The chair she sleeps in

It was her favourite corner of house; gave her adequate sunlight in winters post noon and satisfying breeze in summers. She used to sleep almost entire day peacefully on her rocking chair. After my in-laws got killed in an accident, she was the only one we had who we could call a family. My husband, my four years old daughter and I took turns to sit with her and tell her what is going on in our respective lives. My daughter loved her the most. She used to keep scribbling and doodling things we have not been able to discern from one another. Then she always used to hand over her art to her beloved grandmother who played along and praised her. My husband, no matter how tired he was, used to sit with her and pressed her legs till she slept.

 

I also did my best to keep her happy; but I was so jealous of her, jealous of the fact that she could afford to sleep all day while I slog in kitchen for a daughter and a husband who paid no attention to me and jealous of the fact that she had the most amazing corner of the house. However if you ask me what was I most jealous of her; it was her rocking chair. Sometimes I used to imagine myself sitting in that chair, admiring myself in mirror on opposite wall and fading into slumber while I oscillate. I was amazed at how I had never seen her leaving that chair, how she manages to do her chores even without asking my help and even without leaving that chair. This is one mystery I could never solve. I had lost all hopes of ever sitting in that chair; but luck was in my favour.

She had slept the entire day without moving from the chair as usual. When my husband was pressing her legs, he felt they were colder than usual. Thinking that she was unwell, he tried to wake her up. She never got up. After she was gone, we felt if we had awakened from a dream. Suddenly we did not know what to do in the spare time which was earlier spent with her. Next few days were very depressing and uncomfortable for both of us. Now we had time for each other but nothing to talk about. One day not long after the grandmother died, I spent one such wordless evening with my husband and then walked out of the room to look after my daughter. She was as usual doodling sitting in that corner near the rocking chair. I realised in last few days, I had forgotten both, my daughter and the chair. I kept looking at her while she scribbled with absolute concentration, but what she did next made me shiver. She offered the notebook in the air, as if her grandmother was still there to praise her. Next few moments she kept chuckling as she used to do when her grandmother told her jokes about what the doodle appeared to her as. I lifted her in my arms while she kept pointing at the chair as if her grandmother was still sitting there.

I had not slept properly since she died. It was a lovely winter afternoon and that corner of house looked particularly tempting with sun coming in through the blinds. I had waited for this moment for a very long time. I slowly settled into that chair. As soon as it started oscillating, I understood why I craved for it so much. It was so soothing and relaxing. I also knew now how she managed to sleep for entire day, since only after two minutes my eyes got heavy. I must have slept for hours when a touch woke me up. My daughter handed over her doodle to me. I looked at it and she chuckled even when I did not say anything. I tried to get up but could not. And then it dawned upon me. I looked at my shrivelled hands. I looked at myself in the mirror only to find reflection of a vacant chair. I wanted to scream but I could not.

And then something happened which made it all clear. I came out of the room and kept looking at my daughter. I seemed frightened watching my daughter chuckling. Is this not the dress I was wearing yesterday? How can I see myself standing across the room? And then I picked up my daughter and went into the room while the real I was still sitting on the chair. Or was she real?

And then she came back, looked into my eyes and said – “You wished for my life, I wished for yours”.

A story I shouldn't have told...

Ever since I was a kid, I was fascinated by demons in my closet. I have spent many nights sleeping with one eye open, looking at the door, trying to catch hold of the green eyed devil.  My friends (and none of them was imaginary) were scared to enter my room; frightened that I will once again switch off the lights and tell them one of my favourite ghost stories, with voice modulation and will not let them go till one of them could not control their pee anymore.

With age, my fascination with the dark side only increased. Not for a single moment in my life, I ever believed that it was all fiction. There was perhaps not a single decent ghost story which I had not read. But the time had come to try and actually be in one. In teenage, it is easy to beguile people in your impish plans by entering into a silly bet. The bet was to stay in the graveyard till midnight.

We had decided to meet at the front gate two hours before midnight. I am sure you would have never experienced this, but a graveyard is perhaps the most peaceful place at night. Contrary to what media depicts; there are no screams, no owl hoots, nobody walks with candles in their hands, nobody vanishes in thin air and there is no scary old witch. We decided to sit between the graves and see what happens. I decided to once again see some scared faces and started telling one of the scariest stories I had ever heard.

The story was a about a kid named Emily Drew. She was mentally unstable. She used to cut her wrists and cheeks with blade and kept looking herself in the mirror with her hands covered with her own blood. She liked to see blood on herself. One day she died. But she came back and haunted her family till they publically admitted that they had murdered her because they were too scared of her. My friends were trying to be brave but I could see that they shivered and shuddered whenever I modulated my voice for dramatic effects.

The clock struck midnight. Anyways, we all got bored in a while and started to leave, but one of us kept sitting. We all laughed at him that he was so afraid that he could not even get up. When I touched him on his shoulder, his body just dropped. His face seemed to be disfigured, hands were all twisted and eyes ready to pop out of their sockets; looking directly at me as if pointing at me and shouting that I was the murderer. Our faces were white with fear and without thinking we just ran out of the graveyard.

I remained confined to my room for days to come. The vision of his lifeless body and staring eyes kept haunting me. I had never been so frightened all my life. I cried for hours. I had nightmares; those eyes, they followed me everywhere. I did not have the courage to come out of the house, to hear the news of his death and to give a reaction which will not give away my horrible part in his dreadful death. I kept staring at the closet, frightened for the first time that those eyes are looking at me from behind the door; frightened that the door will open and his lifeless body will fall out of it.

After a point in time, I could not take anymore and just decided to get out of the house. To avoid any interactions, I slipped out at night. I kept walking absent-mindedly and to my horror ended up at the familiar gate of the graveyard. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I entered. I reached the same place as we were sitting the other day. Something compelled me to sit at the place my friend was sitting. I kept sitting for a long time. The clock struck midnight, and then I saw a sight after which I had no doubt why my friend died. A small girl, with hands and face covered in blood, was standing in front of me looking into a mirror. Beside her was a grave with the engraving – Emily Drew.

I passed out.

Rants of a Writer...

Here I am, sitting again, staring at a blank sheet of paper. A writer is not scared of dark; he does not wake up with a start after seeing a dark figure, most of the time it is the white colour which is a nightmare for him. You may want to test this by showing a white sheet of paper to a writer and demand a ransom out of him, though I do not advise this for the risk of him having a heart attack.

The question also is whether a writer should write about a memory from my past, a dream for the future or just pull out a feather from his imagination. Sometimes I feel that after writing a paragraph or two, all three of them gets mixed up to an extent that it becomes new reality for me, a new memory and a new dream. I feel if I could play a recap of my life, it would be very different from how I remember it now.

Another challenge is how writers keep coming up with innovative and interesting plots and characters. I have been told that writers keep observing people around them to get inspired for writing new stories. Well, I am not so sure about it. After all who live around pirates, secret service agents, conniving politicians, arm dealers, ghosts, wand wielding kids, dragons, parallel universes, aliens, talking dogs and cats, vampires and other such plots and characters I have never seen in my ordinary life.

You must be thinking that if it is such a scary job then why writers keep coming back and face their worst fears almost every day. Till the time I did not start writing, I could never understand the logic for so many people to vent out their thoughts, imaginations, standpoints on relatively lesser avenues of writing – fiction and non-fiction further categorised into horror, politics, suspense, thriller, love, sex, travel, cookery, religion, philosophy, business, education etc. For determining a definite answer to the question, I advise you to try writing a paragraph on any subject that first comes to your mind. You will have to establish a line of thought, one or more characters, an opening and a closing. After writing a couple of lines, I am sure that you would get your answer.

It is your chance to play God, to create people out of nowhere, to write and control their destiny, and to feel a power beyond your comprehension. It will also bring you closer to understanding the decision God takes while writing stories for your life i.e. if you think there actually is a God who holds strings to our lives. You would understand that sometimes there is no logic; sometimes you twist life of one of your characters just for fun, just because he was not doing anything interesting enough to be kept alive till the end of novel.

Having said that, since God is in this business for a long time, I believe God has figured out of a way of having a logic to almost everything which happens to your life – no loose ends.

The world I imagined...

I have not travelled this far for nothing. Ever since I was a kid, I used to imagine a world where I could run endlessly with all colours of nature – green, orange, blue and hues of red fusing as I sprint past them. I imagined standing on the corner of the earth, looking at what lay beneath and above the horizon. As a kid, you are allowed to have a wild imagination. For some unlucky ones like me, the imagination does not stop with age. The craving of finding this world grew so much that one day I could no longer continue with my excitingly mundane occupation. It was time.

It was not an easy job and a very expensive one. Fortunately or unfortunately there is no travel agency who plans this sort of adventure. Also I am sure I was not alone in search for such a place because at all promising locations I stumbled across people, automotive noise or military. I was looking for something more extraordinarily secluded untouched and silent. I should have started this search long back; maybe a thousand years back.

I was broke; both financially and emotionally. I was getting desperate. I had heard that seven hundred miles in west, there is a large piece of private land. It ran into millions of acres. It was the most suitable place for me to fulfil my dream. I knew I had to break in.

The place was as beautiful as I imagined it to be; green till you can see topped by a blue, red and orange sky. I had decided. It was the place. I had to die here, in middle of nowhere, with no one around; but only my beautiful colours. I have not travelled this far for nothing. I started running. No matter how much I ran, it seemed that nothing changed; just like I imagined. I kept running. Despite my lifelong imagination, I had never actually run in my life. My heart gave out soon.

And here I was lying; just last few moments. All colours were fusing into one – Black.

 

PS: I had imagined a different ending for the story. But I could just not deprive myself of a beautiful death...