Short Story - Present Sir, Every Day
- Luvv A Sanwal
- Jan 18
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 19
Short Story
A chilling psychological crime thriller set in India, this story follows a series of impossible, meticulously planned murders that shake the city. When a powerful man is found brutally killed inside his luxury penthouse, Inspector Shinde discovers a disturbing pattern linking each crime. The killer leaves behind the same haunting signature, suggesting the murders are neither random nor impulsive. As the investigation deepens, the line between past and present blurs, revealing a dark, methodical serial killer driven by memory and precision. This suspense-filled short story explores justice, fear, and the long shadows of forgotten cruelty.
They didn’t identify Raghav Malhotra by his face.
He was found alive at 3:11 a.m. in his penthouse corridor, crawling. The cameras caught everything except the man who arranged it. Raghav’s legs were bent backward at the knees, joints folded wrong, taped tight with electrical wire. His palms were scrubbed raw, skin peeled away until bone flashed white. A trail of blood led from the bedroom to the elevator like a dragged confession.
The medical examiner said the killer had forced him to crawl. From one end of the flat to the other. The floor was covered in coarse salt, industrial cleaner, and crushed glass powder. Every inch. Every movement tore flesh. Salt bit into exposed nerves. Cleaner burned the wounds open again. Raghav screamed until his throat gave up. Then he kept crawling anyway.
He died fifteen centimeters from the elevator button.
On the wall, written neatly with a bloodied fingertip, were the words: “Present, every day sir.”
The video leaked within hours. Cities froze.
Parents checked on children who were long grown. Old college groups went silent. Men who once laughed at ragging and bullying as “tradition” suddenly remembered details they had buried carefully. The horror wasn’t just how Raghav died. It was how patient it was. How instructional. How familiar.
Inspector Shinde arrived at Kunal Vora’s bungalow just before dusk, when the light makes everyone look guilty. The place smelled of money and panic. Imported cologne fighting sweat. Kunal sat across from him, fingers locked so tightly his knuckles had gone pale. Final year engineering batch of 2012.
“Any suspects?,” Shinde said. Kunal laughed, then stopped midway like his body had corrected him. “There was this fresher,” he said. “Quiet. Always carrying notes like they were shields. We thought… you know. He needed toughening.” Shinde didn’t blink.
“First day, we tied his shoelaces together and made him run the stairs,” Kunal said quickly, as if speed might save him. “Second day, shaved half his head. Everyone laughed. He didn’t.”
Shinde wrote nothing.
“We made him crawl once,” Kunal whispered. “Beer bottles broken on the floor. Said if he stopped, we’d start again. Said attendance matters.”
Shinde looked up slowly. “What was his name?” Kunal opened his mouth and the lights went out. Not a flicker. A clean, confident blackout.
Shinde reached for his gun as metal screamed overhead. The chandelier fell like a thought becoming action. By the time emergency lights came back, Kunal was dead. Glass everywhere. Embedded. Mirroring Raghav’s death down to the angle of the cuts. Beneath the wreckage, chalk dust bloomed like breath.
And the sign appeared, "Present, every day sir."
Shinde stood very still, shock crawling under his skin. A minute earlier, Kunal had described the punishment. Now he had become it.
A man drowned in a washroom sink after being forced to drink until he vomited in college. Another suffocated inside a cupboard bolted from the outside, found with bruised knuckles. One burned alive in a lab shower steaming hotter and hotter. Each crime impossible. Each crime precise. Each crime signed, "Present, every day sir." The final bully died at a reunion dinner, choking and gasping when the fire extinguisher fed him with carbon and oxygen vanished like mercy.
The assassin was never caught. But every senior batch learned a new tradition.
Be kind. Someone remembers.
-The End
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