Chapter 3 - 2/3

      A week Later. A worksite. 

"Just this one last time and I wouldn't pick up your calls, unless it's a call for your funeral."

The last of the men shot at the scanty bearded. It's been over a week now and work had brought them together again. 

"But you'll answer the call won't you? The call of a corpse?"

The scanty bearded laughed to his own joke, fixing the long iron pipe in the wall. The person he was addressing was behind the other wall. 

"Why me? I bet you had no guts to call Jacob. It's been all mouth, hasn't it?"

He teased the scanty bearded, who pushed the pipe deliberately and almost pierced the chest of the fellow with the edge. 

"Lucky you. I should gut your throat. Jacob holds no place around me anymore. That coward."

The other fellow was quick to toss the odds behind as they moved to the other hole in the wall, few steps ahead. They only had three more to go. 

"What do you make of that constant noise of a news that sits on the TV channels almost all the day?"

The other fellow pushed the pipe in, roughly, probably to seek a revenge. But the scanty bearded was quite a smart one. He dodged the odds with a response,

"If you're talking about that wonder accident, I'm not interested."

"But seriously. How could a man survive such impact? The truck crashed into almost pebbles. The doors were pressed upon the steering. There's no way the driver could had escaped. But so we heard, his corpse was missing!"

The scanty bearded covered the other end of the pipe and moved to the next,

"But the government would make a scene of it. According to them, the police are working non-stop."

He scoffed,

"Bunch of retards. They are all about the money."

"Wasn't it a day after the pregnant lady?"

The fellow asked and the scanty bearded ogled,

"You fool! Need a priest to tell you that the walls have ears. I bet you've been having nightmares after that day. Coward."

He sniggered for no reason. Then there was a silence for the next few moments. Probably they were keen on completing the last two, before grabbing another bottle of vodka, which was few steps away from them on a wooden stool. 

Suddenly, there came a coo and giggle behind the scanty bearded. 

"Dumbass. You also changed your ringtone to a giggling baby? Like... Here we are, dedicated to the loving foetus in the wandering ghost."

He blurted, choking up on the laughter. But the other fellow didn't say a word as they moved to the last part. 

Then came the coo and giggle again. The scanty bearded was raged, pushing the pipe into the chest of the other fellow behind the wall. The pipe bruised the fellow's chest, eating into his light dirty shirt. 

"Take the call or switch the goddamn phone off."

He barked, but then he heard the coo and giggle again. But this time, twas getting louder and closer. 

"Do you have a death wish? You almost killed me."

The other fellow barked but no response came.

"Greg! I'm done with you. Finish the fucking work yourself. You're too full of your goddamn self!!!"

The other fellow maintained his rage, yet no response came. And after few seconds, he heard,

"Did you bring your baby to work, that I don't know about?"

The scanty bearded had said, staring confusedly at his back. Before him and crawling towards him was a cute little girl, with nothing save a neat diaper around her small waist. 

"What baby? Is that your little trick to con me into working on for your insolent self?"

The other man kept reeling in rage, unaware of what was going on. 

The baby crawled to the feet of the scanty bearded and he bent down and picked her up. 

"She's so cute. Goddamnit."

He turned the baby to either side playfully as she giggled. 

"But one thing I don't understand is how possible --"

He couldn't finish up his words as the eyes of the baby changed from silver to red.

"Kleb, come see. Wonder. The first red-eyed baby in the world."

Greg wondered, turning to face Kleb who had just walked out of the corner to face him. 

But just in time he turned sideways to face Kleb, a small blue snake crawled out of the mouth of the baby and leapt at the neck of Greg, wounding around and tightening on his nape and Adam's apple as he screamed,

"Take her. Take her from me. Fuck! I'll throw her away."

Greg tried giving the baby to Kleb who was peeing in his pants already at the sight. 

"Oh, shit. Fuck, Damn...God!!"

Greg released the baby suddenly in the air, to get the snake off his own neck. But the girl never dropped, she floated in the air. Gradually descending as Kleb's eyes widened. 

Greg on the other hand kept battling with the snake which no longer was tightening up his neck, but has now struck his mandible, slithering into his mouth, then breaking through the upper jaw into the nose region, leaving an imprint of venoms at every stop, till it crawled in his head up to his brain, blacking out his neurons and sight till both his pupils turned dead black. And just seven seconds of screaming and wild dances tuned by the pain, his head bursted open and his braincells and lots splattered everywhere. A disturbing sight. His body fell down without a head. With a hollowed neck, as though a trench had been dug in it. 

"Holy mother of my fucking spirit."

Klep gasped, and made a run for it, screaming his lungs out. He ran to the very end of that block away from the giggling baby, sucking her left thumb. 

But as he got to the end of the block, the baby was at the mouth of the stairs. 

"How did you get here? "

He argued, looking to where he had just left her. 

"This does not make sense."

His voice was beginning to break as he hurried in the other direction. 

"No, I can't be killed that way. I can't die that way."

He jumped over Greg's corpse. He was on the top floor of the storey building. He took a turn and ran in the direction of the wall he had worked behind. But at the very end was the baby crawling towards him again, giggling!

There was in no direction the baby wasn't. He could neither make it to the stairs nor jump over the baby. 

"Go away you fucking baby. Go to your mother."

He yelled. But at least, he should know that there are some words you don't say in the ears of babies. 

With no other direction to run, he hurried to the window of the block and climbed on it. 

"Oh, shit. It's too high."

He cussed, looking down to the busy road and people picking up a gathering at the sight of someone who's about to commit suicide. 

But as he turned to look at the base of the window, the baby was already there giggling. 

"Should I trample on her?"

He argued with his sixth sense but he got no sane response. He looked down to the express road again, he could see people waving him down, chattering indistinctly. 

But as he looked down at the bottom of the window again, he couldn't find the baby, but a large coiled snake, poking its neck at him, venomous tongue slithering in and out. 

He lost his balance at that sight. And that was it. Everything happened too soon. But as he made a contact with the hard bitumen tarred road, only his head was shattered, his other part intact. 

As the people gathered on his corpse, few reaching out to the cops, some raised their heads and looked up at the window...

"A baby... A baby..."

A middle-aged woman screamed on top of her voice. 

"A baby on the window!"

She added. Running miserably across the road as a running vehicle collided with her, crunching her bones. Scattering the gathered. 

And when people looked up to the window, there was no one there, let alone A BABY...