be discussing you. He is still on the lookout for his family's killer and we keep in contact for the same reason." Shukla shrugged lazily.
Khushi frowned. "Why do you do that?" She asked.
"Do what?" He asked raising an eyebrow.
"Give more information than necessary. I mean I just hinted at possibility of you and him being in touch on regular basis and you went right ahead and gave me reasoning, justification and actually confirmed my haunch." She grinned suddenly.
Shukla's face didn't betray anything.
She clapped her hand in glee and smiled wanly. "After I finish my story we will go separate ways and no one will ever see me again."
Shukla narrowed his eyes and nodded.Khushi began to recount the events from past month and half.
Once she had finished her story, Shukla knew what Khushi Gupta truly was.
Note: The chapter number isn't a mistake :=)Edited by RockBarbie - 12 years ago
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