They lived in a small hill town, a happy young couple that had just been married. Everything had been working out brilliantly, both enjoyed great jobs where they worked hard five days a week and partied and made love during weekends, life couldn’t get any better. But it did.
He soon got promoted after which they moved to a metro, she took up a job at an American MNC, both so full of energy. The hustle and bustle of the crowd made them realize that this is what they had always wanted, to live in a big urban city where they could make lots of fun loving, high-society friends and party late into the night .They bought a place in a plush neighbourhood, where they soon started to realize that they didn’t belong .That they would have to change their clothes, their cell phones and even the shoes to gain acceptance in the new locality. Nothing seemed to work out, but he was so determined that he even traded his Hyundai Accent , which they were earlier satisfied with for a new BMW X1 that he would proudly drive to work and park in the big multi-story community parking lot everyday where his wasn’t the odd-car-out anymore.
One day she got fired from work after her American employers realized that their country suddenly owed so much money to the world that its companies could no longer afford to pay taxes, much less pay overseas employees. She cursed George Bush, his successor and oil and decided to find a new job. They could not afford their acquired lifestyle anymore.
What they could also not afford any longer was his new low-mileage SUV, which he would look at with a heavy heart in the parking lot every day after walking back from work. The car seemed to cry at him like a lonely girl standing amidst a crowd wanting to be set free. But he would only cry back knowing he could no longer keep up with the oil price hikes. Meanwhile, she couldn’t find a new job. Both became bitter individuals, the joy of marriage had disappeared, they hardly wanted to party anymore, the sex-life was almost gone. She tried hiding her frustration of sitting at home doing nothing all day long but couldn’t.
What she also tried hiding was that she was three weeks pregnant with their first baby, waiting to break the news at a better time. She finally told him thinking it would make things a little better and he falsely-sympathised with her saying that it was a good thing she wasn’t working since now she could take care of their baby full-time. Soon she began to realize that he had gradually started coming home from work late and even started driving the BMW again, not being able to stop herself from laughing at the thought that her husband was working overtime just to drive a damn SUV that they didn’t even require. One day a woman she befriended at a community get-together told her that she had spotted her husband with another woman in the parking lot. Puzzled, she started spying on his cell phone and realized that indeed he had been calling an unknown woman for some time. She bribed the service-provider to find out that the number belonged to an escort company from which her husband had been hiring a prostitute.
For the past two months.
Heartbroken and shattered that her husband would cheat on his pregnant wife with a hooker she decided that she did not want this man to become the father of the baby she would become the mother of someday. Filled with hatred the next day she bribed a government official so she could acquire a small pistol, the kind her Army man father had taught her to use when she was a little girl. She waited for him to sneak out one night, picked up the gun from the kitchen drawer where she had been hiding it and quietly followed him into the basement of the parking lot where he always parked his BMW. On the way she bribed the watchman to know how long her husband had been sneaking into the parking.
Who told her it had been two months.
Asking him to get out of there she followed her husband into the dark basement where she saw him with the hooker as they quietly moved behind a big yellow Hummer. Bringing the pistol out she started walking closer. It was dark but enough for her to see that the girl got down on her knees while her husband stood there with his back to the car standing in front of her .Tears streaming down her cheeks she gripped the gun tighter and moved further, within shooting distance now. As the hooker stayed on her knees she started hearing deep breaths and choking noises. Not being able to take it anymore she hysterically fired two gunshots, successively getting both of them with two gunshots. Crying uncontrollably, she moved further to say one last goodbye to the monster she had loved. He had been imprinted to the car and so did the girl, in the same position, sitting on her knees, head hard-pressed against the car from the gunshot. She pulled the girl’s hair back to take a look at her face and suddenly felt her own eyes popping out and jaw dropping from what she saw. In the girl’s hand lay a siphon whose one end was inside her own mouth and the other one traversed all the way to the petrol tank of the big yellow Hummer. She froze, fell to her knees and turned the gun on herself upon realizing exactly how long her husband had been driving the BMW again.
It had been two months.
