Chapter 3. Deadly Hand

For the nth time I told the general that I didn’t know the whereabouts of the decoding device and anyway, it was of little use to them as the professor had decoded and published all of the Victorian diaries and some of the codex scrolls too [ECHO#02-5]. He didn’t like my response “Come now Mister Priest. The ancient artefact is thousands of years old yet too advanced a technology for its time therefore the property of DARPA”. “It was found in India by a British explorer” I protested only to get an angry stare in return. “Property of the U.S. and DARPA” he said firmly and signalled the guard. That was it, the interrogation was at an end. As I was escorted back to the cells, I wondered whether there was more to the artefact than an ancient encryption device or were the military just clutching at straws in their obsessive hunt for the mythological weapons of the ancient Gods?

Back in the cell I found Piyush. “I need something to take my mind of this place. Do you have any more to tell of your dominant aunty?” I asked wearily. “Just one as it happens” he answered. “Do you remember my telling you that I should have listened to aunty when she told me no good will come of letting that lovely but lethal girl-thief live? Well a few days later I was working in auntie’s garden when this old flat-bed truck drew up nosily on the road on the other side of the garden wall. Suddenly a gang of 4 Lambani roughs came pouring over the wall, alarming me. They were big ugly dirty looking brutes with viscous sneers and the look of violence. “Fang! Seize!” one of the men yelled and in response a huge nasty slobbering black dog leapt over the wall, set it’s evil eyes upon me and immediately raced towards me. There’s a saying that Indian parents tell their kids “Black dogs eat people”. You know “Eat up your food or a black dog will eat you” and stuff like that. I was terrified and fled towards the house but the gypsies intercepted my route.

“Ouch!” I cried as I felt the jaws of the snarling slobbering beast clamp around my ankle bringing me to the ground to eat me. “Fang no! Not this time. Release! Release I say!” one of the men ordered but the beast was reluctant to give up it’s dinner. “Release!” he shouted giving the man-eating hound a hard smack upon the snout. By now the others had caught up and helped separate me from the foul beast. The roughs dragged me back towards the wall with plenty of hard kicks and punches to get my co-operation while Fang kept worrying after my leg to get a piece of human flesh. “Aunt ... BOROOPH!” my cry for help was brutally shut down by a punch in the gut. Once they got me over the wall and into the back of their truck, they beat the crap out of me while another of their gang drove the truck away at high speed with screeching tyres and a trail of dust. Laughing uproariously they didn’t stop beating me up until I passed out under the blows, cut, badly bruised and bleeding.

When I finally came to I found myself on the veranda of a large mansion, set at the end of a long driveway. There were a lot of Lambani thugs lurking around but all paid deference to the mature white haired man in an expensive looking white suit, white shirt, tie and hat sitting in a large wicker-back chair. Smoking a Cuban cigar his fingers idly drummed a glass-topped table at his side with a cut-glass decanter on top and a glass by his hand. This was the local gang-lord and he did not look like a nice man even though he tried to dress and act like a rich man. “When Leila did not return” He started speaking without even looking at my bruised battered form. “I was most concerned. After all she was an expensive investment, her training and all that you understand?” he took a drag on his cigar and blew smoke through his teeth. “Then when the boys found her lovely young body thrown out like trash. Well” He paused raising his hand. I saw the rich jewel encrusted rings on his fingers as he made a dismissive gesture. “To say that I was more than a little disappointed in my investment would be an exaggeration” he continued.

His eyes flickered briefly to the corner where a voice spoke up “Hold him for me. I will kill him once my limbs have healed”. I looked and saw the lovely girl-thief sitting in a smaller wicker chair, her arms and legs plastered and bandaged. Her smouldering seductive brown eyes burrowed with hatred into me as she spoke “I will keep him barely alive for 6 days beating him to within an inch of his live ignoring his pathetic pleas to be put out of his misery. Then on the seventh I will slowly break his body apart so he dies a most agonising death”. I realised that beauty was not everything and even a beauty such as she was heartless and evil. I looked away from her in disgust, to think that I had felt pity for her when aunty was beating her. “You had your chance and you failed me” remarked the gang-lord with clear contempt. “It was that fat old aunty of his” the girl protested. “Enough!” he barked then gathered his composure as if he were a civilised man. “You see, young man, you will be my guest here until your family pay recompense for...” he waved his cigar in the direction of the girl-thief then continued. “Of course we will then have to kill you” he added chillingly. “Maybe I will give you to Leila and her Kali-cult for one of their pagan sacrifices. You know how it is” he chuckled as if sharing a joke “It’s nothing personal it’s just business”.

Just then Leila began to get agitated. “It’s her!, kill her, kill her!” she cried in alarm. I turned my head in the direction she was staring. At the top of the driveway a familiar large figure walked past the gate posts straight into the compound striding purposefully towards us down the long drive. The old man scoffed “That fat old cow did this to you? You really are a disgrace Leila”. “But...” she began to protest. “Shh child. I don’t want to hear any more of your excuses” the gang-lord cut her off “The woman is just a fat aunty concerned for her nephew. No doubt she has read our ransom note and has come to negotiate terms”. Even from this distance I could see that aunty was wearing the black sari of discipline and knew with mounting excitement that she would think nothing of disciplining these gangsters. She just kept on marching towards the veranda with a determined look upon her face.

“I proved myself to you. None of your men could beat me in a fight. That shows how dangerous she is. She’s a lot stronger than she looks. Kill her!” Leila urged. The gang-lord considered this for a moment then told one of his men “Go tell the men to stop the fat old tub of lard then escort her to me”. The man left the veranda and barked instructions. A group of men went out to meet aunty as she continued to stride down the drive. There must have been well over a dozen of them converging upon her at different rates yet aunty stared right through them at the gang-lord.

The quickest of the men reached her and tried to block her way. Without even slowing down aunties’ thick right arm shot out like a thunderbolt. CRACK! Her big fist blasted his jaw and the goon was bowled over backwards and hit the soil out cold. The next goon didn’t fare much better. He came in from her side with his arms open trying to catch her. Without even looking at him, auntie’s fist shot up like a rocket at her side. BLAM! Her fist landed so hard that his head snapped back in a spray of spittle and teeth as he went over like a fallen tree. Aunty didn’t even break her stride. The next tough tried to be clever and stand in front of her blocking her way then made a grab with both hands for head. Aunty just hammered her left fist beneath his arms into his unprotected gut. WHUMPH! her fist landed with a very loud sound of something very solid hitting a man’s body. “Worrrraghhh!” he groaned loudly, his body buckling in the middle and his arms falling back by his side. WHUMP her right fist shot forwards again plunging deep into his belly making that same loud sound with such force that his whole body lifted clean off his feet. His body rode auntie’s fist until it finally withdrew letting him fall to the dirt where he crumpled into a tight unmoving ball which aunty casually stepped over and continued walking.

The next goon also blocked aunties’ way and as she went to swing at him, he moved fast trapping one fist then the other in the crook of his arms. Without hesitation the hem of her sheer black sari leapt up as her big wide knee ploughed so hard between the man’s legs with a terrible thud. WHAMP! “Oooooooorrrrrr!” he screamed in anguish, his face contorting into a mask of horrific pain as he rode her knee into the air. My own balls ached in sympathy. Finally he fell to the ground and rolled into a tight ball clutching his nads, puked then passed out. “See I told you” shrieked Leila. “Stop her god-dam it stop her! She’s only a fat old woman stop her!” the gangland shouted to his goons in frustration.

The goons were now coming at aunty thick and fast but to my excitement, she cut through them like a knife knocking them down like skittles with powerful punches to their heads. One tough guy sneered as he nonchalantly knocked aside her blows to the right and left. BAM BAM! BERLAM! Auntie’s fist went right down the middle blasting him right on the side of his jaw with such a loud audible blow that I swear his jaw lurched to his right with a loud crack as his head spun fast under the blow. He too went down and stayed down. Her big pudgy fists were like the hammer of the Gods. There was no safety for them even when they attacked in numbers. BLAM! One goon’s face exploded into a bloody mess as her fist struck the middle of his face, while she blocked an incoming punch from his friend BLAM! who then went down with a shattered jaw. CRACK! A powerful uppercut to the jaw sent the first goon hurtling head over heels backwards to the ground. The sight of my large overweight aunty in a sexy sheer black sari striding down the drive leaving a trail of unconscious bodies of tough guy gangsters in her wake had my dick as stiff as a rod.