Conclusion

The thing inside me picked her name from the staff-room talk on a Thursday. Pranavi, twenty-three, younger sister of one of the final-year boys, the wedding fixed for the end of the month. The cold walked my body to the address after the last class, past the lane where the decorators had already stacked the plastic chairs. She opened the door in a simple salwar, mehndi still dark on her hands, smiling the polite smile she gave her brother’s teacher.

“Sir? Is something wrong?”

“Your brother left his project file. He said you would know which shelf. It will only take a minute.”

She let me in because the reason was ordinary and the wedding preparations had already filled the front room with boxes. The thing led her down the short corridor to the empty bedroom at the back, the one with the new bed still wrapped in plastic. The door closed. She turned, still explaining about the file, and the explanation stopped when it shoved her forward onto the mattress. The plastic crackled. She gasped.

“Sir—what are you—”

It yanked the salwar and the cotton underneath down to her knees and entered her in one hard thrust. She was dry. The scream was sharp and immediate, cut against the pillow. Blood welled at once and ran onto the plastic. She bucked, sobbing, mehndi-stained hands scrabbling. “Please—stop—it hurts—I’m getting married—don’t—” The strokes were brutal from the first—deep, cracking drives that jolted her against the bed. Each one forced her open further. She cried continuously, tears soaking the pillow, voice breaking into raw pleas between thrusts. “Stop, sir, please, the wedding is in two weeks, it hurts so much, why—”

It drank from the side of her throat while it fucked her, long pulls that paled her skin under the afternoon light through the curtain. Her struggles weakened. The pain and the feeding made her legs shake. She came once, sudden and shattered, cunt clenching tight while she still sobbed and begged it to pull out, saying the name of the man she was supposed to marry. It did not slow. Short, vicious thrusts ground against the raw, bleeding places until more blood and slick ran down her thighs and onto the plastic. It spilled deep, grinding, holding her there until it was empty. When it pulled out, come and a thick streak of blood followed. She lay trembling on the half-unwrapped bed, salwar tangled, skin already luminous at the throat and face, eyes wide with pain and the ruin of the plans that had filled the front room.

“Hold her,” the thing said with my voice. “Slave. Keep her on the bed. Make her look at what is left of the wedding.”

My hands moved. I turned her face toward the open doorway where the stacked chairs and the half-finished garlands were visible. She looked, still crying, mehndi smeared. “The wedding… sir… it hurt… please… I can’t…”

The thing fed once more, small and deliberate, from the other side of her throat until her lips lost color. Then it straightened my body and spoke the conclusion while she remained pale and shaking under my hands.

“Every girl. Through this body. You watch every one. The neighbor. The colleagues. The mothers. The sister who was going to marry next month. I open them bloody. I pale their skin. You hold them so the screams stay quiet. You keep your eyes open. When enough are ready you walk them to the station as the slave who brings them. He waits at the fort. He claims them. There is no wedding that finishes. There is only the next thrust, the next pale face, the next set of mehndi hands that will never reach the mandap, and you carrying them to him while the cold inside you decides the order.”

It walked us out past the boxes and the chairs. She stayed on the plastic-covered bed, pale, blood drying on her thighs, unable to call for the family still in the front room. I locked nothing. The invasion filled every place it had taken. Outside, the decorators were still stacking chairs for a wedding that would not happen the way anyone had planned. The thing was already sorting the next name from the years of faces.