Dead Man Walking
- a short story
A sound of gunfire in the air, sent the mynahs screeching to other shelters, and the stray dogs took cover. More curious than alarmed, residents of the pocket of houses darted out to check the cause of the ruckus, so early in the morning.
Himmat Singh, the chowkidaar, stood in the wide lane between neat houses with their small patches of tidy lawns, and craned his neck for a better shot. Housewives deserted half-prepared breakfasts for kids and rushed out lest they miss the scene. It is not everyday that the colony heard gun shots.
By the next gunshot there were more than a dozen curious onlookers. Mr. Dixit whose house was the centre of commotion stood outside his iron gate and looked resolutely helpless, his fists tightly held in pockets of his well worn-out trousers. He was quiet gentleman who was determined to have the least interference with matters outside his bank branch, unless they pertained to his little verandah, which they were now.
His wife looked inconsolable and alarmed; she was a rather large boisterous lady with two young kids, who seemed perturbed with the unwarranted attention the unexpected visitor had been causing in her verandah. Her frail mother in law stood obediently away from the couple, clutching the hand of her five year old grandson, who was enjoying the relentless bijju’s antics.
A long black hairy tail, some two feet long, swished outside the bougainvillea creeper against the wall for a fraction of a second. A collective gasp was let out from the crowd, now getting larger with every passing minute.
“It’s the Bijju!”, said Mrs. Dixit for the benefit of the onlookers.
“If the tail is so huge, what must the demon look like?” said another. Some people have eyes for the unseen at all times.
“We must kill it, Himmat Singh, are you any good with that gun of yours?”, said the now impatient Srivastav Aunty, she spat on the ground for additional effect.
Poor Himmat Singh, as experienced with the gun as accountants are with space ships, smiled a sheepish grin.
“It is very clever auntyji, It won’t come out in the open or I would shoot its brain out.”
For Auntyji, in this case Srivastav aunty, Himmat Singh’s universal term of endearment failed to evoke any sympathy.
“You are a good for nothing shooter, Himmat Singh, you cannot even bring down a sitting duck with that godforsaken rifle, Lookout…here it is again!”
The ‘Bijju’ in question made for a spot higher up the creeper, it had calculated the move, going up and down several times in his nocturnal outings. Another sigh from the crowd as the black hairy torso of the beast glistened in day light. The ‘bijju’ was putting up quiet a show and the children were as delighted as a bunch of clowns.
“Mummy, we shouldn’t be killing it no? It has every right to be alive.” A puny little grandmother all of 9 years of age pouted at the mother, Mrs. Dixit.
“My principle is, never to leave an enemy alive.” Srivastav aunty said with a sinister sneer and crowd imagined her enemies dying imaginary deaths.
The little girl cringed and hid behind her mother.
“Oh, then do not kill it, lets just chase it away Himmat Singh, you are anyway not having much luck with the target”
A volley of opinions were given. Some were sworn to PETA on the spot and someone appealed to remember the principles of Jainism. Srivastav aunty remained unmoved.
“The Bijju shall die”. She persisted.
Himmat Singh took another lame shot egged on by those who wanted the ‘Bijju’ dead. This time the creature decided to rest the case by climbing the creeper in a fast motion and jumping on to the terrace above.
“See, escaped! Didn’t you get this month’s salary from the association you fool! Such kind of animals should be killed. Do you know how dangerous he would be hurt when it attacks unprovoked?”
A sound cuff on Himmat Singh’s ear established his incompetence in dealing with any animal.
Soon there were reports from the kids jumping excitedly on the rooftops from the opposite lane of houses that they clearly saw the ‘bijju’ escape into the adjoining mango grove.
“Oh it was so huge auntyji, as big as this” an enthusiastic kid spread his hands about him.
Srivastav aunty mouthed some explicatives and dispersed the crowd, clearly unhappy with the turn of events.
I had slept through all this.
I was holidaying in my home town, and woke and slept at my leisure. This cluster of around fifty houses was this colony where I had spent a good part of my growing up. It was in that part of the town where some greenery had survived the dust and grime around it. Fruit orchards were sold out for residential projects. But there was still bird song alive in the air and trees struggled under the weight of ripening fruits.
“Bhabhi, it was such a huge tail, so long”, exclaimed another aunty to my mother, who had too missed the morning commotion but had been careful to catch up. We took leisurely post dinner strolls in the colony. It was then when I first heard about the ‘bijju’.
“Does it exist Ma?” I asked a bit skeptical. We easily dismiss all animals as being caged or in far off forests, the dogs, cats, cows and buffaloes being only exceptions.
“I don’t know much, haven’t seen one myself. But I heard it’s notorious for digging up graves and exhuming corpses.” replied my mother, knowing it would interest me immediately.
“Kabbar Bijju? Is this the same one?” I always thought it was a made up creature to cover organ trade.
“You must ask Srivastav aunty, if you want to know more.” said mother, as a clearly disgruntled Srivastav aunty showed up walking before her house.
After the initial niceties, I came to ask about the ‘Bijju’.
“Arrey, they let it go! Those bunch of idiots. Big time animal right activists they are! Mother in law serves tea in the morning, does the entire house work. They should treat their elders well and then spend the rest of their sympathies on animals.”
“I had killed one myself,” she went on to add without prompting. My mother nodded to confirm.
“It was loitering around the colony temple when I had gone for my puja, I took the nearest shovel and brought it down on its skull, we had to hit it with sticks to kill it though. Hardy creatures they are!” I readily believed her claim. No one messes with Srivastav aunty, even if you are a grave digger.
“But what about the rumours that it eats the dead bodies? Does it really? That’s sickening.” I persisted on finding if bijju was just objectified into a vile creature it really wasn’t.
“Oh yes like hell it does. When it grabs a dead man’s thumb, the body rises bolt upright! I have seen this with my own eyes” She swished her hand in air for the effect.
“Now you people have no businesses being out and about in the dark with the bijju lurking in the shadows” she reprimanded us instantly.
We bid her farewell and continued to walk.
“This whole area was a graveyard once as I hear.” added a fellow health enthusiast on the walk as we moved ahead.
“This place, here, it was a broken English house with baths and there were huge chains and iron hooks that were excavated while this colony was being built.” Saying so she randomly pointed at a now splendid house no where resembling the English ruins.
There’s no stopping once tongues are let loose.
There were more to come, some had seen a pair of glinting eyes in the dark. Others had heard their doors creaking as though something’s trying to paw its way in. Some had heard it call like ‘whay-we’ in the dark and some had heard it cry and grunt.
I had a fitful sleep that night, of old English homes and of dead men turning in tombs. Corpses rising out of graves and walking like zombies in the moonlight. A malicious creature able to infuse life in the corpse with a bite. Something was sinister and fascinating about this creature and I was determined to know more.
The ‘Honey badger’ or the ‘Indian Ratler’ is a less known nocturnal animal known for its ferocious defense, so much so that it is listed in the Guinness Book of records as the ‘most fearless animal in the world”. They have even been known to chase young lions and take their kills in Africa.
They are serious poultry predators and eat almost everything under the sun, they are known to kill and eat snakes, even highly venomous or large ones such as cobras. They have been known to dig up human corpses in India. They devour all parts of their prey, including skin, hair, feathers, flesh and bones, holding their food down with their forepaws. So there was some truth in all the moolah surrounding the visitor of the verandah.
But books will tell you all that. I was looking for a story, because it is the story that will go round and survive, as it always does, tougher than perhaps the badger itself.
So searching for the story, I met Srivastav Aunty again on the second night of the ‘bijju’s’ staged escape. She was pleased to have a ready listener; it helped her pass her leisurely time post retirement with a stream of visitors.
“All kinds of people come looking for me. Elections are fought here.” she said waving at the area of the house where there were chairs and couches huddled together around a centre table, atypical of the north Indian household.
“The other day, mayor of the city, came calling. I thought of gathering the colony residents so we can request benefits for the colony, but he wouldn’t wait for more than ten minutes. By the time our people reached him he was a good 500 mtrs away. We caught up with him nevertheless, is this what we elected you for? I gave him a good piece of my mind. He apologized immediately, after all at the time of election he was the one who had come here, hands folded, looking for favors and votes. He sent sweets after the elections, ah but I am a poor old diabetic, sent his sweets away.”
We sat before the TV and near her charpoy, she preferred to sleep in the lobby, It helped her keep an occasional check on the house and reprimand the sleepy chaowkidar lest he sleeps on duty.
“There’s no unity among people for the causes that concern their own good” , she tut-tutted.
“No one wants to lead and take a stand against what’s wrong. See these sodium vapour lamps all over the colony. I had the Nagar Nigam put them up. They were Rs 500 a piece, these lamps. Guess how much we got them here, For free! All it takes, is shaking up these hooligans by their collars till they give in.”
Unceremoniously, she launched into another story.
“Long time back, there was stern doctor in Gujarat, she was a brilliant woman, serving in the army hospital, a brigadier or something of this rank. She was respected and feared across the area for her medical prowess and her infamous temper. Eccentric in habits, she would saunter on the dry river beds of Sabarmati and the adjoining jungle and experiment with medicinal plants and herbs. If there was one thing wrong with the woman, then it was this, she would drink her self silly on the rums and whiskeys acquired from the army canteen. But it was in these moments of drunken stupor that her genius was at its best.
We chanced on this doctor when we were seeking treatment for an acquaintance of ours, your Uncleji and I. The patient here was a beautiful young woman, married to our distant nephew, she was a pretty girl, a beauty un matched. It could have been just an evil eye; her body began to show signs of some rare skin disease. Nothing other than her pretty face was spared. She began having sore painful rashes all over her body. Her worried husband, distressed at the sight of his new and pretty wife’s strange illness ran helter skelter for treatment and then someone mentioned this lone crusader at the banks of Sabarmati.
She chased us out of her bungalow the first day. No one gets treated here, she would say. But we persisted. Perhaps the sight of fair faced girl’s painful rashes softened the doctor, she agreed to the treatment with some weird directions.
“Dig a hole to the height of this girl at the banks of Sabarmati”, she barked orders.
“Fill it half with lime stone, ‘Choona’ and be there at the river bank at 4 AM tomorrow with 4 cakes of Lifebouy soap.”
The local residents amused with this never heard before treatment, accustomed though they were of the doctor’s eccentricity, pooled in men and material as per the doctor’s whims.
The doctor arrived with rum on her breath.
“Pour river water in the hole.” She said.
Lime and water is an alkaline solution called milk of lime, it is extremely fast reacting and bubbles up instantly on formation causing an exothermic, heat releasing reaction.
Into this solution she put in the diseased woman sans her clothes, till only her head remained above the ground, for twenty agonizing minutes. The poor girl cried and withered in agony, her face contorted with pain and tears ran down uninterrupted from here eyes but the doctor would hear none of her complaints.
After a timed interval, she asked her attendants to take the girl out of the pit and immerse her into the cold waters of Sabarmati.
“Scrub her now with the soap cake, one at a time.”
Shocked but enthralled we all proceeded as she said. She made us repeat the distressing treatment process four times, before applying a paste of herbs on the inflicted woman’s body. She was all skin and bones, bruised and pink with the scrubbing. The woman shivered and shuddered in the cold of the morning and said she felt frozen. The Doctor remained impassive and returned to her bungalow after administering the medicine.
No one knew what the herbs were; the doctor wouldn’t disclose the preparation to anyone. Even the attendants who grind the barks and the roots knew little or nothing about the preparation. We took our patient away and in a full moon’s time the woman recovered completely. She has never suffered any ailment ever since and everyone said she went one to be more picturesque and attractive than she was before.
“What about the Bijju?”, I thought we had thoroughly lost track with the mad doctor and her beautiful patient.
“Oh them! We stood at the river bank looking over the treatment, when there were sharp cries and and the air was thick with sacry “whay-wie” of the monsters. They have a strong sense of smell these monsters, growing to as big as jackal. A horde of them appeared on the other side of the river. They have such sharp teeth and claw these bijjus! It was a pack of about eight to a dozen of them. They sniffed about in the air for flesh and their eyes gleamed and darted in the still dark outlines of bushes by the river. Then one of them, dug in the ground with its powerful front paws. A freshly laid grave of a poor fellow, probably a mussalhmaan was their kill for the night. It still had diyah lit for the poor soul’s journey to the next world.
No sooner did the powerful creature reach the dead man’s foot’s thumb, it stuck the ground with such brute force of its powerful limbs, that body stiffened after death, rose out of the ground. UPRIGHT.
Two or three beasts attacked the corpse , some on the torso, some on the limbs, yelping with delight and carried it off in the bushes for the pack’s feast.”
She finished with flourish and an indiscreet pleasure at her macabre story telling.
- a short story
A sound of gunfire in the air, sent the mynahs screeching to other shelters, and the stray dogs took cover. More curious than alarmed, residents of the pocket of houses darted out to check the cause of the ruckus, so early in the morning.
Himmat Singh, the chowkidaar, stood in the wide lane between neat houses with their small patches of tidy lawns, and craned his neck for a better shot. Housewives deserted half-prepared breakfasts for kids and rushed out lest they miss the scene. It is not everyday that the colony heard gun shots.
By the next gunshot there were more than a dozen curious onlookers. Mr. Dixit whose house was the centre of commotion stood outside his iron gate and looked resolutely helpless, his fists tightly held in pockets of his well worn-out trousers. He was quiet gentleman who was determined to have the least interference with matters outside his bank branch, unless they pertained to his little verandah, which they were now.
His wife looked inconsolable and alarmed; she was a rather large boisterous lady with two young kids, who seemed perturbed with the unwarranted attention the unexpected visitor had been causing in her verandah. Her frail mother in law stood obediently away from the couple, clutching the hand of her five year old grandson, who was enjoying the relentless bijju’s antics.
A long black hairy tail, some two feet long, swished outside the bougainvillea creeper against the wall for a fraction of a second. A collective gasp was let out from the crowd, now getting larger with every passing minute.
“It’s the Bijju!”, said Mrs. Dixit for the benefit of the onlookers.
“If the tail is so huge, what must the demon look like?” said another. Some people have eyes for the unseen at all times.
“We must kill it, Himmat Singh, are you any good with that gun of yours?”, said the now impatient Srivastav Aunty, she spat on the ground for additional effect.
Poor Himmat Singh, as experienced with the gun as accountants are with space ships, smiled a sheepish grin.
“It is very clever auntyji, It won’t come out in the open or I would shoot its brain out.”
For Auntyji, in this case Srivastav aunty, Himmat Singh’s universal term of endearment failed to evoke any sympathy.
“You are a good for nothing shooter, Himmat Singh, you cannot even bring down a sitting duck with that godforsaken rifle, Lookout…here it is again!”
The ‘Bijju’ in question made for a spot higher up the creeper, it had calculated the move, going up and down several times in his nocturnal outings. Another sigh from the crowd as the black hairy torso of the beast glistened in day light. The ‘bijju’ was putting up quiet a show and the children were as delighted as a bunch of clowns.
“Mummy, we shouldn’t be killing it no? It has every right to be alive.” A puny little grandmother all of 9 years of age pouted at the mother, Mrs. Dixit.
“My principle is, never to leave an enemy alive.” Srivastav aunty said with a sinister sneer and crowd imagined her enemies dying imaginary deaths.
The little girl cringed and hid behind her mother.
“Oh, then do not kill it, lets just chase it away Himmat Singh, you are anyway not having much luck with the target”
A volley of opinions were given. Some were sworn to PETA on the spot and someone appealed to remember the principles of Jainism. Srivastav aunty remained unmoved.
“The Bijju shall die”. She persisted.
Himmat Singh took another lame shot egged on by those who wanted the ‘Bijju’ dead. This time the creature decided to rest the case by climbing the creeper in a fast motion and jumping on to the terrace above.
“See, escaped! Didn’t you get this month’s salary from the association you fool! Such kind of animals should be killed. Do you know how dangerous he would be hurt when it attacks unprovoked?”
A sound cuff on Himmat Singh’s ear established his incompetence in dealing with any animal.
Soon there were reports from the kids jumping excitedly on the rooftops from the opposite lane of houses that they clearly saw the ‘bijju’ escape into the adjoining mango grove.
“Oh it was so huge auntyji, as big as this” an enthusiastic kid spread his hands about him.
Srivastav aunty mouthed some explicatives and dispersed the crowd, clearly unhappy with the turn of events.
I had slept through all this.
I was holidaying in my home town, and woke and slept at my leisure. This cluster of around fifty houses was this colony where I had spent a good part of my growing up. It was in that part of the town where some greenery had survived the dust and grime around it. Fruit orchards were sold out for residential projects. But there was still bird song alive in the air and trees struggled under the weight of ripening fruits.
“Bhabhi, it was such a huge tail, so long”, exclaimed another aunty to my mother, who had too missed the morning commotion but had been careful to catch up. We took leisurely post dinner strolls in the colony. It was then when I first heard about the ‘bijju’.
“Does it exist Ma?” I asked a bit skeptical. We easily dismiss all animals as being caged or in far off forests, the dogs, cats, cows and buffaloes being only exceptions.
“I don’t know much, haven’t seen one myself. But I heard it’s notorious for digging up graves and exhuming corpses.” replied my mother, knowing it would interest me immediately.
“Kabbar Bijju? Is this the same one?” I always thought it was a made up creature to cover organ trade.
“You must ask Srivastav aunty, if you want to know more.” said mother, as a clearly disgruntled Srivastav aunty showed up walking before her house.
After the initial niceties, I came to ask about the ‘Bijju’.
“Arrey, they let it go! Those bunch of idiots. Big time animal right activists they are! Mother in law serves tea in the morning, does the entire house work. They should treat their elders well and then spend the rest of their sympathies on animals.”
“I had killed one myself,” she went on to add without prompting. My mother nodded to confirm.
“It was loitering around the colony temple when I had gone for my puja, I took the nearest shovel and brought it down on its skull, we had to hit it with sticks to kill it though. Hardy creatures they are!” I readily believed her claim. No one messes with Srivastav aunty, even if you are a grave digger.
“But what about the rumours that it eats the dead bodies? Does it really? That’s sickening.” I persisted on finding if bijju was just objectified into a vile creature it really wasn’t.
“Oh yes like hell it does. When it grabs a dead man’s thumb, the body rises bolt upright! I have seen this with my own eyes” She swished her hand in air for the effect.
“Now you people have no businesses being out and about in the dark with the bijju lurking in the shadows” she reprimanded us instantly.
We bid her farewell and continued to walk.
“This whole area was a graveyard once as I hear.” added a fellow health enthusiast on the walk as we moved ahead.
“This place, here, it was a broken English house with baths and there were huge chains and iron hooks that were excavated while this colony was being built.” Saying so she randomly pointed at a now splendid house no where resembling the English ruins.
There’s no stopping once tongues are let loose.
There were more to come, some had seen a pair of glinting eyes in the dark. Others had heard their doors creaking as though something’s trying to paw its way in. Some had heard it call like ‘whay-we’ in the dark and some had heard it cry and grunt.
I had a fitful sleep that night, of old English homes and of dead men turning in tombs. Corpses rising out of graves and walking like zombies in the moonlight. A malicious creature able to infuse life in the corpse with a bite. Something was sinister and fascinating about this creature and I was determined to know more.
The ‘Honey badger’ or the ‘Indian Ratler’ is a less known nocturnal animal known for its ferocious defense, so much so that it is listed in the Guinness Book of records as the ‘most fearless animal in the world”. They have even been known to chase young lions and take their kills in Africa.
They are serious poultry predators and eat almost everything under the sun, they are known to kill and eat snakes, even highly venomous or large ones such as cobras. They have been known to dig up human corpses in India. They devour all parts of their prey, including skin, hair, feathers, flesh and bones, holding their food down with their forepaws. So there was some truth in all the moolah surrounding the visitor of the verandah.
But books will tell you all that. I was looking for a story, because it is the story that will go round and survive, as it always does, tougher than perhaps the badger itself.
So searching for the story, I met Srivastav Aunty again on the second night of the ‘bijju’s’ staged escape. She was pleased to have a ready listener; it helped her pass her leisurely time post retirement with a stream of visitors.
“All kinds of people come looking for me. Elections are fought here.” she said waving at the area of the house where there were chairs and couches huddled together around a centre table, atypical of the north Indian household.
“The other day, mayor of the city, came calling. I thought of gathering the colony residents so we can request benefits for the colony, but he wouldn’t wait for more than ten minutes. By the time our people reached him he was a good 500 mtrs away. We caught up with him nevertheless, is this what we elected you for? I gave him a good piece of my mind. He apologized immediately, after all at the time of election he was the one who had come here, hands folded, looking for favors and votes. He sent sweets after the elections, ah but I am a poor old diabetic, sent his sweets away.”
We sat before the TV and near her charpoy, she preferred to sleep in the lobby, It helped her keep an occasional check on the house and reprimand the sleepy chaowkidar lest he sleeps on duty.
“There’s no unity among people for the causes that concern their own good” , she tut-tutted.
“No one wants to lead and take a stand against what’s wrong. See these sodium vapour lamps all over the colony. I had the Nagar Nigam put them up. They were Rs 500 a piece, these lamps. Guess how much we got them here, For free! All it takes, is shaking up these hooligans by their collars till they give in.”
Unceremoniously, she launched into another story.
“Long time back, there was stern doctor in Gujarat, she was a brilliant woman, serving in the army hospital, a brigadier or something of this rank. She was respected and feared across the area for her medical prowess and her infamous temper. Eccentric in habits, she would saunter on the dry river beds of Sabarmati and the adjoining jungle and experiment with medicinal plants and herbs. If there was one thing wrong with the woman, then it was this, she would drink her self silly on the rums and whiskeys acquired from the army canteen. But it was in these moments of drunken stupor that her genius was at its best.
We chanced on this doctor when we were seeking treatment for an acquaintance of ours, your Uncleji and I. The patient here was a beautiful young woman, married to our distant nephew, she was a pretty girl, a beauty un matched. It could have been just an evil eye; her body began to show signs of some rare skin disease. Nothing other than her pretty face was spared. She began having sore painful rashes all over her body. Her worried husband, distressed at the sight of his new and pretty wife’s strange illness ran helter skelter for treatment and then someone mentioned this lone crusader at the banks of Sabarmati.
She chased us out of her bungalow the first day. No one gets treated here, she would say. But we persisted. Perhaps the sight of fair faced girl’s painful rashes softened the doctor, she agreed to the treatment with some weird directions.
“Dig a hole to the height of this girl at the banks of Sabarmati”, she barked orders.
“Fill it half with lime stone, ‘Choona’ and be there at the river bank at 4 AM tomorrow with 4 cakes of Lifebouy soap.”
The local residents amused with this never heard before treatment, accustomed though they were of the doctor’s eccentricity, pooled in men and material as per the doctor’s whims.
The doctor arrived with rum on her breath.
“Pour river water in the hole.” She said.
Lime and water is an alkaline solution called milk of lime, it is extremely fast reacting and bubbles up instantly on formation causing an exothermic, heat releasing reaction.
Into this solution she put in the diseased woman sans her clothes, till only her head remained above the ground, for twenty agonizing minutes. The poor girl cried and withered in agony, her face contorted with pain and tears ran down uninterrupted from here eyes but the doctor would hear none of her complaints.
After a timed interval, she asked her attendants to take the girl out of the pit and immerse her into the cold waters of Sabarmati.
“Scrub her now with the soap cake, one at a time.”
Shocked but enthralled we all proceeded as she said. She made us repeat the distressing treatment process four times, before applying a paste of herbs on the inflicted woman’s body. She was all skin and bones, bruised and pink with the scrubbing. The woman shivered and shuddered in the cold of the morning and said she felt frozen. The Doctor remained impassive and returned to her bungalow after administering the medicine.
No one knew what the herbs were; the doctor wouldn’t disclose the preparation to anyone. Even the attendants who grind the barks and the roots knew little or nothing about the preparation. We took our patient away and in a full moon’s time the woman recovered completely. She has never suffered any ailment ever since and everyone said she went one to be more picturesque and attractive than she was before.
“What about the Bijju?”, I thought we had thoroughly lost track with the mad doctor and her beautiful patient.
“Oh them! We stood at the river bank looking over the treatment, when there were sharp cries and and the air was thick with sacry “whay-wie” of the monsters. They have a strong sense of smell these monsters, growing to as big as jackal. A horde of them appeared on the other side of the river. They have such sharp teeth and claw these bijjus! It was a pack of about eight to a dozen of them. They sniffed about in the air for flesh and their eyes gleamed and darted in the still dark outlines of bushes by the river. Then one of them, dug in the ground with its powerful front paws. A freshly laid grave of a poor fellow, probably a mussalhmaan was their kill for the night. It still had diyah lit for the poor soul’s journey to the next world.
No sooner did the powerful creature reach the dead man’s foot’s thumb, it stuck the ground with such brute force of its powerful limbs, that body stiffened after death, rose out of the ground. UPRIGHT.
Two or three beasts attacked the corpse , some on the torso, some on the limbs, yelping with delight and carried it off in the bushes for the pack’s feast.”
She finished with flourish and an indiscreet pleasure at her macabre story telling.
