Days later, they sat at a crumbling dhaba beside a dusty highway with the sound of steel plates clattering and oil sizzling as a lullaby. She held a glass of chai in her hand; the trembling hand was eager to clutch the glass, resting her gaze on his bloodied hands on the table. He leaned forward, his voice flowing like a velvet storm.
"Casstte, dear", said he, "like Asctoics, love is in a battlefield, and I am the soldier. I'd drain the earth dry if that would bring a smile on your face."
"Why so much blood?" His voice, touched with some pain, went from the corner of her mouth, eyes locked onto him, searching for an answer.
He took her hand. Warm, though stained with gore, rough calluses brushed against her soft skin. "Because every drop is a vow, meri casstte. He was your shield, but shields rust—they break. I shattered him so you would never feel his weight again."
That night, her cousin came visiting- a veritable giant with a lathi, accompanied by a sneer, his shadow interminably dragging along in the dhaba's dim light. The psychopath saw the chains in his eyes, having the intent to drag her back to a life of suffocation. He enticed the man away to an abandoned godown nearby, shrouded in dust and decay, with walls steeped in unwritten times. The lathi clattered as he slid a rusted iron rod through his cousin's throat, blood arching out like hydrangeas open under rain, splattering the walls in torrents like monsoon rain. The man gargled, grasping at the air, but the psychopath yanked the rod free and brought it down, crushing the skull into a pulp—bone fragments and brain matter flew about like confetti. With a cleaver in his hand, he hacked the body apart, every cut leaving behind a soggy, fleshy sound, the limbs all tumbling down like timber, pooling blood across the cracked concrete. "You dared to bind her," he snarled and kicked the torso until the ribs splintered like twigs. "She's my casstte, my sky—I slaughter a thousand to see her soar."
He returned to the dhaba, kneeling in lubbering gore that ascended to his boots, now heaving with breathlessness. She touched his blood-stained face and whispered, "You, a beast."
"And you, my heart, meri casstte," said he, kissing her trembling fingers, placing crimson smudges. "He chased to curse your soul—I drenched him, so you breathe free."
Tears spilled from her eyes, as he wiped them away, staining her cheeks in red. "Blood would dry sometimes, but I'd paint the world in it for you," he whispered, with his eyes burning with love teetering into insanity. She did not pull away, but her silence anchored heavy-laden fear, awe, or something far deeper? Outside, the wind sang a faint sound, a motorbike's roar drawing closer.