Dilawar Duggal was a sharp entrepreneur. 

He had to be, in order to run a business, smack-dab in the middle of nowhere-ville, Punjab. 

For example, he could tell by the make of a customer's car, and the style of his/her haircut; exactly what they'd likely order from his hotel's menu. 

Honda: Tea/Paratha/Butter combo. 

Suzuki: Karahi Chicken with Butter Naan. Lassi to go. 

Toyota: Cigarettes. 

Duggal also knew, when to assert his authority on the hotel's only other employee; his cousin Dilshad Duggal, AKA The Resident Storyteller Extraordinaire. Such as right now. DIlawar was mentally butchering his cousin as the latter hung around the open-air dining area, chatting up the late-late-night road-trippers who'd stopped by for refreshments at his tiny Highway-side diner. 

"...and they say that she has been roam alone in these parts ever since, covered head to toe in black. Occasionally, she'd stand on the roadside as a hitchhiker. And if any poor bastard was stupid enough to give her a lift. Oof! she sits in the backseat, and after a while, just vanishes into thin air. Poof! like that! and next thing you know. the driver's eyes fall out of his skull, and he's left screaming, trying to drive without eyes." Dilshad's avid audience of late-night travelers let out mixed sounds of disbelief tinged with fear. He was customarily sitting on his haunches, an embroidered shawl draped across his skinny shoulders, his hand pausing to stir the Doodh Patti tea that was brewing on a small propane stove situated in a corner of the (illegally occupied) dining area. 

"Mama. Do you think she's real? Kaali Dulhan (The Black Bride)? I don't want to sit with her in the back!" a young girl of about five anxiously asked her mother, who hurriedly consoled the child, while shooting murderous glares at Dilshad. 

"There there now missy," Dilawar hurriedly tried to diffuse the damage, settling a cup of sizzling hot tea in front of a lone male traveler, "Kaali Dulhan is just a crazy story! Lies!" 

"Except it's a Real LIfe crazy story," Dilshad shook his head solemnly, completely unaware of the pointed glares of most adults around him, "Every story seems crazy, until one day, it happens to you, and then BOOM! what do you know? Kaali Dulhan is sitting in the back of your car, scratching your eyes out." 

"But I only have two!" the child wailed loudly, clutching at her eyes. Much to the annoyance of other customers, she continued to cry loudly, until her distraught parents carried her off into their parked Hiace. 

"Next time you decide to tell that crazy story to customers, make sure you ask that witch for a job, because I swear to God, I will kick you out without severance. Family be damned!" Dilawar hissed to his cousin, before stomping off to collect bills. 

Dilshad made a face at his back. 

"I hope she comes for you one day. Then we'll see who's crazy!" 

......................

Having a near perfect eidetic memory was important to Sofia's plan. It certainly wasn't her physical stamina that ensured her escape; she was panting and wheezing like an overworked mule by the time she reached one of the dingy roadside dhaabas near the highway. Helped by the very vivid collection of images from her first Karachi-to-Kherian drive, she avoided the route to Karachi, choosing to walk for hours in the opposite direction. If her geographic calculation was accurate (and it most certainly was), she'd reach the Punjab province soon, because Kherian was the second last town on the Sindh border, nestled under an off-shoot of the Indus River, the village was a mix of Punjabi and Sindhi culture, with multilingual inhabitants. 

Dawn had already started to break, and if she weren't terrified of running into any search parties for her, Sofia might have taken the time to truly appreciate the stunning vista of the National Highway near dawn-break. The wide road strip stretched behind and in front of her, surrounded by wild fields on both sides. The sun was just beginning to rise from the far-off roots in the fields, and the whole sky was lilac, orange, grey, tea-pink and red and the same time. As it was though, this idyllic beauty had so far only served to destroy Sofia's illusions about family, blood and land, and the peaceful rural imagery of the Sindh-Punjab landscape filled her with irritated revulsion whenever she considered the deception she had been the target of. 

Lesson Learned: Hell can sometimes look just like Heaven.  

God had been kind to this patch of the earth. The weather was breezy with a hint of chill, and the stunning wild beauty of the fields was almost breathtaking. The only thing Man-made for miles was this dilapidated local eatery, crudely made out of mismatched logs, and cheap, recycled aluminium. A hand-painted Pepsi logo was almost faded under the equally faded bilingual store title scribbled with charcoal: "Hotel Merryot", the English was democratically written beside the Urdu title of the same name. 

Sofia chuckled hysterically when she realized the cheeky optimism of this tiny hovel. The shack was barely bigger than a shoebox! a mini cafe at best, it wasn't a 'hotel', by any standards. In case anyone could ever mistake it for the real "Merryot" hotel, the owner had added a tiny disclaimer in Urdu below the name: 

"!ہماری کوئی برانچ نہی ہے"

(We don't have a branch!)

Good old Pakistani narcissism. 

Intense hunger and exhaustion surpassed her hilarity, the moment that she stepped near the diner entrance. If heaven had a smell, it was Hotel Merryot! the earthy scents of coal-roasted meat and buttered bread assailed her senses, until she thought she could literally fill her stomach just by sniffing the air like a flu-stricken hound. Throwing caution and discretion to the wind, she ignored the couple of customers sitting on the roadside tables, sidled right up to the tiny open window counter on the concealed side of the highway, and peered inside. A heavy-set bearded bear of a man stared back with sleepy eyes. He seemed to blink in slow motion a few times, as if clearing his head of sleep, before his confusion turned to almost comical horror. 

"What do you want from me?" he croaked in Punjabi-accented Urdu, after uttering a prayer in Arabic. She thought she heard him say Kaali Dulhan, but it was too hushed to be sure.

"Something to eat," Sofia coughed back weakly, puzzled at the man's odd reaction. 

He quickly wrapped up a chest piece inside a fresh naan, and thrust the offering to Sofia, shuddering repeatedly when he accidentally touched the head-to-toe black wrap covering her wrist. 

"I can't pay you right now, but I can come back and do it later..." Sofia started to say when the man almost wept with distress and insisted that she consider the food a gift, and never darken his door ever. He might have also blown some more Arabic verses in her direction, but Sofia was too busy scurrying off to a deserted corner, and tearing into the food, to notice. 

With a fuller stomach, came the belated realization that if there was ever a chance to hitchhike to safety; it was this diner. Another worry plagued Sofia: her face. Pretty soon, her extended family would realize that she'd escaped, and they'll search the closest communities first. Perhaps her plan to walk away from the original route might buy her a few hours, but if Tayajee was even slightly proactive, he'll surely be visiting this dhaaba soon. And anyone at this diner could be prompted to recognize her from her photos. Her alert gaze swept across the deserted rear part of the diner. She cautiously walked around the rectangular space and peeped into the open-air dining area. It was empty except for a snoozing shawl-covered man, and a lone male customer, who was sipping on a tiny green tea-cup, scrolling through his cellphone. With his back to Sofia, all she could see were his lean-broad shoulders, clean-cut hair and the soft glow of his cellphone. With the weird hotel owner out of sight inside the kitchen, the area had an almost surreal-stillness to it. 

Moving towards the other side of the diner, Sofia came to a mostly empty makeshift parking lot. An overly bedecked 80's Honda motorcycle was chained to a lone light-pole, and beside this useless vehicle was the object of Sofia's interest: A blue-black Toyota Fortuner. She correctly guessed that the owner was the tea-guy from the diner. The tires and hood of the vehicle was dusty from the road, and a small blinking blue light near the windshield was reflected in the side-mirrors. 

'There's no way he'd be stupid enough to leave it unlocked...' she wondered desperately. The last thing she needed, was to trigger any automatic alarms, by touching the door handle. 'Please, please God. I will never eat meat again. I will spend my days on a prayer mat. I will never even look at a man again. Just please let him be an idiot.'

She squeezed her eyes shut and tugged at the door handle. 

The car started shrieking like a robotic cat in labor. 

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck..." Sofia moaned under her breath, looking wildly around for a hiding place. With seconds to spare, the best option was to crawl on her hands and knees and crouch under the massive tires of the vehicle. Hopefully, the Non-Idiot will think the alarm was triggered by a stray rodent. 

From her hiding place, Sofia could only see a pair of well worn Adidas crunching over to the parking lot. They paused a few feet away, before the screeching car suddenly quieted. Another pair of feet joined the Adidas, and Sofia heard the crazy diner owner say: 

"It's her. I can feel it." 

"It's who?" came the bored reply. 

"Kaali Dulhan. She's latched onto you my good man. Only death and blindness will stop her now." 

Adidas snorted derisively. 

"Yeah. Okay. As long as she splits the gas bill, she can latch on all she wants." 

"She revels in misery, and despair. All her victims so far have been lone men," the diner owner wasn't done laying it thickly. 

"I'm not too worried. If it comes to that, I'm sure my wife will avenge my untimely demise..." Adidas sounded like he was rolling his eyes as he walked away. 

Meanwhile, Sofia's brain was busy recalling every single thing she'd ever read or practiced about automobile safety. While vastly different from space shuttles, one thing was certainly true for them both: there was always more than one way to enter a vehicle. 

She considered and discarded the option of actually asking Adidas for help. Nobody would be crazy enough to give a ride to a weird strange woman walking alone on a highway in her nightshirt and a chaddar. If the situations were reversed, even Sofia wouldn't help herself. She could be a terrorist enabler, or an elaborate kidnapping ploy.  Hell, anyone with a lick of common sense and survival instincts would speed right past her...or run her down for good measure. 

If he wasn't an idiot, there was a likely chance that he hadn't turned off the alarm system when he had quieted the car earlier. With a rough plan in mind she crawled out from under the car. 

As an experiment, she cautiously tugged at the door handle again.

The car shrieked as loud as the last time. 

Again, Adidas walked over to inspect the area, and a second later the shrieking stopped as he went away. 

This time when Sofia tugged at the door and nothing happened, she smiled to herself for the first time that night. 

He had turned the alarm off. Likely thinking that the remote batteries were acting up. It was a common problem with automatic vehicles. 

'Thank you God. And thank you Adidas,' she thought to herself.

Deftly, Sofia yanked and unscrewed the aluminium car antenna from the side of the windshield. Yanking the rusty old rear-view mirror from the abandoned motorcycle, she used it to create a wedge between the car doors. The car was a heavy one, so she was panting by the time she was able to jam the long antenna inside the wedge. It took over five minutes of cursing, and panting and twisting before her makeshift car-breaker-in could reached the lock buttons on the side of the door. On the tenth try, she succeeded in hitting the tiny antenna knob to the lock. 

It was hard not to weep with joy as soon as the heavenly click sound was heard. 

Yanking the door quietly open, Sofia was mentally high-fiving herself. 

"Nice work." a familiar, deep voice said from behind her.  

"Thanks!" she had already chirped out before her body froze with fear. 

Adidas.  

The incriminating antenna clutched in her right hand suddenly became the center of her universe. It was the only real thing that she held onto, like a safety float tethering her to earth, without which she'd surely disintegrate into nothingness, from acute mortification. 

"Drop the stick and turn around," Adidas ordered softly. His voice was low, but there was no mistaking the anger beneath it. 

Sofia considered jamming the antenna in his eyes, and running for it. That's certainly what Kaali Dulhan would have done. Maybe the mythical witch was onto something...

"I said drop the damned stick!" he added sharply this time. 

Squeezing her eyes shut, she turned around and dropped the antenna in the dirt below. 

Time to face the music...

Author's Note: 

EEEK! I am so excited for this part of the story! XD I have been replaying this scene in my head since months now, so I am very nervous and excited to write it. I want to get it just right. That's why I had to stop in the middle and break it into a chapter. Have to build the appropriate amount of suspense y'know... ^_^

Anyways, Loved your comments guys! *Hugs and Kizzezz*

This is actually getting a much, much better response than my previous book! maybe the third person thing really is working out...hmm...or maybe it's just the anticipation of 'Hot Pissed Off stranger' that I mentioned in the blurb, and that several of you have reminded me, I need to introduce soon enough. 

I will. Sooner than soon, hopefully. 

As always, none of my chapters will follow a timetable or specific length format. As I have indicated before, I am impulsive, moody and very much my own boss 

(EEV laughs derisively)

and hence, I'll see you when I see you. And that is that. 

Let me know what you think of the story so far, and in case you've gone nuts over the beautiful cover art in the description, blame hershey-z for that. She's given me a bunch of swoon-worthy art that I will stingily hog for the future chapters. (You may however, check out her amazing cover art book 'Artraphics' to view them). 

Love and Butter Naan, 

-E.