I met a woman named India. Her name annoyed me. It made me think her parents must have been hippies who thought it would be cool to name their daughter after a country, or they were on drugs when they dreamed up her name. I hated that hippy dippy crap. I’d seen it before. I knew a guy named Tibet, of all things. He went nuts in high school, and, far as I know, he’s in a psychiatric hospital to this day 15 years later. Maybe his weird name destined him to weird out and screw up his gray matter. At least they didn’t name him Jesus, who knows what kind of God complex that could have hung on him, and he’d have a lot to try to live up to.
“How did you get a name like India?” I asked India, hiding my dislike of her name.
She said, “My parents were hippies, and still kinda are. My mother always wanted to go to India but never got the chance, so she named me India.
That makes a lot of sense, I thought to myself. Typical hippy dippy thinking. I felt even surer her parents were stoned when they came up with that ridiculous name. Because India was beautiful and built and had an engaging smile and seemed nice in spite of her annoying name, I put my bias aside. I had been unfair and decided to accept her beyond a name she had no choice in receiving.
We made a date for the next night. I picked India up at her apartment in a quiet apartment complex with tall, leafy trees in abundance. She strolled out of her apartment smartly dressed in a white blouse and a long blue dress. I liked that she dressed conservatively instead of how I imagined her hippy parents must have. I had a retro mental picture of them as aged poster parents for the misbegotten age of Aquarius.
We had dinner at Red Lobster. I liked her table manners, how elegantly she handled the silverware, and how she didn’t talk with her mouth full.
“What do you do for a living?” I asked her.
“I’m an Administrative Assistant for Floyds & Reynolds, a company that sells imported women’s handbags. You’d be surprised at how much money there is in handbags.”
I had no interest in women’s handbags, but I liked that India had a stable job and normalcy in her life. She was nothing like the images her name conjured in my imagination. I felt palpitations of love beginning to stir in my heart. As animated as our conversation was for the rest of the evening, I got the feeling she felt those stirrings too, but with women, you never know. So I kept my casual front up and didn’t show even a hint of my feelings.
I saw her three times after that. On the third night she invited me into her apartment. After she closed the door, she put her arms around me and said, “I love you.”
I couldn’t believe my luck. I said I love you too, and we spent the night in bed together. Before I left the next morning, she said, “I want you to meet my parents tonight.”
“Okay,” I said, realizing she must really love me to want to introduce me to her parents, though I felt a bit uneasy and didn’t want to meet them. What would I have to talk about to aging hippies? I hated what I read about the sixties. Lost kids doing drugs and joining cults and thinking they were going to change the world with their peace and love songs. Yet, all they did was open the door to widespread drug use throughout the world. I wondered if her parents still took LSD and would they be stoned when we met. And how could they spawn such a beautiful, stable woman with a name that could have consigned her to become like a sixties freak living on LSD and all the craziness of that era.
When I met her parents, her father, Daniel, looked like what I thought Jesus would, with his shoulder-length dark, brown hair and his peaceful, brown eyes. But at unguarded times, his eyes turned evil. The incongruity of his appearance disturbed me. Her mother, Serena, had straight black hair flowing down her back, mysterious eyes impossible to read, and a welcoming smile. I didn’t know what to make of her. She was a puzzle to me. I wondered if Daniel abused her when his eyes got the evil look in them. I got angry wondering if he ever abused India. India wasn’t there. She had to visit an aunt in the hospital emergency room and would join us later, her mother told me.
Sandalwood incense permeated the house. Flowers graced the windows. Pictures of the Hindu Goddess Kali hung everywhere. She had four arms. One held a trident, one a bloodied sword and one a hacked off head dripping blood into a pot held by her fourth hand. Multiple skulls hung around her neck like a macabre, Hawaiian Lei.
The images of Kali were only pictures, but they alarmed me. I remembered reading about the Thuggees of India who robbed and strangled people to death as rituals for the goddess Kali. I chastised myself for being foolish and put my fears aside. These were just old hippies still obsessed with Eastern Spirituality.
Daniel smiled. “I have a surprise for you. Go get it Sandra. Sandra marched into the kitchen and came back with a pitcher of a red liquid.
“Ever try watermelon wine?” he said.
“No,” I said. As a lover of watermelon, I wondered how it tasted as a wine.
Sandra poured the wine into my glass for me to sample.
“Thanks,” I said, and took a sip. It was the best wine I ever tasted. Sandra poured more into my glass, noticing the delight on my face. I finished the watermelon wine and said, “How do you … how … do … you ….” and I passed out.
I woke up sometime later tied to a post in the house’s cellar that had an ungodly smell. More pictures of Kali were in the room. The pictures sat on shrine tables, two shines had a pile of ashes on trays in front of the pictures.
“What the hell is this!” I howled. “Why am I tied up?”
Daniel grinned devilishly. “You are going to have the supreme honor of being sacrificed to Kali, just like Jeff Steward and William Banes did. Did you hear about them on the news?
I shook my head. The news ran reports on the missing young men daily, and the police had no leads in the case. They vanished and no one knew what happened to them.
“You see those ashes on those two Kali Shrines?”
I nodded, my body perspiring. Fear paralyzing me, I knew where the conversation was going. I knew where I was going.
“Oh, don’t look shocked,” Daniel said. “They will be reborn as holy men devoted to Kali and will have many followers. It’s the greatest honor to be sacrificed to her.” Daniel looked at the pictures of Kali with sickening reverence.
“Why don’t you sacrifice yourselves to her then?”
Because our seva, our service, is to bring sacrifices to Kali. Because of our service, we will cross the ocean of life and death and attain full enlightenment when we drop our bodies and leave the earth plane.
Piss poor excuse, I thought, for psychopathic behavior. What the hell happened to the peace and love?
Daniel told me to get a good night’s sleep. “Tomorrow you will be purified in the fires of cremation and on your way to becoming a great holy man in service to Kali. You don’t know how lucky you are to have been chosen by India for this supreme honor. She could have picked anyone, but she picked you for this greatest of all earthly honors.
“Good night,” Sandra whispered, like a mother about to tuck in a child. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I was furious with India for deceiving me and setting me up to be murdered. But, I calmed and wished she could be brought to justice along with her murderous parents. I wondered if she helped with the cremations. At that moment, in the darkness of that cellar, she crept into it and approached me.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I am going to help you escape. It was different with the others. I didn’t love them. I love you, my future husband.”
“Others,” I said, surprised at how calm I was. I believe seeing a chance to save my life calmed me down a little.
“Yes, Jeff Steward and William Banes. You heard of them?”
“Yes. I guess that’s them over there,“ I said, pointing to the ashes.
“Exactly. They are holy men following Kali now, a higher honor you could not find.”
“But, because I love you and don’t want you to leave me, I’m going to set you free. But you must promise me one thing, that you will always love me and not tell anyone about this. And that you will marry me. Promise?”
“I promise,” I said.
“Swear it in the name of the goddess Kali and know if you break your promise in Kali’s name, she will come after you.”
“I swear in the name of Kali I won’t break my promise to you. Now please untie me and let me get out of here!”
“Swear to Kali you will marry me.”
“Okay. Okay. I swear to Kali I will marry you. Now get me out of here!”
India untied me and led me out a back door and to my car. She kissed me and said, “I love you forever and please keep your promise, my darling, future husband.”
I raced to the police station and told them everything. Months later, India and her mother and father got sent to prison. I received a letter from India that read something like even though you broke your promise to me, I still love you and always will. Please come visit me and marry me. I should be out in seven years with parole and we can live happily ever after. I know now what I did was wrong, and I want to make it up to you. Please come see me, my love, my future husband.
Love,
India
I tore the letter up and threw it in the trash. I just couldn’t forgive her for what she did, and I could never trust her. I suspected she was as screwed up as her parents, the apple not falling far from the tree thing, and could one day try to kill me in a whacked out religious frenzy.
I haven’t get over the horror of what she and her parents tried to do to me. Every night I have terrifying nightmares. Kali comes after me in all her horrifying fierceness. She chases me around a dark cellar, her arms waving in the air, her sword poised to hack my head off. Just as she is about to catch me, I wake gasping for breath, my body trembling and covered in sweat. I fear one day she will catch me and kill me in that nightmare and drag my soul to some Hindu hell. I pray I’m wrong!
Bob Boyd