Those fingers. What have they not touched in such a short, unfortunate time? I could’ve written a ridiculously flowery song about you, for you. And watched you attach rhythm and tune to it like mango hairs attach to molars. Too bad a pistol came in our way. A distinctly large, dark and fatal mango hair.

The same mango hair, as it happens, that you’re loading now.

A spring in that step; a sense of purpose, both of which I have found to be disappointingly absent for a long time. You’re renewed, Nisha. Renewed as the night-time that’s so swiftly dispelled by impending dawn. At last, I get to see the fluttering, mothlike girl I threw myself at like an umbrella in a tornado.

Not here; not where granny breathed her last. One death makes a room sacred; two deaths make it cursed. Stride to the other room. The one with your favourite cupboard. It is always more satisfying to end evil when you can watch it flail and choke and expel its final gasp into the ether. The cupboard offers you that advantage.

The advantage of beholding the villain of your story, before finishing the story and the villain altogether.