Whose Fault Is It Anyway?

Short Story 04

There was a pin-drop silence in the open ground. Hundreds had gathered at the place, not out of concern or compassion but out of a sense of revenge. To them, the day was important, for it ascertained the beliefs they had been bred and fed with.

“Kill her, kill her!” The crowd had started chanting, as soon as the victim had been brought out. Without a look at the victim’s face, without the slightest idea of her crimes, the crowd was baying for her blood. The executioner remained unperturbed though. A moment later, in one clean swipe, he had fulfilled the crowd’s wishes.

The entertainment for the day was over. The crowd returned home.

Hundreds of years later, the forerunners of those people stood in the same place, where a busy street had come up. In the tea shop, the crowd was milling around the television, which was presently showing the latest news. A woman had been assaulted and killed in the city and the police was currently looking for the perpetrators of the crime. The crowd wasn’t greatly perturbed by it though. Most of them had heard such news before and they took to their standard defence while pronouncing their judgement,

“She was asking for it.”

Fixing the problem was hard. But finding the one to blame couldn’t have been easier.