CHAPTER 1: The Rescue

It's was not easy for the officers to understand that the boy who had killed a dozen men(particularly the last one in such a grotesque way) to cry for mercy like a child who's being beaten because he stole candies. He was 17, fragile-looking and handsome and there was something insanely saintly about him and yet the facts pointed to the different direction of this ideology. 

"Are you with Rameshwar?" Inspector Ashith asked slamming his hands lightly on the arms of his chair.

"I...I just want to go. It's all over."

Ashith was trying his best not to use the popular third-degree method. He wouldn't want to spoil the brat's face with his own blood. 

"Again..." Ashith slams the arms of chair again later caressing his forehead with his left hand. It's not as if he wasn't beaten but the innocence with which he cried Please don't hit me. It's all over. It made the officer's stop. Partially they wanted to beat him making him experience a near-death experience. The inspector gets a good salary but the lower ranking Hawaldars salaries aren't enough to spend on the unduly expensive standard of living in Mumbai. So they were very cross for him murdering the Patildar fellow as he was the only major drug lord left who could pay them handsome bribes. There were minor gangsters too but unlike the former one they would give in kind like prostitutes,weeds,etc. Ashith too had made a good amount of money dealing with Patildar but secretly, and the conditions were such that made him do it.  

"I think he has became mentally retarded after the deed he's done" said Ashith getting up but Sharma stopped him "Sir it's just acting so that we sent him for medical treatment and he can escape."

"So What? Beat him to death. If journalists gets a whiff of the news he would become a city hero. Politicians are already on edge because of upcoming elections. It would be bad for all of us to do something stupid." As Ashith takes out a cigarette from his pocket and puts it in his mouth, a Hawaldar enters the cell "His lawyer has came to fetch him. He has the bail papers with him."

"What the f**k? He has commited a murder."

"But the papers are original and has the court's stamp. I reviewed it with other bail documents."

Who the f**k is he? Ashith looks at the boy who face is pale and his pupils enlarge probably due to shock. Why is he shocked? He's being released. Wait...Can it be he wasn't expecting anyone to come. So Why?...

A woman clad in black suit with a pink shirt inside stands outside the cell So he's the one. They have strange taste for picking someone like him. She must be the kind of woman who workouts everyday. All those squats have done a pretty good deed of making those hips look temptingly seductive although this year she's going to turn 30. 

"So when are you planning to let him leave" she asks with a stoic face.

"When we are done interrogating him" says Ashith I am not leaving him that easily. Not until I learn something more. 

"Oh! But I have other businesses to attend to. I am short on time."

"I don't see how that's my problem."

"Well it could be. After this I have to meet Rajiv BrijVashi, you know the editor of India Daily. I don't want him getting tense. If he calls me, I would have to tell him to meet me here. And this case would be intriguingly tempting to him. Don't you think?"

Ashith clenches his fist. This were the kind of lawyers he hated. 

"Well do you still want me to wait?" asks the woman. 

How good it would have been if officers would be free to do one murder in their life. Ashith tells one of them to release the boy. 

The boy sits in the car as the woman completes some of the paperwork. 

"May I know your name?" asks Ashith.

"Find it in the papers."

"So it's not a myth that lawyers who associates themselves with criminals are usually the grumpy type"

"I can also tell a thing about you or two. I have my own Corrupted Police 101 to thank for it."

"Hmph" he frowned although he wanted to chuckle at her remark "You must be living a lavish life"

"What makes you give such pretentious comment?"

"There are hardly any lawyers I know who would rescue a murderer. That too one who has left so many evidences behind it."

She doesn't hesitate to chuckle but leaves for the car without any reply. I don't think this will be the last I see of her Ashith thinks looking at the slowly accelerating car. 

She looks at the boy "So Roy, that's your name isn't it?". Still his face is pale and his eyebrows tightened with brimming madness "It's Over. It's just Over. Isn't it?". 

"STOP IT!" she says "Don't play such games with me. I am not bounded by their rules. You would be on the edge of life and death if you don't cooperate."

"WHO ARE YOU?" he asks ,his voice a little less intense and an uncertain heavy fluctuation of rhythmic beating of his heart.

"Soon Enough.."

"Eh!"

"Soon Enough" she says "You are going to find out"

Roy looks at the disappearing lights of the city as the car drives along a remote area with an uncanny amount of weird shaped trees. In which direction is my f*****g fate trying to dive into now.

Author's Note

Sorry guys for poorly written dialogues but someone told me I should put more effort into writing dialogues. But it's just I am afraid of writing dialogues because I suck at saying something meaningful and entertaining in real life too. It's just an effort here. Thank you for bearing it.

Reviews

[JayG]

• Sorry guys for poorly written dialogues but someone told me I should put more effort into writing dialogues.

It's not a matter of being good or bad with dialog, it's that you're assuming that one must have a talent for something that, in reality, is a learned skill, as is all of writing fiction.

One of the most common misconceptions among hopeful writers is that we learned to write in school, and that since writing-is-writing, we need no more when writing fiction. It's the thing that kills more careers than anything else.

But think about it. Compare the numbers of stories you were assigned to write as against the number of reports, essays, letters, and papers. Fiction was only a tiny fraction of that because you were learning skills that would make you employable as an adult, not the tricks of the working professional fiction writer.

You, like your schoolmates leaned a series of writing techniques designed to inform clearly and concisely. They're fact-based and author-centric, as-is-this-story, and as such it's pretty much emotion-free, as a narrator, whose performance we can neither see nor hear, explains the situation.

But...how many of your teachers have sold a word of their fiction? But shouldn't they be especially knowledgeable in how to write fiction? Shouldn't the majority of successful writers be teachers?

But they're not. Why? Because they only know, and teach, nonfiction writing skills. When you read fiction, is it to be informed or entertained? History books inform us, and they're boring. You don't want to learn that the protagonist has fallen in love, you want the story to make YOU fall in love. And report writing skills can't do that. You want fiction that's emotion-based and character-centric. You don't want to know what CAN be seen, you want to now what matters to the protagonist in the moment that character calls "NOW." You want to be moved, to care, and to worry about what the protagonist worries about. Simply put: You want to be involved, not informed.

The short version, as Ernest Hemingway saw it: “It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.” In other words, you need to dig into the tricks of the trade, because like any other profession, you need the proper tools, and, the knowledge of how to use them.

The good news is that those who write fiction, successfully, like to talk about how they do it. So the skills are no secret, nor are they any more difficult to master than those you learned in your school days. And, you already know the common things, like punctuation and spelling, so the learning time for the techniques of fiction is far less than the many years we spent mastering our current writing skills—though it does take time and effort to master them, as it does with any profession, so you need to decide if the effort is worth it.

The bright side? If you truly are meant to be a writer you'll love the learning.

My personal suggestion is to begin with something easy, like Debra Dixon's, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict. It's a great intro to the nuts and bolts issues. Then, after about six months of practice using the skills you learn from her, pick up Dwight Swain's, Techniques of the Selling Writer. It's the best I've found, though it's not the easiest of books.

Both will help you exchange that sturdy cart-horse we're given in school for Pegasus. And mounted on a winged beast, who knows where you'll fly to?

You might want to dig around in the articles in my blog on WordPress to get an idea of the issues you must address. They're not meant to teach you how to write, but will give you a feel for the things an author must know.

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/

[Shubham Sharma]

Thank you for your helpful review. I shall certainly follow your blog.

[barleygirl]

I'm glad you were brave & started using more dialogue, becuz you are already very good at it! The way you did that scene with the lawyer lady & how she subtly threatens to tell the news media. All that is really good stuff. It's a great way to advance your storyline & not have it be a bunch of boring description as you tell the story. This is SHOW instead of tell, nicely balanced. I also like the way you use italics to show what people are thinking. This is just as useful as dialogue & you do a good job of using both. I also felt like I could not do dialogue becuz I do not talk much in real life. But practice makes us better, which JayG said in his long review below. Just keep practicing, becuz you are already getting better and it's only chapter ONE! *smile* Fondly, Margie

[Chris Shaw]

I can't give you the sort of advice that JayG has given you. I am a writer of poetry myself rather than novels. However I read your chapter (normally I don't side track from poetry) and was pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed what I read. Found I wanted to read it all, and was pleased I did. The ending was full of intrigue and I wondered what the hell was going to happen next. I have a feeling that woman in the black suit and pink shirt is going to turn out nasty, really nasty. I don't know what to think of that 17 year old. He troubles me. A killer and yet still a boy, brainwashed or what? Interesting.

Chris