“Fear has a large shadow, but he himself is small” - Ruth Gendler
I was patiently doing a thing which I had kept pushing for a long time - clearing all the clutter from my laptop. A real trashy job with billions of files crowding the whole place. I would not have started off in the first place had I been able to copy the movie from my pen drive. When you find you don’t even have two GB free space on your PC, that indicates you should really start off with some serious cleaning work. I did. And wonders of wonders I came across so many things which were so important. I had renamed them with IMP as prefixes and suffixes and kept them at such safe places that I had completely forgotten about them :P. Poor files finally saw the light of the day after almost a year and a half.
In the process I came across my Movies folder. I began marking them - Drona(I didnt watch it after piggy chops made her outrageous entry), De Taali (God, was it a movie?), Kismat Konnection and the list went on. No doubt my PC didnt have any space left. Keeping the movies of such kind was in itself a crime. So Shift deleted it without a second thought. Happy with the work I scanned for any itty bitty movies hiding somewhere. And I found 1920 hiding safely under the cover name of New_Movie. God I remember watching it and cursing Sneha(my roommate)for suggesting me to watch it.The movie felt like a masquerade party, wherein the director was trying to sell the fear factor by elevating the leading lady to new horizontal heights. It was more a comedy than a ghostly affair. Just as I was going to delete it, I had an idea, why not take a last look at it before I kick it out of my PC to rest in peace forever. So I double clicked on the movie and it opened in media player.
I fast forwarded the whole thing and had a hearty laugh and afterwards deleted it straightaway. Good riddance I thought. I checked the space and there was enough space now to copy the movie. I started the copying process and wandered to the kitchen to get some coffee for my sore throat. Just as I stepped into the kitchen the lights went out. Gosh. First the incessant rains from the morning, a terribly bad cold and now the power cut.
I scrambled back to my room toppling over the mess of shoes in the corridor. It was pitch dark and I was blind as a bat in that darkness. As I rummaged through my bed trying to locate my precious mobile(the only source of instant light) I came across strange feeling objects which I was oblivious to resting on my bed. Anyway that was not the issue right now. I searched and searched but couldn’t find it. Suddenly a message came as my life saviour. I ran in the direction of the sound. There it was right on the top of the fridge snuggled coyly by the side of the Kissan Jam bottle.
I unlocked it and blessed the soul who had sent the sms. Then I walked back to my room in search of a candle. Now where did I keep that all important thing. The last time I saw it was some eight months ago during the festival of lights of course. Elementary my dear Watson, so I looked in the elementary place - the small rack beside my almirah where I dumped anything and everything.
After much pushing and probing I finally pulled out the small slender white candle. I lit up with all the care and placed it in a candle holder in my room. The rains were transformed into torrents by then accompanied with strong wind. The rain was now coming inside so I pulled the windows and left a small slit, enough not to suffocate me. I checked the PC, the copy was done and my PC complained of low battery so I shut it down.
Now I was sitting inside the room with nothing to do. They say idle mind is devil's workshop, mine was not an exception. It has been years since I was all alone in the room(Sneha was having night shifts so she came home late) with no light and a raging rainstorm outside. I looked at the rain beating down my window. I could not make out anything in the dark. Only burly dark figures romped around hazily. Dont know what happened but suddenly the look of those things made me feel a bit uncomfortable. I pulled the curtains to cover the sight. They say once the fear gets better of you its a point of no return. Everything starts to feel creepy. Strange thoughts flickered through my mind. All the murderers of the crime thrillers I had read began to parade before me.
The candle light flickered and created eerie kaleidoscope of dark shadows. The wind was trying to force itself in through the narrow slit which made a sharp hissing sound. The hissing sound soon turned into a crazy banging on the window; so much so that I was afraid it might shatter the whole thing anytime. I hugged my pillow and sat with eyes shut to ward off evil images. Suddenly there was a tap on the door. I had nearly jumped out of my skin hearing that. It was 9.45 pm, Sneha came at 11.30, so who could it be?
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