Tuesday's Truffle is...Short Fiction!

Cobra! Sahib! Cobra!

by

Cleveland W. Gibson

I wake up in a sweat, full of dread, seeing coloured, sharp images multiply beyond recognition.  I see her everywhere. I try to sleep but she invades my brain. I swear I've a hole in my skull through which she drifts but I can't prove it. Like daemons, the images beckon, then jump out at me forcing me awake.

I stand trembling in the middle of the night, unable to cast off the scourge of certain events, even though they took place in India many years ago. I may never get rid of feeling trapped like a caged animal.  Always the scene flashed in my mind's eye to torture me.  In my nightmare everything is as black as if it's me inside the body bag, it's me trying to come alive again, and it's me trying to claw a way out of my personal hell.

To say I was riddled with guilt might be a gross understatement.

I remember acting like a madman, as I waited those split seconds, for the security gate to our house at 53 Ripon Street, Calcutta, to be forced open.

“There's a murderer in there, Bearer,” I shouted. “I must save Sarah.”

He didn't answer. The medics bustled around him with drips as he tried to stifle a look of pain. 

The stab wound to his neck appeared serious enough to saturate his shirt. Soon the medics

would whisk him away to the Gandhi hospital on Lower Circular Road.

I'd seen the butter brown face, at the window, of the psychopathic killer hunted by the police. That grabbed my attention, as well as knowing Sarah, my wife, was inside our house alone with the violent killer Ali Sunja. His track record meant every person he met faced a cold, lonely grave.

I entered the courtyard at speed, then crept up the wide wooden staircase built on the side

of the house.  My revolver felt comforting in my hand.  I used the cover of the guava tree 

in climbing upwards to the first floor.

I passed through the open doorway and, though I listened carefully, all I heard was the 

sound of the grandfather clock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

“Sarah!” I shouted. “Where are you?”

First the single shot. Then Sarah screamed. From the sound of the shot I placed her in the bathroom. As I rushed to help her, I heard more shots in rapid succession. Then I felt the tense atmosphere, the strange eerie silence. I shivered.

“Sarah!”

The flimsy door stood ajar. I kicked it open wider still. I darted in to see Sarah lying 

in a bathtub of bubbles, her head thrown back, an arm twisted beneath her. I saw blood on her 

face, enough to make me fear the worst.

“Sarah! My God!”

In the same instant I fired one shot. One shot was enough, but then I was a Bisley Trophy Holder, a born marksman. An army sniper.

Sarah lay out of the bathtub at an awkward angle. Her position suggested death to me. After my time in the Burmese jungle I knew a dead body when I saw one.

On a mat across the floor lay the Indian Ali Sunja, a victim to the snake attack. 

He looked dead, as dead as the cobra a few feet away from him, the one I'd shot a second ago for killing my Sarah.

I hardly had time to take it all in when I heard a shout behind me.

“Cobra, Sahib! Cobra!”

I always remember that warning shout. It still fuels my nightmares. But it saved my life by 

alerting me--to the second cobra that loved its dead mate. 

It also hated me. Revenge. Revenge.

I turned.  The cobra, with its hypnotic red eyes, slid over the thin raffia matting toward me. As it reared it pumped up its hood.  Through my sunglasses I looked cold death in the face. I sweated.

I shot again.

                                                       #

I had thought myself wise to leave Sarah a loaded gun in case an incident like this arose. I swallowed hard, savouring the bitterness, the irony of the situation. My eyes filled with tears.

Wisdom is always fine, in retrospect. I stumbled through my parlor, past the numerous trophies I'd won for shooting that now gathered dust.

Wisdom too might have saved Sarah, if only I'd taught her to shoot straight.

Like me.

The End

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Cleveland W. Gibson is the author of digital shorts Silver Wolf and Only 
the Best, plus several others available through amazon.com. He was born 
in colonial India in an atmosphere of colour, mystery and intrigue. In 
the UK, he worked in the government, trained as a life guard, and was a 
road race director for over ten years. Since taking up writing, he’s 
published over 200 short stories, poems, articles in more than 
eighty-five countries. His current project is a fantasy novel, House of 
the Skull Drum.

You can read more short fiction by Cleveland here. 

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