The ruined temple in the hills, its idols shattered and mute, creepers fused around the stone. Of skulls he made an altar, her enemies all, each corpse a hymn to her, and the air was heavy with the sickly and pungent smell of decay mixed with incense.
First, the landlord, that filthy arrogant swine who castrated his hands over her in the haveli. A psychopath cornered him inside his lavish chambers, the silk curtains moving with the rhythm of that man smashing the stone lingam over the man. His skull caved in with that watery-sounding sickening crunch as blood and brains oozed out like spilled curry at the feet of Shiva. He stomped on the corpse with ribs snapping like twigs and the flesh pulping under his boots until he had created a red mire. "You lusted after her," he hissed, spitting on the ruin. "She's my casstte, my light—your filth dies with you."
Then there was an old scheming friend of hers from whom she could ever expect a sharper dagger with whose tip the enemy could wound her. He dragged her to the dark shadows of the temple and slashed her throat with a glass piece from an old lamp. Blood poured out rhythmically in spurts while her head lolled down low: on the shinstone where gushing blood newly soaked into a dark sheen. He ripped open her chest with crackling of ribs as if dry wood and garabage organs shining dimly in the shadow of closed-off light while he jerked them free. "You poisoned her heart," he said in his voice softh and sweet like a lover's song. "I silenced you for my casstte's peace."
And then fellow suitor, a coward who had the audacity to dream about her, ended his life by hanging him on altar with rusted nails-through his chest, thrown wide open with bare hands, ribs cracking with brittle snaps, blood flying like rain across the cracked idols. He ripped the heart free, still beating faintly, and held it up, warm and slick in his grip. "This is yours, casstte," he said, his eyes burning with a fevered glow. "No one else can claim it."
She walked in closer, brushing her saree across the gore, her breath shallow. "You're crazy," she said, awe and sorrow thick in her voice.
"Insane for you, casstte," he said, kneeling before her, blood dripping from his hands onto her feet. "I'd kill until the earth bleeds dry, just to see you whole."
"They were my shadows," she cried, tears falling beneath the shards of light like jewels.
"And I am your sun," he swore, kissing her feet and leaving red marks on her skin. "I burned them away for you." There was a crackle in the bushes outside: someone, or something, was near.