Chapter 4 – Chains and Shadows

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📖 Chapter 4 – Chains and Shadows

Tom woke to the sound of dripping.

Not water, but something heavier, thicker. The smell stung his nostrils—metallic, sour, sharp, as if iron bars themselves were melting. He tried to move, but iron chains rattled around his wrists, biting into skin rubbed raw from struggling. His body ached, his mouth dry, his head spinning from the sedative.

The room was dim, lit only by a single kerosene lamp swaying in the humid air. Shadows danced across the cracked walls. Rotten guavas lay scattered across the floor, their skins eaten away by tiny burn holes.

Tom’s eyes adjusted slowly. Then he saw it—on the far wall, pinned with rusted nails, a poster of himself.

It was the same Chanel perfume advertisement: Tom’s face smiling, silk shirt open, hand elegant around the bottle. But this copy was stained, wrinkled, and patched with clear tape, as though someone had cherished it through storms. Beneath it, other clippings: his old modeling spreads, a headline about his LGBT series, even a blurred backstage photo where Tom was laughing with his co-stars.

The sight made his stomach twist. Someone had built a shrine of him.

"Who did this…?" Tom whispered hoarsely.

A sound answered from behind—a slow shuffle, chains dragging, a breath wheezing like a furnace.

Tom turned his head toward the sound. At first he saw only the shape of a man in rags, face hidden in shadow. But then the figure stepped forward, the lamplight revealing melted skin, acid scars, and trembling hands covered in bandages.

The ugly man.

But as Tom’s gaze swept upward, he caught a glimpse of the mirror leaning crookedly against the wall. In its cracked surface, he saw the man’s reflection… and recognized something beneath the ruin.

The jawline.

The eyes, though bloodshot, still familiar.

The way he tilted his head—once shy, now broken.

“Andrew…?” Tom’s voice cracked.

The man froze. His ruined lips quivered. His eyes flooded with tears that hissed as they rolled down.

“Yes,” the monster rasped, his voice torn by acid, yet carrying the echo of a name long forgotten. “Andrew. From the dhaba… in Kolkata… Do you remember?”

Memories flickered in Tom’s mind—faint, hazy. A little roadside eatery on the edge of the slum where he once ate during a shoot in the city. A young chef, his apron always dusted with flour, his hands quick and clever with spices, his smile shy whenever Tom ordered tea. Tom had barely noticed him then. Just another face in the crowd.

But Andrew had noticed Tom. Always.

The chains rattled as Andrew dropped to his knees before the poster. His voice broke as he pressed a scarred hand to Tom’s smiling face on the paper.

“They all loved you. The world loved you. Perfume… cameras… lights. But me—” he turned, pointing at his ruined skin, “—I was rotting in the slum. Cooking for drunks, scraping coins. Still… I loved you. Cruelly, hungrily. Every poster, every ad… I kept them. I dreamed you would one day walk into my dhaba and sit, not as a star, but as mine.”

His body shook. Acid leaked from his palms, burning the poster edges.

Tom tugged against his chains, fear surging. “Andrew, please… you don’t have to do this. If you loved me, why chain me?”

Andrew’s face twisted between agony and obsession. He staggered closer, his voice dropping to a whisper, a confession dragged from the pit of his chest.

“Because love… love is cruel when it’s one-sided. They infected me, Tom. They made me a monster. And when I saw you again—on that Chanel board above the Kolkata railway—I remembered why I hadn’t died yet. You. Always you. You are the cure. For my body. For my hunger. For my loneliness.”

He reached out with a trembling, burning hand toward Tom’s cheek. The air smelled of acid and longing.

Tom flinched away, chains clattering. His heart pounded, torn between pity and terror. The boy he barely remembered from a slum dhaba was now the monster who had stolen his wedding night.

And Andrew, the chef who once fed strangers with gentle hands, was ready to devour him in the name of love.

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Add flashbacks of Andrew’s past → life in the slum, cooking in the dhaba, secretly cutting out Tom’s posters.

Detail Tom’s inner fear vs. guilt → realizing he never noticed Andrew, never valued him.

Expand the dialogue scenes → Andrew’s confession, Tom’s attempts to reason with him.

More horror detail → Andrew’s acid infection destroying parts of the room, posters curling and burning as he weeps.

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