Raw Innocence

She opened her bag to take out her umbrella, thanking her lucky stars that she was carrying one. It was raining very heavily, quite unnatural to the place where she lives where monsoons generally tend to exist only in the pages of geography books or scripts of news-reporters. She shivered as the cold air laden with rain drops gushed past her. She already felt the urge to cup the sides of a hot coffee mug. I will make the evening up to it, she promised to the weather, smiling at nowhere.

She plugged in her earphones, perfect opportunity to drown herself in songs from her "Rain" playlist, and also that she was walking alone, it served a greater purpose. Finally, she set out from under the shed where had taken refuge for a while as the light drizzle had changed into enormous drops falling with so much intensity that it almost hurt to stand under them. She was unknowingly singing the song that was playing in her playlist quite loudly, the rain drowned her voice quite effectively. She released a deep sigh after the completion of her favorite lines.

She looked up to find a girl smiling at her. She was drenched from head to toe, her hair all messed up, falling half on her face,  she was shivering like anything. But it was the smile that caught her attention, it was almost the same smile that her seven year old sister had given her after successfully spelling out B-A-S-K-E-T-B-A-L-L, one that was printed on the mini ball that she gifted her this summer and this made her suddenly miss her sister very much, remembering the times when she used to enjoy getting drenched on their roof with her sister in her lap, ignoring the perpetual shouts from their mother downstairs.

She was jolted back to reality when a streak of lightning split open the sky in front of her turning the grey hue around into an amazing purple followed by a deafening thunder. She realized that she had stopped walking. She noticed the girl was still looking at her still, almost amused. She took off her earphones, thinking maybe she was one of those people whom she knows but can't point out their name or how she knows them at the moment. Then she realized that this was the same girl who some of her friends had conveniently named "weirdo".. "freak" based on very little interaction they had with her. She asked her whether she would like to share her umbrella, she happily came under it.

As they started walking towards their hostel, she asked the girl general questions, some she answered with overflowing excitement, some with pursed lips and some with animated gestures. She was more and more reminded of her sister now. From the little conversation they could have while walking towards the hostel, she came to know her name, the place she belonged to, that she was a fresher, and didn't have many friends yet.. As they reached the gate, the girl ran out of the umbrella, looking back with a grateful grin.

As she entered her room and put her bag down, she could not shake off the worry that engulfed her now, worry for a mere stranger. She felt angry towards the parents of the girls who had sent her to the hostel, could they not see that she was too naive to live in one, did they not know how other students might make fun of her innocence (like her own friends had done), take advantage of her gullibility or did they want her to learn things alone? But would she be able to cope up? She stood in front of her window, it was still raining heavily, she thought of her baby sister, imagined her getting drenched in a heavy rain somewhere when she had forgotten to carry her umbrella, would there be anyone to provide her with one, she felt a lump in her throat.

She tried to change her course of thoughts, she had promised herself that she would spend the evening well, she could not ruin it worrying about things that were not in her control. She sat on her window sill with the unfinished novel that was reaching its climax now.. but all she could remember was that innocent smile.. so pure.. so innocent!

Are you afraid of the dark?

It was all dark and swampy. She could hear her ragged breathing echo against the walls of the tunnel, the sound of her footsteps reverberated throughout.  Her body was numb! She could feel it tense even more, as if preparing to put in more.. to run faster, but she knew.. it did not really matter. It was closing in, the time has come...

She woke up in cold sweat on her bed. Clutching her bed sheet, she tried to stop from shivering, she realized that she had goose-bumps all over. She sat up after a while. Her room was shrouded in darkness, the only thing that she could make out was the pattern of the grills of her window that the moonlight had carved in the wall opposite, it was strangely distinct and resolute considering the moon outside which was dull and almost hidden behind clouds. A slight breeze made the pattern waver.Some clouds might have passed across the moon.She noticed that the lights were out, probably a power-cut or something, the expressway that overlooked her window was pitch black except few appearances of one or two vehicles hurrying away. She checked her cell phone for the time.. It was 3:30..

It was all very very silent, she could hear every breath she took, even almost the thud of her heartbeats. Though sound, sight every kind of sense was overridden by her sense of fear. She had never felt so scared.. She did not know what to do, whether to run with all her might or whether not to budge even an inch. She gulped noisily, adding to her discomfort, because she realized that she was thirsty and that she needs to go out to get water. The situation was getting really uncomfortable.

She decided to stay put, to divert herself with something else. Running her hands through her bed-sheet tentatively she decided to get hold of her phone so that she could listen to some music. She found her phone at last, plugging in the the headphones she went to her playlist and played a DJ mix, at-least that would be loud enough to deafen her from the sounds outside and since the song was really remixed in a night-club or something, bouts of hooting at regular interim made her less aware of the fact that she was all alone.

As she settled against her pillow, in a half-lying position, something very very strange happened, the pigeon which perpetually lives outside her window was looking at her, with a unfaltering and unnerving gaze and weirdly it was not seeing through her, it was looking at her, as if it had been suddenly endowed with human intelligence. It took every ounce of her courage to get up and go towards the window and try to shoo it away but it did not move a bit, rather one can say settled down more comfortably on the sill. She was almost on the verge of collapsing.

Suddenly the pitch-black expressway outside was again filled with lights from the lamp post and just a second later her room lit up brightly and the fan started rotating noisily. She heaved a sigh of relief, the room which minutes back was closing in on her, now looked very much familiar and welcoming. But she still did not have courage to go out and bring water. To hell with water she though, she might as well die of thirst. Lowering herself on her bed, she tried not to remember the nightmare that triggered her fear.. but her ragged breathing, footsteps on a wet-surface, the feeling of suffocation just at the altar of collapsing, and the fact that she felt really really exhausted, like one feels after running for a good length, did worsen matters. It had all felt so real. She could not shake it away. Closing her eyes tightly now, she clutched her sides and with all her might tried to go back to sleep again..