THE SECRETS OF ASPHALDITE

by Udyan Sharma

  The police squad scrutinized each and every corner of the Oester’s House but alas there was no trace of him in that colossal manor.

  Finally, after profuse stabs when there was no prospect left for Mr. Charles to be found, Mr. Venginny began to ruminate that it could be a kidnap or an unexpected murder for his affluence due to which he accused David of killing his father for his interminable prosperity.

  Mr. Venginny told one of his prudent crew member to keep an eye on David so that he could capture every action of David.

  David didn’t knew that Mr. Venginny was suspicious regarding him as he trusted him a lot.

  Mrs. Jane was more desolate than Susan and David as the revulsion of loosing her husband was not letting her to control her soul to still be emboldened in that grim state when her intact life was in the position of being ruined due to which a salty tear ran across onto her lips and she started snivelling.

  While Mr. Venginny was absconding the Oester’s House with his crew members, he abruptly got aware of an eccentric warehouse connected to the mansion through a trivial corridor.

  He turned around and saw that David and Mrs. Jane had returned back to their chambers which was a moral news for him as he didn’t wanted them to see him viewing that warehouse along with his crew members.

  Mr. Venginny along with his crew members ambled towards the warehouse and found a hoary firm door thwarting them from entering into the warehouse with a danger sign stuck on it.

  They shattered that door by using some silent explosives, especially crafted for silent devastation of doors. A lot of smoke had been produced over there after that silent explosion but its opacity was very less, making it obscure to naked eyes.

  Finally, after all the smoke disappeared, they entered the warehouse along with their revolvers fully charged to impede them from any kind of pistol assassination as they thought that there could be a threat for them.

  The warehouse looked very frowzy as if it had not been laundered for years with only a single red bulb hanging from the tin roof. A lot of live electrical wires were running along the tin roof, making it a kind of electrical power house.

  Actually, it was the powerhouse of the Oester Mansion which gave electricity to the whole Oester House, making it immensely perilous and risky for human beings.

  Mr. Venginny started inspecting that place as he was cogitating that David might have concealed Mr. Charles’s dead body somewhere in the powerhouse.

  While he was finding the dead body of Mr. Charles, he gruffly tramped backward when a live wire was about to plunge on his head after which he pondered to get out of that frantic place but it was against his gutsy character of astuteness.

  After getting whacked, he decided to repose on a sloppy chair which might have been there for around 14 years.

  All the crew members were trying their best to locate Mr. Charles it was very difficult for them to locate him in that secluded hazardous powerhouse.

  Finally, after accumulating bounteous energy, he again started probing that place as he was sure that the dead body of Mr. Charles was somewhere in that malignant powerhouse only.

  Mr. Venginny was vigorously snooping for Mr. Charles but tersely his feet slipped and he fell down into an isolated corridor. He impeccably knew that it was the only corridor connecting the Oester’s House to that unnerving powerhouse.

  He started walking towards the entrance to the Oester’s House, where he found Mr. Charles nasty body lying on a piece of marble flooring. He knew that Mr. Charles was still alive as his heart was still beating at an anomalous heart rate.

  After seeing that, he hastily called his crew members and lucidly told them to call the ambulance and arrest David as soon as possible in the arraignment of nastily killing his father.

  The crew members immediately contacted the Vitality Hospital and told them to straightaway send an ambulance to the Oester’s House so that Mr. Charles could be saved in time.

  Mr. Venginny took his pistol and shattered the door and promptly ran towards David’s room.

  David was grossly slumbering in his room with Susan, being unaware that the police had traced his father in that stale mucky powerhouse. He was totally unaware that Mr. Venginny was about to arrest him in a few minutes.

  Mr. Venginny reached there in five minutes, arrested him and maliciously hauled him to his government affiliated car and rigorously took him to the Police Headquarters without any analyses

  David was baffled in that perplexing situation due to which he could not validate that he didn’t knew anything regarding his father’s slaughter. He was trying his best to ratify that he was not the slayer of his father but Mr. Venginny firmly knew that every butcher behaves innocent after getting caught by the police.

  The ambulance reached the Oester’s House in fifteen minutes after which Mr. Charles was expeditiously taken to the hospital. Whereas David was answering abysmal probes, questioned to him by the Zurich Police Department in the butchery of his acquitted father. Both of them were hapless at that time due to their depraved fates.

  Doctors at the hospital received the nauseating body of Mr. Charles and hastily shifted him to the Operation Theatre.

  Mr. Charles was in such a grave position that it could be the last trice of his life. He needed a gallant therapy so that he could be saved from the nastiness of death.

  Mrs. Jane also reached the hospital in few minutes, after which she started pleading Lord Jesus to give her treasured husband a novel life. Whereas, Susan reached the Police Headquarters and started imploring the bureaucrats to discharge her esteemed husband from the confinement. What a game of fate it was!

  The Rousing Notice

  It was an impenetrable state for everyone. The cataclysmic rain had almost ruined their lives and made them fretful.

  After getting that stern news, Mr. Connel hassled towards the hospital as it had completely agitated his state of mind and brought him to the adversity of relations and friendship.

  He reached the hospital in an hour, as his house was not so far from that noble hospital. He was surely vexed for Mr. Oester but nothing was in his hands as the circumstances were catastrophic.

  On the other hand, Ms. Mariah was with her hapless daughter, who was bawling in the grief of her precious mate’s misery. She was in such a condition that she couldn’t even relate herself to a human being and perhaps she was frazzled with that eccentric situation.

  Mr. Connel was oblivious with the situation as he had just returned from a foreign expedition and reached there without having even a single cup of tea prepared by his inventive servant. He was concerned with Mr. Oester’s situation as they both were empathetic chums and had been with each other since their childhood.

  He didn’t want to intrude his friendship as Mr. Charles was the only source of bliss and satisfaction to him.

  He conversed with Mr. Venginny and when he got to know that, the assassin of his treasured friend was David, he went to the police station with some kind of antagonism in his eyes and forced his daughter to detach the soul of that malevolent person from her heart and divorce him for ever.

  Susan had no other option than to divorce her husband as there was a lot of pressure on her and no one was there to embolden her but still she brawled for the glee of her dismaying companion and civilly besought her genial father for some time in order to prove her affronted husband as an innocuous person.

  Mr. Charles was vehement at that time and no one could stop him from taking his own verdicts which might make him feel penitent at the end.

  He talked to a mutual advocate of Zurich, prepared the papers of divorce and handed them over to his wretched daughter without any clemency.

  After getting that austere notice from her fuming father, she was so fateful that she couldn’t even talk to her esteemed husband for once.

  She howled and sniveled a lot, but there was no one who could hear and value the asset of her plague.

  Finally, she signed the papers and broke that consecrated bond within a
few minutes, which eventually exhibited the concluding flares of her gratification.

  There was no emblem of optimism in the hospital; everyone was feeling atrocious and only a silver lining from somewhere could lead his fate to cure.

  The media flashed the headlines while the doctors continued the surgery of that veiling treatment.

  There was destiny, hope and fate with the doctors who would save the life of an intellectual businessman like Mr. Charles Oester as a bribe of not less than one million dollars could be anticipated. However, he was an eminent and a celebrated luminary all over the globe.

  Whenever Mrs. Jane barely endeavored to witness the deplorable body of her spouse through the small pan-cake sized window, she was heaved back by the torments of her moans and was again forced to upbraid her son.

  Mr. Connel paid an affable amount to the police on the superior mandate that David should be agonized till the case was conjectured by the court. He exclusively nominated skilled people for his work and was finally satisfied after the court’s verdict which heralded a death sentence to David.

  David himself knew that he was acquitted but he blissfully revered the order of the court and started living like a vagrant in the prison.

  The doctors proclaimed that the condition of Mr. Oester was improving gradually but there was surely something erroneous which struck Mrs. Jane as the worst part of the situation.

  They were all scattered around his bed, with all their cravings and blessings. For a prolonged period, there was a deep taciturnity but when his fingers stumbled and his eyes widened; they thought it to be a marvel.

  They interacted with him but the main void came to be known when Susan gifted him a get well soon card with a bouquet of flowers.

  He intruded her and stated that why was a stranger given a permission to meet him. He thought that his security legitimates were trying to mutilate his privacy.

  No one was able to solve that disconcerting situation but after few cerebral tests, the doctors stated that Mr. Charles had lost a short proportion of his memory and he might not be able to diagnose few people, unless and until he is completely cured or flashes back his memory to instances related to those people, he is unable to evoke.

  Her sentiments were dismal at that time and wiping off her tears, she stood reticently for a moment, detaching herself from the scene, from the newly furnished chair and from the others. Then she set off down the creaky wooden stairs of the hospital, running faster and faster in a tacky way.

  Standing at a distance of around twenty yards from her, gazing at the vacillating eyes of her running posture, Mrs. Mariah too broke off in twinge and sat down hesitantly on the dark blue coloured metallic chair, with her hands on Mr. Charles bed and too began to sniffle.

  Mr. Charles was completely oblivious of the situation, knowing that everyone was in deep woe, questioned Mrs. Mariah while slowly keeping his middle finger on the tip of her green colour polished nail.

  She held his hand but keeping it safely above his navel, she didn’t reply anything and left the room while picking up her handkerchief which had fallen down when she had dragged her hand to place Mr. Charles hand over his navel.

  It was truly a game of melancholies and a situation of cynicism, misinterpretation and regrets.

  While many people around the world choose not to believe in Gods but there are plenty who do.

  Civilizations residing in a divine planet like Earth believe in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Agnosticism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Atheism, Mormonism, Hinduism and Catholicism etcetera but is it similarly true for civilizations which are far away from us, residing in exo-planets, suspected of keeping an eye on us. Thus, God is not the one who is to be censured for mishaps and revered for noble junctures.

  A person is to be equally reprimanded for his mishaps if he is revered for his noble junctures. Whereas, a person who doesn’t deserves bliss, shall not be given denigration.

  The case of Susan was somehow similar. For her, all had shrunk to the dimensions of her frenzied life, and the people in it, affianced in squabbles and suspicion.

  She was sitting on the settee, which was facing towards the Northeast and at such a distance which was two quarters of the distance between the ceiling and the floor of her room; undeniably close to the enormous glass window of her room.

  She was sitting. Not exactly, perhaps she was fitting; fitting the indigence of her perplexing life into her diminutive red coloured heart.

  Someone banged her door but she didn’t retort, her perception aiming at the window pane.

  The person reacted sadistically and banged the door once more with his full power and abruptly the garbling noise of the door brought her back to the Earth.

  She was dazed for a moment and hastily stomped off to the door and got another cynical news which provoked her again in plague. It was the postman who had brought that astounding news, which eventually was a notice from the court for the hearing of David’s uncanny case but how did it matter Susan, she had already divorced him.

  The truth was rather stumping. The court had rebuffed Susan’s appeal for divorce from David as she was alleged of making a slaughter plan with David to slay her father-in-law: Mr. Charles.

  She took that letter from the postman, thanked him and stomped off to her bed. She tore open that envelope and analyzed it prudently but while she could read the last paper, she felt an indulgent hand, full of coziness on her shoulder, which was rather covered with her long hair.

  She turned around and found that it was no one else but her benign mother who always cherished her but now was not able look at the weeps present in the essence of her innocent daughter, whose destiny had mislead her always on a path of crevasses.

  While lifting up her charming gown, Mrs. Mariah sat near Susan. She stimulated her and gave her the resilience to be valiant and face each and every twist of life as she had too endured such a situation.

  It was a squally night, when Mrs. Mariah heard some kind of knocking on the door of her archaic abode. At that time, she was around twenty years old; a time when she was fully matured.

  She unbolted the door and found Mr. Connel in a vexatious condition which was impossible for her to abide as she was a newly married bride and hadn’t even relished a few days with her amorous spouse.

  She told Susan that she was bankrupt at that time and couldn’t even afford a single penny for the medication of Mr. Connel but it didn’t mean that there was no prospect for a better providence.

  There was indeed a silver lining, not exactly from the emissions of the sun but from the interpretations of altruism and munificence which acknowledged her that humanity has no restriction and austerity in it.

  It was an affluent stranger for her. Perhaps it was a seraph of generosity for her. It was no one other than Mr. Charles.

  He had seized that sordid body of Mr. Connel from the corner of his right eye while he was passing by his trivial abode, with a group of his legitimates and had instantly decided to drop him to a nearby hospital.

  Mr. Charles paid the bill of the hospital, accomplished the low heart of Mrs. Mariah and gained all the possible blessings from the exultant ambiance of her soul.

  It didn’t deprive him off capital but eventually increased the prosperity of his richness in front of other people and showed the verdure of his mind.

  She ended up with her story, offering a cup of cold water to Susan. She vacillated a little bit but eventually had a sip of that cold water which didn’t only diminish her strain but also chilled her stomach, as the cold water slowly went into her stomach through her trifling oesophagus.

  She felt a little bit jovial after hearing that story but still there were many deep wounds which had offended her heart, making her despondent.

  She requested her mother to leave her alone for some time as her sentiments were ruined.

  Mrs. Mariah left the room in the desire of Susan’s placate and instantaneously appointed a lawyer for the hearing of David’s case which had involved Susan in
to it for no reason.

  However, it was David’s fortuity that he was getting the chance of fighting his case in collaboration with the nation’s notorious advocate- Mr. Hassleton Javrich.

  He had a prevalent eminence of winning most of the cases he had fought through his lifetime and it was a tremendous prospect for him as he was getting the fortune to fight a case including the son of the world’s most affluent person, none other than Mr. Charles Oester but he didn’t know that he had been appointed for Susan’s case.

  He equipped most of the knowledge which was obligatory for such an intricate slaughter case like this as he had not fought such a case since the April of 2018 and it was not less than around six years as the hearing of Susan’s case was going to be on twentieth December 2024.

  The world was waiting for the New Year’s Eve, whereas on the other hand someone was waiting for the bail of her spouse, so that she could relish the New Year’s Eve in the hope of a blissful year coming her way.

  She could not do anything rather than lingering in a shudder and waiting for the final day of the court’s hearing which would eventually cheer up her future or afflict her for her intact lifetime.

  A Momentous Day

  The weather was bracing enough with hastening clouds over the city, permitting biased rays of sun to pass through them and buff the sea in absolute optimism of a blue coloured equanimity.

  Markets were a teeming place as undoubtedly the New Year’s Eve was just about to arrive its way to Zurich and no hypothesis remained on a cherubic blue planet like Earth which could either ways affirm the dearth of shopping in women, which indeed lived in an exceedingly rationalized and affluent city like Zurich which already had the peculiarity of being situated in a country like Hitzerland (new name of Switzerland; formally proposed by the national government in 2016), which was universally called the grandeur of the world.

  The court bell rang with its full passion as it used to be prior to that day but something was surely different about that day which was not at all related to the direction of the Sun or the rotation of the Earth.