Short Story – Nightmare
Photo credit: dhester from morguefile.com
The vision would just not go. Ritesh was awkward in his demeanor. He had a persistent headache and was trying to sleep. But, whether he was awake or asleep he kept seeing the same scene in his mind’s eye. The scene wasn’t pretty. In fact it was a nightmare.
Ritesh was staying with four of his friends in a paying guest accommodation while pursuing engineering. The accommodation was on the first floor of an independent house. The distinguishing feature of the house was a serpentine black colored staircase in the front which was visible from afar. It was a conscious decision by Ritesh and his friends to rent an accommodation instead of staying in a hostel. Partially, it was due to the senior’s advice. They didn’t want to go through the rigmarole of the hostel life with ragging being the biggest deterrent.
This accommodation was always buzzing with activity. Whether it was for group studies or parties, there were always at least ten students occupying this place. The presence of a couple of two wheelers made life less complex as the college was around 4 kilometers.
Ritesh was an intelligent guy. He hardly studied. For any exam, if he studied, he invariably topped that course. He had his own priorities in life. On this occasion, he was flooded with the replay of the same scene. A girl, accompanied by her father, was travelling in a red colored Maruti 800 was travelling towards Bhopal. The milestone, in the visual, showed “Bhopal-50 kilometers”. Then, suddenly, a lorry coming from the opposite direction hit the car and the car went tumbling in a ditch nearby the road. There were no survivors.
Incidentally, the girl was Ritesh’s girlfriend. These scenes kept repeating no matter whether Ritesh was asleep or awake. He started telling his friends about this. Friends started joking. They asked him about the color of the truck, registration number of the car, driver’s name and what not. Ritesh was obviously not in a mood to joke or answer their queries. This kept happening for about 5 hours. The nightmare kept repeating.
In the evening, Ritesh called home. He was promptly told by his parents about the mishap that occurred 50 kilometers away from Bhopal. His girlfriend, along with her father, was dead.
When Ritesh told this fact to his friends, everyone was shocked. Unbelievable, they said. The nightmare turned out to be true and in real time.
Nobody joked to him about any of his dreams anymore.
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