Morning bled into Colony Heights like weak tea. Babin Hussain's phone buzzed incessantly, balanced precariously on the edge of the sink as she scrubbed indigo stains from under her nails.
Her vlog, 'Colony Heights Nagin: Liveblogging the Fabric Fiasco!', had exploded overnight. Trolls swarmed: "Fake!" ..."Attention seeker!"... "Send nudes of the Nagin!" But nestled among the garbage was a comment from '@Evette_Obsidian': "She walks where you sleep. Check your reflection near water. The glass lies." Babin snorted, flicking soap bubbles at the screen. "Yeah, right. Next you'll tell me she's my feudatory state wasting my time."
Yet, her thumb hovered over the delete button. The ink match… the pamphlet… "Leave the colony". She glanced at the kitchen tap, dripping steadily. Her reflection shimmered, distorted. Normal. Mostly.
Downstairs, Azmon Hussain meticulously folded the few unshredded saris left in his stall. His movements were stiff, robotic. The damp, threatening note burned a hole in his pocket. "Leave" . He pictured Babin's giggling face, oblivious to the weight pressing down on the colony. "Focus, Hussain," he muttered, smoothing a bolt of peacock-blue georgette.
But his eyes kept darting to the alley where Babin had filmed the woman with the fluid gait vanishing. Today, the shadows seemed deeper, clinging to the damp brickwork like oil.
Up on the third floor, Bablu and Chumki stood silent and unnaturally still by the door while Mrs. Das fastened Chumki's school ribbon. Their usual morning chatter was absent, replaced by a watchful quiet. Bablu kept glancing at the kitchen wall crack. "Shiny Auntie said… school is important," he whispered, his voice small.
Mrs. Das's hands froze on the ribbon. She met her son's wide, unblinking eyes. "Yes," she managed, her voice tight. "Very important." She shoved their lunch boxes, packed with unspiraled rotis into their bags and ushered them out, her own nurse's uniform feeling like a flimsy shield against the chill seeping from the walls.
Across the hall, Rupa Mollick stood before her cracked mirror fragment, salvaged from the smashed poster frame. She carefully applied a large, crimson bindi to her forehead. Her reflection stared back eyes tired, but burning with a strange intensity. The faint scale pattern on her healed palm seemed to shimmer faintly in the grey morning light filtering through the barred window.
She traced it with a fingertip. Resilient. Like snakeskin. A slow, deliberate smile touched her lips, mirroring none of Joba Mollick's painted sweetness. It was the smile of something testing its fangs. "Today," she whispered to her reflection, her voice carrying an unfamiliar, resonant hum, "is my close-up."
She hadn't always been Rupa Mollick. Born Rupa Chatterjee, a name as common as dust in Southeast Bengal , she'd shed it at fourteen like an ill-fitting skin. The transformation began the moment she saw Joba Mollick slither across the screen in "Midnight Serpent Queen". Joba wasn't just beautiful; she was an epiphany of power. A revelation of strength coiled in every hypnotic sway, an awakening of dominance dripping from every venomous glare. Joba Mollick commanded the frame, owned the story.
Rupa Chatterjee vanished overnight. She scrawled "Rupa Mollick" on her schoolbooks, her tiffin box lid, the inside of her worn wrist. She practiced Joba's signature eyebrow arch in bathroom mirrors, copied her throaty laugh until her own voice rasped. She became Mollick. Not legally, not yet, but in the marrow of her bones.
Joba was the goddess; Rupa Mollick was her acolyte, her echo, her POTENTIAL. Now, staring at the faint scales on her palm, Rupa Mollick felt less like an echo and more like a signal growing stronger. "Joba-di showed us the dance," she murmured, her fingers curling slightly. "But I... I feel the bite."
Downstairs, Babin Hussain's phone buzzed like an angry hornet trapped in a jar. Notifications exploded onto her screen: "@Evette_Obsidian: Check reflections near water? Try steam." Babin snorted, flipping her damp hair. Steam? Like some cheap horror flick jump-scare? She shoved the phone into her pocket, grabbed her schoolbag, and slammed the apartment door behind her. The corridor smelled of stale turmeric and damp concrete.
Below, Colony Heights stirred the clatter of breakfast pots, the whine of scooters, Mrs. Banerjee yelling at her lazy son, Bijoy, to hurry up. Babin took the stairs two at a time, skirting the spot where the stain used to pulse. At the bottom landing, she paused. The colony's communal water tap dripped steadily into a cracked plastic bucket. Mist curled faintly from its surface. Babin hesitated.
Ridiculous.
Absolutely ridiculous.
But... Evette_Obsidian knew about the ink.
Babin edged closer. Her reflection wobbled in the shallow water frizzy hair, impatient frown, school uniform slightly askew. Normal. Then, for a fraction of a second, just behind her shoulder, something rippled. Not a face, but a suggestion a coil of shadow, a flicker of impossible iridescence.
Babin gasped, jerking back. The water settled. Only her own startled face stared back. Her phone buzzed again. "@Evette_Obsidian: Told you. Glass lies. Water remembers." Babin's heart hammered against her ribs. "Okay," she breathed, shaky fingers typing. "Who ARE you?"
Across the courtyard, Mrs. Das pushed Bablu and Chumki towards the colony gate. Their silence unnerved her more than yesterday's whispers. They walked stiffly, like wind-up toys. Mrs. Das scanned the bustling street, vegetable vendors setting up, rickshaws jostling, Bishnu the puller already scowling at a potential fare.
Her gaze snagged on Mr. Bhuiyan. He wasn't rushing to his office job. He stood rigid by his scooter, staring intently at the peeling paint on the colony wall beside his parking spot. His briefcase lay forgotten at his feet. Mrs. Das knew that look, the hunted, hollow stare her husband wore after nights of "hissing". Bhuiyan was solid, dependable. Seeing him frozen like that sent a fresh chill down her spine.
Bablu tugged her hand. "Ma," he whispered, pointing not at Bhuiyan, but at the patch of wall Bhuiyan stared at. "Shiny Auntie says he listens too much. To the bad whispers." Mrs. Das followed his finger. The paint wasn't just peeling. A long, thin crack, almost invisible unless you knew to look, snaked up from the pavement. It looked... wet. Darker than the surrounding brick.
Like the crack in her kitchen wall. Bhuiyan suddenly shuddered, blinked rapidly, grabbed his briefcase, and kicked his scooter to life with unnecessary violence. He roared off without a backward glance. Bablu squeezed her hand tighter. "He didn't take the peace," he said solemnly. "Shiny Auntie is sad."
Mrs. Das swallowed hard. "Peace?" The word felt alien, dangerous. She pulled her children closer, steering them past Mr. Bhuiyan's empty spot towards the gate and the awakening chaos of the street beyond.
Fish sellers sat side by side along the way, squatting on frayed gunny sacks beside enamel basins slick with silver scales and gaping mouths. Their cries cut through the morning haze, "Hilsa! Fresh Hooghly hilsa!" A chorus of commerce that couldn't quite drown out the colony's whispers. The air hung thick with brine and the iron tang of blood pooling in gutters. Flies danced in drunken spirals above discarded heads and tails.
Among the damp concrete pillars holding up Colony Heights, Mrs. Sultan held court. Her voice, sharp as a gutting knife, sliced through the fishmongers' din. "My Jasmine? Darker than monsoon soil, yes? But look!" She pushed a cracked phone screen toward the cluster of women picking through mrigal carp.
A pixelated groom; pale, stiff-collared stood beside a beaming girl. "Engineer! Owns a three-storey building in Salt Lake! No dowry! Yet he's known to spend hours in the workshop, tinkering with broken clocks and discarded gadgets." The women murmured, fingers pausing over gills. One whispered, "My niece, wheat-complexion, still waits..."
Another woman chimed in, smiling wistfully. "One of my nieces, she has thick, long hair, which became her attraction. Her groom came to see her, and at first sight, the boy fell in love. He never let her go without the car he provided. So protective!"
Mrs. Sultan smirked, tapping her temple. "It's the shine, sisters. Make 'em glow like polished teak."