Chapter 21
Everything was dark. It looked like the power had gone off in the entire city. I looked around, there was no one in the street. I was standing in the middle of the road, in a narrow lane with tall houses on either sides. What was this road? I was not able to recollect anything. It felt like it was the first time I was here. Where should I go from here? I tried to look for a sign or a name-board to find out the name of the road. I couldn’t see anything. That is when I noticed the silhouette of a man.
I took a few steps towards the man to find out the name of the road. Strangely, I could not see anything except a black outline and the eyes of the man- not clothes nor hair nor face- nothing. I could see even the iris of his eyes. They were staring at me. I got scared. I started moving away from it, but the eyes followed me. I started running and occasionally turned back and looked. I ran quite a while. The figure didn’t move but got bigger and bigger. Those eyes were still looking at me and were always right behind me. I screamed and tried to run. And then I fell on something soft. I was now touching the floor. But there was no floor, although everything around me was soft. I looked up and the figure was now next to me, but without eyes. This time it moved its hand and got a hold of me. It started shaking me.
Suddenly there was light and I sat up. I was sweating profusely. In front of me was Preethy with a sad and worried face.
“Are you okay bhaabhi” Preethy asked with lot of concern.
“Where am I?” I asked.
“In the hospital. You had fainted, so they admitted you here. I heard your screams so I came. It must be a bad dream” she said.
She handed me a glass of water. I drank and placed the glass on the side table. I turned towards Preethy.
Preethy’s face was covered with tears.
“I am very sorry bhabhi. I brought you so much pain”.
I reached for her and we both hugged each other. Sometime later, I was leaning against the pillows and Preethy was sitting on the bed. She was playing with my fingers, and we talked till dawn.
“How is Mr. Sivam?” I asked her.
“Doing fine. It is not a big wound- it just looked bad” Preethy replied with a sigh of relief.
“Is he your father? He had said ‘don’t leave Appa’” I asked her hesitatingly, remembering his last statement.
She shook her head indicating no. “My parents passed away when I was in high school” Preethy replied.
Should I be nosy? Should I ask for more details? Poor thing, she went through too much already. May be I should wait? While I was pondering, Preethy started telling me her story.
She started talking about how her life changed since Madhavi entered her life.