Must Read: Paradox Of Abel - Season 1 - Episode 50

7 years ago

Must Read: Paradox Of Abel - Season 1 - Episode 50

“I’ll like to ask you a very important question, and I’ll like you to reply me with the utmost honesty.” Said Lot. Matters of emotion were not the detective’s forte. His feelings on emotional entanglement could objectively be labelled ‘appalling’.
Instead of replying, Ruth was busy mopping off tears from her face, as well as making careful effort not to mess up her make-up. When she was done, she switched to her former cold self. She regarded the two men with eyes reserved for the lowlest of creatures. She held her face high and proud.
“How much do you know about your father?” Lot asked.
“He wasn’t a saint—of that I’m sure.”
“Do you know why anybody would want him killed?”
“That’s your job to find out.”
“Mrs. Brown,” Lot said, “Who is Abel?”
Her facial expression was instantly knocked out of true by a seismic displacement of horror and astonishment. Her complexion turned aphid. Blue veins became visible under her fair skin and a nervous tic pulled at her right fore-finger. Her eyes betrayed the coldness and unleashed the countenance of astounded impact.
“Do you know any Abel, Mrs. Brown?” Lot asked again, studying her curiously.
“Who—who told you about Abel?”
“We know everything, Mrs. Brown.”
Her eyebrows were raised—she looked scared at this moment.
“You are Abel’s sister, aren’t you?”
She stood up instantly and backed away from the men, “No! No!! how could you possibly know that? No one is expected to know.” She was on the verge of hysteria.
Lot replied calmly, “Your mother told us everything.”
This revelation shocked her; the impact it created on her was almost epileptic. Her whole body shook, and she looked as if she was going to faint.
“My mother?” she asked incredulously.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Brown,” Lot said, “Your mother already told us about what happened to you when you were seventeen. She told s about the man who broke into your home and forced you to copulate with your younger brother, Abel. I’m sure you remember. Things like that are never forgotten, and as awkward as it seems, I sympathise with you.”
Ruth stared at the two men for a long time, gave a very audible sigh and returned to her seat.
“How dare her?” she said, her eyes flashing fury, ‘How could she tell you such? That was something I’ve kept locked up in my mind for twenty years—why did my mother bring back such sorrowful memory?” she was screaming angrily now, “What right—what effrontery has she to say something so outrageous?”
“She told us because she had no choice,” Lot explained, “And you’d have done likewise if you were in her shoes.”
She looked askance at the detective, “What do you mean by that, detective?”
“We have reasons to believe that the second corpse we found last week was Abel—your long-lost brother.”
“What! Did I just hear you right?”
‘Yes, you did.”
Ruth shook her head from left to right and back, ‘You can’t be more wrong.”
“I think the correct grammatical form is ‘wronger’.”

“You must be mistaken. My brother has been missing for over twenty years. You cannot come here now and tell me that the corpse of one vagrant you encountered last week was my brother. Give me something else. What other ridiculous image have you conjured in your out-of-orbit imagination?”
“You saw that corpse last week, didn’t you?”
“I did. And if you intend to ask me if I recognized it as Abel, you can save your breath; he’s not.”
“I very much doubt that you’d recognize easily someone you’ve not seen in two decades, considering the fact that our recent popular subject was heavily bearded.”
She stared at Lot, stunned, “What exactly did my mother tell you both?”
“She told us enough to believe that the man who broke into your house didn’t visit you to preach about Jesus Christ. Can you recall the name of that man, Mrs. Brown?”
“I cannot really remember—it’s a biblical name, I think Adam or Judas, either of the two.”
“Your mother said his name was Cain.”
“Oh yes, she’s right. The man joked that God brought him to destroy Abel, something like that—like Cain did to his brother in the Good Book. I can remember now, his full name was Cain Martins. He had the kind of face that could scare the bejesus out of a coven of voodoo witches and wizards.”
“Mrs. Brown, did you know about your brother’s accident when he was six?”
“Abel never had any accident, except when he fell off the branch of a tree when he was plucking mangoes. His thigh was stitched.”
Lot frowned.
‘Mrs. Brown, did the copul*tion of that day result in pregnancy?”
Ruth sprang up suddenly, as though she realized that she had been perching on the point of a nail, she wouldn’t have reacted worse if she was slapped on the face. “How dare you ask me such an asinine question?”
“Please answer the question.” Lot replied calmly.
“What are you trying to insinuate now? That Remi, my daughter, is the result of what happened between my brother and I?”
“I must confess, the thought did cross our minds.”
“ ‘Our’—plural personal pronoun.” Ruth looked from Lot to the quiet Daniel Famous. She eyed the young man malevolently.
Daniel, seeing the trouble the detective had dragged him in, quickly attempted to defend himself—but under the lady’s glare, he was finding it hard to find his own tongue. He looked down helplessly and feeling remarkably foolish. Whatever the reason might be, Daniel knew he was on Ruth’s list now, and he knew the woman well enough to suspect that Ruth made her list with a pencil that had no eraser.
Ruth shook her head and turned back to the detective, “I refuse to lay answer to such a ridiculous question. You may drag me from here to the Queen’s court, my lips shall remain sealed. Besides, did you ask my mother the same senseless question?”
Lot swallowed the bitter insult and replied, “No, we didn’t. She wasn’t the one who got la!d that day, you were.”
She seemed not to notice the sarcasm because she replied, “So, she didn’t tell you?”
“Tell us what?”
“It was horrible, seeing the n*kedness of your family member and watching the intercourse.”
Lot nodded, “I understand how hard it must have been for her, watching her children sleep with each—”
“You’re still not getting it, are you?” Ruth interrupted sharply, her voice thicker and louder, “After forcing my parents to watch the intercourse between my brother and I, the stranger forced my mother to get in her birthday suit. The monster raped her right there in our presence. Right there! But anyway, you both can go and play with yourselves!”