Blood on her face..

When you stay alone, you develop a tendency of talking to yourself. I also narrate the incidents, frustrations and fears to keep myself entertained. Cooking for oneself, eating alone and then dragging oneself to bed night after night becomes an uphill task; and top of all, this rain. As if staying alone wasn’t scary enough for a girl, the rain and wind has to bang on doors and windows like ghosts trying to enter from all directions. It’s been a long time since I have been staying alone. One would think I must have become accustomed now, but I am as scared as I was the first day I slept alone.

I took a long time to sleep at first and then kept waking up with sound of each thunder. When I woke up this time, the sound was different. It was not thunder and it was not the wind banging against my door. There was someone outside the door. There was someone knocking faintly in regular intervals. I asked who it was. Nobody replied. The knocking increased and with it another sound; as if somebody was scratching the gate. My first reaction was to ignore the sound and sleep, but I rejected it immediately. I was as curious as I was scared. With trembling hands I put the security chain and slowly opened the door. There was no one outside the gate. I removed the chain and opened the gate, and then I screamed. Something ran into my home. It was a cat. She adjusted in a corner, licking herself. I gave her some milk in a bowl and went off to sleep.

Next day morning I had almost forgotten about the cat, when she startled me by dropping something. She liked me and kept rubbing her head against my hand. I got surprised when I went to pour some more milk in her bowl. The bowl was full of milk I gave to her the last night. I gave her a cookie which she sniffed and rejected immediately. She kept playing with a ball so I let her be, and then the daily routine kicked in followed by another lonely night. The only difference was that she was lying beside me on the bed today. Human mind creates its own image of company and thus sleeping was a little easier tonight. The night was eerily quiet and yet I woke up and opened my eyes. My heart skipped a beat and I shuddered with fear. She was just standing there on bed, very near my face. Her eyes were glowing in dark. I sat up and took a minute to be normal again. I locked her in another room and went off to sleep.

The bowl was still full of milk the following morning. I opened the door of the other room to let her out. I was a bit shaken when I saw her face. There was blood on it. In a way it solved the mystery of the bowl full of milk. But where did she find a rat or another rodent in my house? I had enough on my hands so I forgot the incident and carried on with routine followed by another night. I really needed to sleep after two eventful nights. Before sleeping I locked her in another room and then slept. I was very tired and fell asleep as soon as I hit the bed. But it was not in my destiny to sleep tonight as well. I heard someone crying. It was not a sob. It was a wail, women let out when they are being tortured. It was accompanied with a familiar scratching sound. I must have a very sound heart; otherwise combination of these two sounds was a perfect recipe for a stroke. The sounds were coming from the other room. I do not know what I was thinking when I opened the gate, but the wailing stopped and the cat ran into my room. I decided to let her out of the home next morning.

If I had any doubt on my decision of getting rid of her, it was cleared when I saw blood on her mouth the next morning. So I kicked her out of the gate as she purred and tried to come back. I was cleaning the house when I noticed a strange thing. There were stains on blood in the bowl as well. Did she kill a rodent and then like a sophisticated cat, kept it in her bowl and ate? It was a puzzle on which I did not wish to spend any more time.  And then the routine kicked in followed by another lonely night.

I knew I will have to get up again in night, but was only praying the reason was not horrifying. The prayer was not answered. What happened shook me to the core. I opened my eyes and saw two glowing eyes. I do not know how she came back, but there she was standing in front of me. Next few days and nights were horrifying. She kept coming back. There was wailing sound if I locked her in another room. She always had blood on her mouth and her bowl every morning. I could not bring myself to kill her. Leaving her far from home and in animal shelters did not help. She came back every night and just stood there with demonic eyes tearing through me while I sleep.

I was exhausted and terrified. I had grown white with fear and weakness. While lying on bed, I saw myself in the mirror. I was looking all white in white gown and bloodless face. I could not take it anymore, opening my eyes to find her standing there. So I decided not to sleep at all. I wanted to see where she comes from.  Time seemed to stop. It was an eternity before she showed up. She slowly walked up to her bowl. Why was she standing there? There was nothing in the bowl. But she was not looking at it. She was looking at me. She kept looking into my eyes and I kept looking at her. I noticed some other movement in the room. I looked into the mirror. I tried to scream but could not.

In the mirror my white body in white gown was standing on the floor, before the cat and the bowl. I tore my hand with my teeth and kept wailing. I was in pain and screamed at top of my voice. The blood dripped into the bowl.

I don’t remember what happened after that. Then the morning came and with it, the cat with blood on her face. 

When I will see her tomorrow..

I was standing on the sidewalk. I stand here every morning. I prepared myself to gather courage, cross the street and talk to her. I have been thinking about this moment for a long time now. Any moment she will open the door and come out. I remember her exactly the same. Everyday she comes out on the street wearing a hat, smiles and looks up, and my world just stops there. I watch her walk down the street and I just stand there, mesmerised.

My father used to tell stories about how he used to travel several miles to get a glimpse of my mother. He did this for months before she finally said yes and they got married. I used to wonder, what makes a person take so much pain; what makes a person identify his true love and what makes him sure that he will be able to persuade her eventually. I used to tell my father that I will never be able to undertake such burden. I did not see the point. My father always said “trust me son, you will; and it will all be worth every minute you spent standing in rain and heat, every step you take in a journey of miles and every tear you drop waiting for her.”

I asked my mother whether my father’s persistence forced her to say yes. She said that she would have agreed on the first day they met. She knew that he was the one she would get married to. I was baffled, why did she wait? She winked at me and said “It’s a girl’s secret. Ask the girl you would love when she says yes.” I always thought they were a weird couple.

I first saw her three months back. I am a shy person, especially when it comes to beautiful girls. I believe she looked at me. At the risk of sounding like a crazy stalker, I figured out her address and followed her home. I thought I will ring the doorbell and ask her out, but could not gather enough courage. I tried many times in office as well, however her smile makes me forget everything, even what I was about to say.

But not today; today I will walk up to her and ask her out. I had rehearsed what I will say. I had also planned various responses based on her reaction. I decided not to be too excited if she says yes, nor too depressed if she refuses. What if she does not recognise me? Should I then first introduce myself? Will she think I was stalking her? What if she was already engaged to someone? Am I dressed appropriately? Hope there is no spinach in my teeth? I cannot get nervous today. I have to do this.

And then the door opened. My heartbeat increased every millisecond. And there she was, like I remember her. Why does she smile so much? I am again forgetting what I had planned to say. I should do something fast. I started walking towards her. I was only watching her. The world had stopped around me.

But maybe everything had not stopped. I failed to notice a speeding truck approaching me. She looked at me. I thought she had recognised me. And then the truck hit me. I was dead. Again! I stood, picked up the flowers I brought for her, dusted my coat and walked back to the sidewalk.

I stood there, waiting for tomorrow morning when I will see her again.

The shadow

Everybody called her ‘shadow’. It was not her original name, but nobody knows what it was. I used to see everyone running back to their houses after darkness fell. Some people said that they had seen her; some said that she was behind them when they were walking towards home. Sometimes I used to wonder, not a single person had claimed that she had harmed them or their kids, but still she was the most feared thing for years. There were varied stories about her; how she got burnt alive in her home or how she was feared to be a witch and was beaten to death or how she was used to drink blood of animals and kids to keep herself young.

I was most curious of them all. So I snuck out one night and hid behind a rock. I kept waiting but nothing happened. I came back at midnight and tiptoed in the house. I lit a lamp in my room and started making my bed. Just when I was about to switch off the lamp, I saw something that made my spine chill and my forehead bursting with sweat. It was my shadow, looking at me, or at least it seemed. It was a women’s outline. I slapped myself thinking that I was dreaming but I wasn’t. I could not scream or tell my parents with the fear that they will discover my misdeed. Whole night I kept sitting in a corner trying not to look at the shadow. Irony was that the shadow needed light to exist and I needed light to not die of fear.

Sometime during the night I fell asleep. I woke up with a start and looked at my shadow. It was my normal shadow. It was after all a dream. I took a deep breath of relief and carried on as usual during the day. By the evening I had forgotten about it and by the night I was planning on sleeping peacefully with no recollection of the incident. Somebody touched me on the shoulder and woke me up. I was paralyzed with fear and could not move. Then somebody whispered in my ear and told me to walk out of the house. I was in a state of trance. While I was walking she kept whispering in my ear that I am not separate from her; she said that she was a part of me now and that I was a part of her. She also told me that I will have to go wherever she goes.

I hid under the bed, went to temples to pray, kept chanting prayers but she kept coming back every night. Her existence did not matter on presence of light but yet she was my shadow. It was as if I was living in a nightmare which didn’t seem to come to an end. One day I gathered courage and screamed at her. She didn’t seem to notice at all, but yes next day there were more horror stories of the shadow and its poor victim. I begged her to leave me but she did not give any response.

Finally I told my parents. They were shocked and frightened at the same time. To avoid embarrassment they did not tell anyone. They tied me to the bed at night so that I cannot go out. But night came and so did she. I spent entire night on roads again. When I came back, I expected my parents to be in terror but they were not. They told me that I had not gone out even for a single minute.

So I gave up and kept wandering with her night after night after night. She did not say anything; just kept roaming. I tried not to look at her face, not that she had a face to look at. She kept holding my hand, with a hand she did not have. I stopped telling her to leave me. My parents were happy seeing me in house for entire night when I was actually treading up and down the roads.

But something had changed now. I had started feeling secured with her. I started looking forward to the nights when we walked on those roads together. I found myself to be most peaceful when I was with her. And then one day she looked at me again with eyes she did not have. I knew she was going to leave me now. And then I looked at her. And she knew I wasn’t going to leave her.

I am the shadow.

The price I paid....

She kept on roaming in the house at night. I tried everything; making her sleep with me, locking the door to her room, tying her to the bed, giving her mild sleeping pills, psychiatric sessions; but nothing worked. You may not believe all this, even I did not at first, but then one night I stood outside the gate and saw the lock open from inside and she emerging out of the room. She was always in trance. I was frozen that night for the first time and now every night I silently look at her while she walks up and down the stairs, jumps on the couch, opens and closes the refrigerator, stares out of the window and talks to the cat. She does not sleep and so do I.

She is very cheerful during the day, with no recollection of what she does at night. She never sleeps, but is always fresh. On the other hand, I cannot go through the torture and horror of watching her every night. How she unties herself or opens the lock has always been a mystery to me.

One day I noticed that she was talking to someone at the window. It was past midnight. It was a scary face, the one you imagine that a ghost would have. I could not hear what they were talking about. I screamed and ran towards the window. He did not seem to notice me and kept talking to her. I picked her up and shut the window closed. She kept talking as if he was still there. While I was shutting the window, I saw his face closely and skipped a heartbeat. My dead husband was standing outside the window.

I was alone at home next evening when the window opened by itself. I saw the face and screamed once again. He called me by the name he used to. He kept a figure on his lips and gestured me to be quiet. Then he spoke. He said that he knows what was troubling her. He also said that he knows how to cure her, but there is a price to be paid. He asked whether I was willing to pay the price. Then he left, I do not remember when and how.

And then everything changed. I do not know how, but it did. I could not believe when I saw her sleeping. I kept watching her entire night and cried with happiness. Every following night, scared that I was, that things will not be like this for long, I saw her sleeping. And after a long time, I also started sleeping again. Life became normal. Weeks passed. I was convinced that she was cured now. Though I could never understand her powers of opening locks without keys, but I did not want to think about it. I also wanted to forget that I ever saw my dead husband. It was all a nightmare and it was over.

One day, principal of her school called me. She was worried. My daughter was sleeping in the school. My first thought was that she might be making up for all years of lost sleep. I started making her sleep early in evening. She had stopped talking, had dark circles under her eyes and had lost appetite. I started taking her out to play with other children but she just sat in a corner. She trembled and shivered when I spoke with her.

Once again I had to take her down to the psychiatrist. She went back to her memories in a state of trance. She said she did her homework, had dinner and went to her room to sleep. And then she started trembling, scared to hell and had to be brought back to her senses. I could not let her go through the nightmare again.

It took me lot of time to make her comfortable enough to talk to us. I took her in my arms and asked what is she so afraid of? She said “you”. I told her that I loved her a lot and will not do anything to hurt her or let anything happen which will hurt her. I asked her why she was afraid of me.

She innocently asked – “Why do you keep walking at night?”

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.