A psychological crime-horror short story by J. Sharanya from BSc BTCFS, II year
The army quarters were usually quiet, their lanes lined with trimmed hedges and identical houses. Life there followed a rhythm: children playing in the evening, guards patrolling the gates, colony events on weekends. So, when a new family moved in, everyone noticed.
A man, his wife, and their twin daughters.
Across the street lived Mrs. Sharma. She was among the first to feel thrilled about their arrival. A new family meant fresh energy, new bonds. She baked sweets, carried them over, and knocked on their door with a wide smile.
The wife had opened the door. Pale, reserved, her lips barely curved in return. The girls peeked from behind her, clutching a glass bottle filled with something red.
“They must be shy,” Mrs. Sharma had reassured herself.
She kept trying. Inviting them to colony functions. Sending her children to befriend the twins. But the family remained distant, almost… unbothered.
Something about them was off.
The twins never went to school. Instead, they played endlessly in their courtyard, always with that bottle filled with red liquid. Mrs. Sharma once spotted them pouring some of it on the soil, giggling. She assumed it was just paint.
One afternoon, she found the wife buying vegetables. “Your girls never go to school?” she asked kindly.
The wife froze. “They are homeschooled,” she whispered quickly, then left without even buying a single vegetable. Her eyes darted around, nervous, as if terrified of someone watching.
Mrs. Sharma felt a chill but brushed it aside.
Weeks turned into months. Gradually, she stopped caring.
Until one night.
The colony was shaken awake by guards shouting. A thief had broken into one of the houses. Residents rushed out with sticks and torches, chasing until they cornered the man.
But instead of resisting, the thief begged them. “Call the police! Please… call them!”
People were baffled. A thief asking for the police?
When the officers arrived and tried to arrest him, he blurted out:
“I went into that house… and saw them. Dead. Three of them. Rotting.”
The crowd gasped. The police, skeptical, still forced their way into the family’s house.
The smell hit them first. A thick, rotting stench.
Upstairs, in a locked bedroom, they found three decomposed bodies. A woman and two little girls.
The colony stood in horror. They had seen that woman. They had seen those children. How could they have been dead all along?
The police arrested the thief, charging him with murder. But the autopsy told another story.
The bodies dated back three months.
No strangulation. No forced trauma. No poison in the blood.
But the urine told the truth: extremely high levels of paracetamol metabolites. A silent overdose. Enough to shut down their livers and kill them slowly, invisibly.
The investigation grew darker.
When questioned, Mrs. Sharma insisted she had seen the wife watering plants just that morning. She had seen the twins playing in the courtyard with their red bottle. She even pointed across the street.
But when the police looked, the house was silent. Empty.
Her husband sighed, embarrassed. “My wife isn’t well,” he explained. “She imagines things. Please don’t trouble her further.” He pressed medicine into her hand, guided her gently to bed.
The police left uncertain. Something about his calmness didn’t sit right.
Days later, deeper checks revealed the truth.
Mrs. Sharma wasn’t truly Mrs. Sharma. She had been the maid in that very house months ago. The man she now lived with wasn’t her husband. He was the real husband of the dead woman across the street.
And the maid—Mrs. Sharma—had seen everything.
She had watched, paralyzed, as he crushed tablets and dissolved them into drinks. Watched his wife and daughters consume them, one by one, unaware. She had stood frozen in the kitchen doorway, paralyzed, as the three of them slowly succumbed.
He had silenced her with threats. Dragged her across the street. Forced her into the role of his wife.
Her mind had shattered under the weight of what she had witnessed. She replayed it endlessly. The wife watering plants. The twins laughing with their red-stained bottle. Not ghosts. Not hallucinations. Memories her trauma refused to bury.
When the truth came out, the colony never felt safe again.
The man was dragged away, screaming, his mask ripped off. The maid sat silently on the balcony, whispering to herself, eyes locked on the empty courtyard.
Across the street, the house stood sealed. Yet to her, the twins were still there—giggling, playing with their bottle. And in the fading light, the liquid inside didn’t look like paint anymore.
