Monday 15 October 2018

The Predator


His name was Ajeet Chakravarti and he was one of the best Scrabble players in the country. He had a way with the tiles - both on the rack and on the board. He just had to give one little glance and words formed themselves in his mind. And not just any words. His mind analysed the value of the tiles and their positional value on the board to maximise his score after taking into account the doubling and tripling of letter and word scores. It automatically considered the bonus of using all the letters on his rack in the same turn and also thought of where he could tempt his opponent to give him a bonanza on the next score. But there were many others as good or better than him. And he did not like to lose.
He was Ajeet (invincible and not defeatable, in Sanskrit) and Chakravarti (emperor in the same language). How could he lose? At Scrabble or anything else ...

His Scrabble skills were well known in the fraternity but few knew that he was also a predator. He went for the brainy kind of victims. He preyed on them through engaging them on their skill of Scrabble. He lured them by playing a mediocre game and letting them win a few times with a very narrow margin once in a while. He was also very jovial and kept them well wined and dined, so that their senses were lulled into complacence. And then, when they least expected it, he struck. All his victims were from the Scrabble crowd, but the fear of ridicule kept his victims silent.

Once he had them eating out of his hand, he usually invited them home to see his custom-made
Scrabble board.  They usually took the bait willingly. And it was a splendid board. He had made it himself out of rose and teak wood. He had meticulously carved the designs and the text in the bonus squares. Each tile was hand-carved from ivory and the letters and letter values were painted in jet black in bold Roman font.  Though it was truly an artistic masterpiece there was something more to the board.

The back of his opponent's tile rack had a digital display. A strategically placed camera in one of the light fittings captured the image of the tiles on the opponent's rack on a real-time basis and sent it to a computer under the table. The computer ran optical character recognition software on the image and sent it to the display. So he knew what exactly his opponent had in stock. But that was not all.

Another camera captured the image from his rack and sent the same to the computer for identifying the tiles on his rack, though these were not sent to a display. His rack, of course, did not have a display behind it. A third camera kept track of real-time position of tiles on the board. All the data was analysed by a complicated but efficient program on the computer, which worked out his best options. He could see these options on the same display by just raising his eyes from the board when it was his turn to play. He was not taking any chances. He had to ensure he won.  There was no way he could lose at this board. But he still lost.

The losses were intentional. He lost or at least kept the score fairly even for the first few games. All the while, he kept his victim well supplied with alcohol - laced with a drug. When he sensed that the victim was losing inhibition, he proposed a game of Strip Scrabble. An entertaining offbeat variant he explained where, when one person used all tiles on the rack in one go, the other had to discard a piece of clothing. The computer ensured his superiority. It never stopped with the victim discarding the final piece. It always went beyond it - with or without consent.

**

He never played at the national level as he did not want to attract attention to himself. The state level pool of players provided him enough prey and that too on his home turf. He first saw Mahi at the State-level Scrabble championships.  He had not seen her at earlier championships.  He looked at the list of competitors, mentally ticking off all female ones as "Done". One name was new -  Mahi Date. That was her full name. Probably a Chitpawan Maharashtrian, he thought. Quite a few of them had grey-green eyes, which were rare in India. But he could not see here eyes. For reasons best known to her, she was wearing a veil. It added an aura of mystery to her. It piqued his interest and added to his appreciation of the rest of her. 

He played the round robin games in the championship defeating all the seven others, except her. He let her win. She had won all her games. The elimination games against others were won by him and her and they ended up pitted against each other in the final. This time he played a ping-pong scoring game. He just surpassed her score every time by a small tantalizing margin which she easily made up on her turn. He let her win in the end. He had identified his next victim.

She was crowned the State Champion and he hosted a party feting her victory. Somewhere during the evening he mentioned his unique Scrabble board. Though she was still veiled, he sensed her curiosity as evidenced by her further conversation. Ajeet had not only lost the game, but for the first time he had lost his heart. Her silvery voice pleasing to his ears.  He had not seen her face yet. And for the first time, he wanted to see her eyes. But old habits die hard...

**

His modus operandi remained the same. And they were down to their last bit of clothing. His boxers and her veil. The veil still tantalizingly stood between him and the face. He was still not sure of the colour of the eyes. He had enquired about the veil and she had said, "Some secrets should  be saved for the last."

It was his turn now and he was ready with his coup-de-grace. He played his winning move and said, "Now I want to remove your veil."

"Me too,: she joined in.

He bent across the board and disrobed her face. And shrank back in horror. The eyes were grey-green as he had expected. But they were ensconced in the sockets of her skull without the protection of eyelids. There was no flesh on the bone and she had a deathly grin on her face..

And just before he went into paralysis, the last thing he heard say was, "Times Up! I am sure your have figured out that Mahi Date is an anagram of 'I am Death'. But death is an easy release for your kind. You shall live on and suffer for what you have done in the past. I shall come for you when your punishment is completed. In the meantime, I have to attend to several more predators."

**

I got this story from Ajeet himself. His massive attack of paralysis after the event had left him unable to do even the simplest things. It was with great difficulty that he narrated the above events, as he could not speak clearly. He gave me the story tile by tile and that took quite a lot of time.

I did not know of what to do with his story. I did meet Mahi several times during the next one month and we played games at the club. She was still wearing a veil. I asked her about it and the time she wore it for the competition. She said, "I was suffering from a skin condition and had to keep my face protected from the sun. When I went indoors, I thought I would retain the veil to spare my competitors from being un-nerved by my patchy and unsightly face."

Over the days, in spite of Ajeet's tale, I was getting attracted to her even though I had not seen her face. I am the type of guy who gets turned on by women with high IQ. One evening after I won a game, she tilted her head in a characteristic way and asked me appraisingly. "How about on a date tonight?" I punningly replied, "A date with Miss Date is definitely welcome. In fact, I was hoping you would ask."

She asked in a husky voice, "Your place or mine?"

Rather direct, I felt, but I was smitten too and beyond redemption. "Mine", I replied,. "We can have dinner at my place. I have something unique for you."

**

After we reached home, I re-steamed the string-hoppers from the fridge and served it with a bean curry flavoured with Szechuan peppers, to the accompaniment of kokum sherbet, which she found delightful.

I asked her, "I was feeling that this might be the right time to remove your veil."

"Me too," she replied. I braced myself for the worst, as she proceeded to remove it. "Who knows what evil lurks in the minds of men," as The Shadow says. Those grey-green eyes were delightfully attractive. They were framed by eyelids sporting long lashes and accompanied by eyebrows which gave me a questioning look.  I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Beautiful," I stuttered. Everything was splendid.  And then, her pretty lips opened to reveal her pearly teeth as she asked me if she could stay over.

The next morning the face was still there and I am still fit and fine enough to type out this story. Maybe Ajeet had had hallucinations, or maybe Schezuan peppers were an antidote. Or, maybe (I flatter myself here), Miss Date "Death" could not resist me.  I convinced myself it was the last option that was true.

Or maybe, I was one of the few who hadn't invited the wrath of the #MeToo movement ... or maybe, Mahi had been possessed for some time ...

***


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