This city bled for them, its streets a canvas of their love and their anger, while the air stank of diesel and death. A politician, fat and smug with the confidence of power, threatened her over the crackling radio at a roadside chai stall. "She'll kneel, or she'll disappear," he had sneered, before throwing down the gauntlet. That night, the psychopath found him in his marble mansion; the guards sprawled like broken dolls across the polished floors, their throats slit in silent warning. He pinned the man to his desk, ripping out his tongue with pliers, blood bubbling as the politician choked, his hands flailing uselessly. "You cursed her, you pig," he growled, smashing a brass idol into the skull. Bone shattered with a sickening *crunch*, brains splattering like spilled curry across the papers, the desk a red ruin. "Meri casstte's my dawn-your voice dies here."
A goon who brushed her shoulder in a crowded market, his leer a silent claim as he pressed himself too close. Dragged him to a butcher's alley, an atmosphere steeped in the smell of meat and rot. He hacked the man down with an axe, each swing bringing yet another wet thud, and pooled blood at his feet like the monsoon puddles, the man's screams dying down into pathetic whimpers. "You touched her shadow," he spat, severing the head with a final chop, the spine snapping like a twig, the head rolling into a pile of offal. "I erased you for my casstte's light." Kicks the torso into a gutter, the rats swarming with eager squeaks.
A further distant cousin, sanctimonious aunt, who whispered of selling her off to a rich man, oily with false commendations. Cornered her in her house with the air heavy with agarbatti and fear. Cut her eyes with a spoon, blood streamed as she wailed, the spoon twisting until the sockets popped empty, blank dark holes staring back. Cut her throat open with a kitchen knife, blood exploded in rhythmic flow, and pool beneath the prayer mat on which she knelt. "She is my sun," he said, kissing her shaking hand as she stood at the door, breath heavy shallow. "I darkened you so she'd shine."
"Meri casstte, the world will kneel," he said with blood dripping from his chin and kneeling before her while in an alley. The city's hum became a far-off dirge. That painful bloom, that soft- edged voice, made for loneliness. "Then make it weep for us." But at that moment, a shadow flickered as they embraced-a figure in the crowd Minding his own business. Heart racing. Another enemy, or perhaps the trust she had shown quite whiskered?