He slowly took the hammer in his right hand. His left hand had the pen, a Hero, black ink fountain pen. Blood dripped from the hammerhead upon the pale tiles on the floor, creating various shapes, like stars, creatures with horns and tails, and occasionally flowers. He came inside the room and sat in front of his desk. The paper in front of him was titled, "Page; 108. D"

Raman Pillai heard a knock on the front door, after ten hours. He could very well recognise the neighbour woman's voice. "She did not come out when I called her for the association meeting this evening. I thought of going around the house and looking inside, thinking she might be busy doing something. That's when I saw it."

A stranger's voice said, "Let's break the door. Is the psychopath inside?" His voice echoed inside the house and disturbed the peace of Raman Pillai.

Soon, the door thrashed against his mother's head, with a loud thud. Had the woman been alive, she would have made the whole hell break loose at this,' Raman Pillai thought.

"The door is stuck!" Someone shouted from the outside.

"Oh my God! It's the woman's head!" Another one said. He was trying to get a clear view of the inside through a window in the central hall that had a view of the adjacent house, fifty feet away. "The dead body is lying straight from the door. Don't push the door, Officer Rajan!" The same person who looked inside the window shouted.

"It seems it's gone thick from death. This must have happened a while ago." Officer Rajan said as he stopped the working on the door for the time being. "I don't want to break her neck." He said under his breath. The woman who was standing nearby screamed at this as if she had already visualised the scene.

The man, who looked through the window, came to the front door and helped Officer Rajan, and they opened the door slightly.

"I will enter first," Officer Rajan said. Once inside, he slipped in the blood that lay pooled near the body.

"So reckless," Raman Pillai thought. Sitting in his room, folding the pages he had already completed, neatly into the file folder. Then he closed his pen and placed it close to the folder.  

Gradually, more people entered the house. "Move!" One of them in a police uniform said. Raman Pillai reluctantly obeyed what they said and stood up. He felt at ease now, after working on the dictionary for over nine hours that day.

"Do not permit anyone else to enter the house!" one of the officers shouted. Three of them were holding hands across the verandah keeping away the neighbours from entering the house for a peek.

"We are from Kerala Police. You are under arrest." One of them shouted at Raman Pillai's face.

The officers entered his room. Raman Pillai's room had a bed, a double cot, and a long table with a chair. It was a 6.5 feet X 6.5 feet box that he called room. "It's congested in here," Officer Rajan said. Three of them stayed with Raman Pillai in the room. The rest of them moved outside.

"You come inside," a police officer was calling a man from the neighbourhood. "Is this the same person?" The officer inquired.

The man nodded after looking at the body. He could not hide a repulsive expression. He ran out, "Yeah! Yeah!" The man said to whomever he came across.

"Let's take the body out, first." Officer Rajan said.

Two of the police officers bent down with a stretcher. Then a couple more came inside through the front door. As they lifted the body onto the stretcher, a part of the skull came undone, and its contents scattered and skidded on the floor, mingling with the blood. One of the men suddenly took his leg back in fear. In his hurry, the officer dropped the left shoulder of the body and the head dangled in the air for some time, like a broken pendulum. 

Raman Pillai laughed at this one.

"Brute!" One of the officers murmured but did not voice the words aloud.

After a few moments, they successfully moved the body out and took Raman Pillai to their jeep. He could not take his manuscript. However, no one had bothered about his pen. Perhaps, they hadn't seen it.

In the jeep too, Raman Pillai heard the police officers address him "Brute!"

"It's a word from Old English," He said to the officer sitting close to him.

"What?" The officer grunted displeased.

Raman Pillai did not say anything to anyone in particular. He looked outside through the back window and said, "In Latin, Brutus."  

"He is mad, clearly! A mad animal." Officer Rajan, who was sitting in the front seat, said.

"Eleven times. I did tell my mother to keep quiet. I want to work on my dictionary, I had told her. Then she asks me to clean my room, and she wants to sweep everywhere. Irritating old lady.' Raman Pillai thought. He held his right hand in a fist.

"I'll wait 8 more times. And then…" he said. "Then dvesha overpowered me."