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📖 Chapter 1 – The Wedding That Never Was

The day had begun with golden light and the sound of temple bells.

Tom’s wedding was the talk of the town. Strings of marigolds swung lazily in the humid air, incense spiraled in soft smoke, and the chatter of relatives filled the courtyard. Women in bright sarees laughed, men in suits sweated under the sun, and somewhere behind the curtains the bride waited, her hands trembling with anticipation.

Tom’s father, a proud man with silver hair and a voice that carried across the garden, moved among the guests, greeting, laughing, keeping everything in order. For him, this day was not only about tradition—it was about family honor, a moment he had long waited for.

Tom himself stood at the entrance, nervous yet glowing, his white sherwani embroidered with golden thread, the ceremonial turban slightly tilted on his head. His friends teased him, photographers clicked endlessly, and the scent of roses mixed with ghee lamps. He should have been happy. He should have been safe.

But beyond the laughter and music, something else moved.

At the edge of the crowd, half-hidden by the shade of a banyan tree, stood a man no one wished to notice. His skin was raw, pitted with burns that seemed to smoke faintly in the heat. His left cheek sagged as though melted candle wax had frozen there. His hands, wrapped in dirty cloth, twitched constantly, as if suppressing unbearable pain. His eyes glowed red—not with love, but with hunger.

This was not a guest.

This was a shadow carrying a plague inside him.

He coughed once, and a small spray of acid burned through the bark of the tree. He whispered to himself, a mantra of madness:

"He is the cure. He must be mine. Before the vows, before the fire, before the gods bind him to another… he must belong to me."

No one saw him slip through the servants’ entrance. No one questioned the large wicker fruit basket he dragged behind, its cloth cover heavy and damp. Bananas, papayas, and apples hid the darkness within.

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Tom had just stepped away from the ceremony for a moment of quiet. The bride’s brothers teased him too much, the noise made his head ache, and he needed air. In the garden, under the arch of jasmine, he bent to drink water from a silver jug.

That was when the ugly man struck.

His burnt hands clamped around Tom’s mouth before a cry could escape. Tom struggled, kicking against the stone floor, but the man was strong, fueled by something more than human desperation. His touch seared—acid leaked from his pores, burning holes into Tom’s sherwani. The stench of scorched fabric and flesh rose in the night air.

Tom’s muffled scream echoed once, then died as the man forced him into the basket, covering him with layers of fruit. Apples rolled against Tom’s cheek, sticky juice mixing with the faint burn of acid. The lid closed. Darkness swallowed him.

The man hoisted the basket onto a cart. To anyone watching, it was just a delivery of fruits for the feast. He pushed through the gate, his body trembling, sweat dripping, the virus inside him gnawing at his veins. Every step he took left behind faint drops of corrosive liquid that hissed against the stones.

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Inside the hall, the priest called for the groom.

The music swelled, drums beat faster, guests clapped in rhythm.

But Tom was nowhere to be found.

At first, the family thought he was shy. Then they joked he had run away. But when the minutes turned to an hour, and Tom’s seat remained empty, a shadow fell over the celebration.

Tom’s father’s smile faded. His eyes scanned the crowd, the courtyard, the streets beyond. Something cold gripped his chest. He could not say why, but he knew—knew with the certainty of blood—that his son was not safe.

Somewhere beyond the walls of laughter and music, his boy had vanished.

And the night had only just begun.

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📖 Chapter 2 – The Basket of Guavas

The wheels of the wooden cart screeched as the ugly man pushed it through the narrow lanes beyond the wedding hall. Firecrackers burst in the distance, drowning out the faint thumps from inside the fruit basket. Beneath the heap of papayas, bananas, and guavas, Tom struggled against ropes biting into his wrists. Every breath was suffocated by the scent of overripe fruit mixed with something harsher—acid. The cloth beneath him was wet, and when it touched his skin it burned like fire.

The man wheezed as he dragged the cart through the midnight crowd. His body shook with spasms. Patches of skin bubbled, oozing yellow-green liquid that hissed when it dripped onto the stones. Yet his strength did not falter. He muttered in a cracked, monstrous voice, half human, half beast:

"Soon… soon he will be mine… the cure… the cure is inside him."

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By the time he reached the small railway station, the night had grown darker. A single bulb flickered above the ticket window, casting long shadows across the cracked walls. The platform smelled of rust and coal smoke. A stray dog whined and ran away the moment the ugly man stepped onto the cement.

The fruit basket rocked. Tom shifted inside, trying to scream, but his voice was swallowed by cloth. A muffled sound escaped—just enough for a young porter nearby to frown and step closer.

“Arrey bhaiya,” the porter said, peering at the basket, “itni raat ko kahan le ja rahe ho itna bada tokra? Kya hai isme?”

The ugly man froze. His breath rattled in his chest. His red eyes gleamed in the lamplight. For a moment, the porter thought he was looking into the face of something not human.

The man’s lips peeled back, revealing yellow teeth corroded at the roots. Acid dribbled from the corner of his mouth, sizzling against the ground. His voice came out thick, guttural, like a growl crawling up from a pit:

“Gauvas…”

The word sounded wrong, dragged out, monstrous.

The porter laughed nervously and stepped back. “Theek hai, theek hai. Lagta hai bazaar ke liye le ja rahe ho.” He hurried away, muttering under his breath about drunks and madmen.

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The man heaved the basket into the corner of a third-class train compartment. The train groaned, steam hissing, and with a long whistle it began to crawl forward. Through the barred window, the wedding lights in the distance flickered like dying stars, fading as the train rattled into the black countryside.

Inside the basket, Tom’s heart pounded. His throat ached from screaming into cloth, his wrists raw from ropes. He shifted and something hard pressed against his cheek—a rolled sheet of paper, old and brittle. Blindly, he nudged it open with his bound hands. Through a small tear in the fruit covering, a flicker of station light revealed what it was.

A poster.

The edges were curled and stained, but Tom could just make out the words:

“MISSING – Experimental Subject #47. Dangerous. Infected with corrosive virus. Report immediately if seen.”

The poster showed a crude sketch—half-burnt skin, hollow eyes, twisted mouth.

It was him.

The ugly man.

The monster carrying him away was not a stranger to the world. He had once been hunted, known, feared.

And now Tom was trapped with him, hidden among guavas, rattling into the endless night.

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⚡ For your 5k–9k word target, I can keep expanding with:

Slower pacing: more sensory details of the train, passengers, Tom’s inner thoughts, flashbacks to the wedding.

Dialogue tension: suspicious passengers asking about the basket, the ugly man replying in his monstrous voice.

Body horror: acid dripping in the compartment, burning wood/metal, making people uneasy.

Parallel scene: Tom’s father at the wedding, discovering an acid-burned trail leading toward the station.

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📖 Chapter 3 – The Scent of Memories

The train rocked through the countryside, each jolt making the fruit basket shudder. The ugly man sat hunched in the corner, his bandaged hands twitching, his eyes bloodshot. Across from him, a young mother clutched her child tighter, whispering prayers. No one wanted to sit too close; his presence poisoned the air with the smell of rot and chemical burn.

He ignored them. His eyes were fixed on the torn poster clutched in his fist. The sketch of his own deformed face stared back at him like a curse.

But inside, something else stirred. A memory.

His trembling hands reached into the pocket of his coat. There, folded carefully among bloodstained rags, was a glossy advertisement torn from a magazine. He smoothed it with fingers that hissed faintly, skin dissolving where it touched the paper. The acid marks spread, but he didn’t care.

It was Tom.

Tom in a white silk shirt, collar open, smile careless and radiant. A bottle of Chanel perfume held lightly in his hand. The tagline shimmered beneath:

“Chanel No. 5 – For the unforgettable.”

The man’s chest heaved. A broken sob escaped his ruined throat. The passengers looked away uneasily, pretending not to notice. But he couldn’t stop the tears. They streamed down his melted cheeks, mixing with acid, burning tiny holes in his shirt.

He remembered.

Tom wasn’t just a stranger. Tom was once a face on billboards, a rising model, the boy who dared to act in that LGBT web series the world had whispered about but secretly watched. A boy who had stood against shame with boldness, who had laughed freely in the cameras.

The ugly man had known him.

Long ago, before the virus.

When his own face wasn’t ruined.

When he was still human.

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"Who is he…?" he whispered to himself, clutching the ad so tightly it tore.

A forgotten name stirred on his tongue. Was it… sam? No. Daniel? The sound escaped in a half-growl, half-sob. "Who… who was I… before they made me this?"

His vision blurred. The acid in his veins boiled hotter, reacting to his emotions. Drops hissed on the floor of the compartment. A passenger yelped as the wooden seat began to smoke, pulling her child away.

But the ugly man didn’t care. His tears fell onto Tom’s picture, eroding the glossy paper until only fragments of the smiling face remained.

"Tom… you are the cure. You were always the cure."

He rocked back and forth, whispering like a mad priest, his voice a guttural chant. Passengers shifted uneasily, whispering about calling the guard. The smell of guavas no longer masked the faint cries from inside the basket.

The night train rattled onward, carrying not just a kidnapped groom, but the ghost of a past life, grief, and a secret connection buried under acid scars.

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Flashbacks: Ugly man remembering meeting Tom years ago (maybe backstage at a shoot, or he was just an admirer).

Inner monologue: His anger at society for loving Tom but abandoning him after the virus.

More train tension: passengers whispering, one tries to open the basket, acid burns their hand.

Parallel scene: Tom’s father discovers Tom once acted in the LGBT series—linking to scandal, shame, and possible motive.

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