Shraddha’s dreams broke as the clock struck
‘one’. She woke up in the dinner table and saw it in the condition, as it had
been, when she dozed off.
She was starting to feel scared. Chetan
haven’t returned yet. The heavily misty glass panes gave an impression of the
intensity of the rain, outside. The distant street light looked like someone
had smudged its yellow light. She drifted away to thoughts again, to that
afternoon, when after the heavy rain, the rainbow coloured the dull sky, they,
wrapped in one bed sheet, had spent it writing each other’s names with fingers,
on the misty window pane.
Her thoughts broke and she grew more
anxious.
Where the hell had he gone?
The phone said ‘Switched off’. She
flooded them with voicemails. The last one, had her crying almost.
She opened the window pane, and let the
rain hit her face. Please keep him safe, RAIN!
The landline rang. She ran to get it. The
receiver almost fell from her hand, when the expected voice whispered eerily, “ .. narrowly escaped death.”
She howled, “where are you?”
“On a pavement. Please come. I am so
scared.”
She ran, broke open the door, and
dodged the stairs. As she crossed the apartment’s main gate, she saw him.
The street lights showed blood gushing
from his forehead. She ran to him, hugged him, and could barely speak, “How..
What happened?”
That followed a disturbing moment of
pause.
“They want to kill me.”
“Who?”
For the whole time I thought about the incident, I
thought it as someone’s else’s life. Anyone, but mine. This incident happened
to SHRADDHA, not me.
Something in me smirked. You are
Shraddha. YOU.
To the busy world outside, as I gazed at, I knew
they take me for a girl suffering from emotional crisis, who lost her fiancé in an
accident and was undergoing counselling, but all I knew was,
Chetan’s death was not normal. It was anything but an
accident..
.. to be continued.
