Patience was not one of Jack’s virtues. He didn’t have many to begin with. And he just revolted when somebody tried to pin him down. Lately he’d been a bit upset because they wanted him to shift base to another city. Cops were beginning to smell something fishy. It’s best to bail out at this point, his associate had said.

‘‘Prove? Prove what? To whom? Nobody is that important to me,’ bellowed Jack on his end of the line.

‘You don’t understand the gravity of the situation, Mr. Thorn. The workers need to be compensated to settle the matter,’ said his associate on the other end.

‘Listen fella, I’ve been behaving very nicely with these people,’ replied Jack. When Jack got angry he threw reason out of the window. ‘All I need to do to settle the matter is’, continued Jack, ‘take the mask off and get the knife out.’

‘All they need to do is inform the cops. And when cops come to know of it, it will not be possible for us to fight them.’

‘I don’t fight, I punish. And if I get it in my brains to finish them off…’

‘Now listen, Mr. Thorn, You can’t do th…’

‘…no cops, no mafia, no luck and no God will save them from me. You can tell them that.’

‘I know they are nothing. But at the moment they seem to be having all the power.’

‘You are forgetting one thing, fella. I need to refresh your memory before I hang up. Power… That’s my game.’

With this Jack slammed the receiver down hard. He hated opposition, especially when it came from virtual nobodies like those minions. He poured whisky in his glass. He loved its smell and the taste. He hated beer though; just couldn’t stand the taste of it. That would be his third drink. In the couple of drinks that preceded it, he had bothered to dilute them with coke. He didn’t this time. It all went down in a couple of swigs.

‘How dare they!’ The glass breaks in his hand and cuts into the inside of his fierce fist, making the blood seep out.

Jack was virtually untouched by the virtue of sensitivity. He looked upon sensitive people as weak. Some women are more masculine than others, and some men are more feminine than others. It seemed nature had not bestowed Jack Thorn with even a shred of femininity. He may have had some sensitivity, but it sure needed a catastrophic event to bring it out in him.

‘Bloody nobodies!’ fumed Jack with broken glass clenched even tighter in his bloodied fist.

………………………………….

Bitch monk never probed into people’s lives, yet people gave him such undeserving name; because he was helpless, because he didn’t hurt anybody. That’s probably why local people never wanted him put in some sort of asylum in the first place; because he was harmless. 

 ‘Why, bitch, why… because you wanted me, bitch, wanted me… to… to wear like him. Why? why? why? To…to…to talk like him?’ stuttered the monk. ‘Get it? Get it? Bitch…’ he continued.

 He wasn’t a very old man, unlike his lifestyle would suggest. Thirty three at the most, if that. But his beard and long graying hair hid his real age. He appeared forty-fiveish to the superficial observers. And nobody observed him closely. They didn’t need to. They knew him as the old monk from that hut up the top who used too many why’s in his speech whenever he spoke and that was it for them.

 

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