The night was engulfed in black with little stains of white here and there. She had admired the night so many times that she didn't even give it a second look. Her heart was hammering so hard that it would explode any moment. There was chillness in the wind which was stopping her to take a step forward. Her eyes had swollen up due to the inevitable events which she had been circumventing till yesterday. She had wept to an extent that tears seemed just another body part. The train took a turn and she could see in the distance the reflections of the moon in the river. She gripped the bars more firmly. As the train took the bridge she slowly closed her eyes. Breathing deeply she offered herself to gravity. She jumped off the train into the cavity below. She could count the seconds in mid-air. She was floating, or was it the sensation one feels after dying.
Akshita woke up from the terrifying dream. Her head was aching and she felt all wet in the abstract sense. It was 4 in the morning. She could not sleep thereafter. These dreams were tearing her apart day by day. She could no longer take them. Few hours later in the morning newspaper she read news of a girl who had committed suicide by jumping off a train over a bridge. How could this have happened? This couldn’t be true. This had happened to her herself in her very own dream. Or was she just trying to make a connection between her dream and the news? She needed to tell this to someone. She readied for the day and on her way to college called up Anchal, to meet her first thing in college.
Akshita narrated everything to Anchal in the longest possible way. Anchal had hardly seen her best friend look so uncomfortable. She didn’t want to sound very serious or to upset her more so she simply told her that the connection seemed very vague. But this was not what Akshita was willing to hear. She knew no one would believe her because of the dreamlike element in her talk. Agreeing to Anchal she also tried pushing away the thoughts.
Later that day Akshita went through the details of how the newspaper girl had come in terms with suicide and she found that she had had a harrowing time with her parents over some issue which wasn’t coming to light. Fear and anxiety had made their abode in her mind.
The day had been somewhat unusual and tiring. It was quite late for her to go home and she couldn’t even find a public transport. Sauntering on the footpath she was somewhat surprised to see the road deserted except for the two guys behind. The two guys! They were following her since she had left work. Her heart missed a beat. She quickened her pace on the narrow pavement and kept looking over her shoulder at short intervals to check whether they had lost her trace. The men were only a few decade meters behind her. She could sense the uneasiness inside her. She tried calling 100 but her call wasn’t getting through. She typed her whereabouts and her grim condition on her phone and selected the Send-to-many-option in such a hurry that she didn’t even know to whom she was sending the SMS. And the next moment she was running. Her action was reflected by her followers. But she couldn’t run. She tried all her might but the world seemed to have plunged into slow motion. The men now were only a few feet away from her. The last thing she remembered was her arms being held by a pair of wicked hands followed by her dreadful scream.
Akshita woke up, all sweating. Her breaths were audible enough to confirm that she had had a stroke of asthma. But that wasn’t the case. Her mobile phone beeped. Who calls at 2 am in the morning? What? No? She knew what was coming. Reluctantly, she picked up her phone. It was an SMS from Anchal and it read – “m @ the crossing of mg road nd lxmi ngr. 2 men folwng me. SOS!”
Terrified, she hurried out of her room and hastened to the colony police station on her two-wheeler, without even realizing that she had left her room open. There were exactly three policemen on duty, two of whom were dozing off and the third on the verge of drowsiness. It took her a good 20 minutes to shake off the cobwebs of sleep in them and convince them to come with her to Laxmi Nagar crossing. Obviously she didn’t speak about the dream, covering the story with a fake call from Anchal. En route the crossing in the police vehicle, she tried calling Anchal for a third time but still the cell phone was switched off. Tension was spreading its roots inside her body. Retrospection of her dream sent shudders down her spine.
They reached the exact place which Anchal had texted her. The place was indeed devoid of any living soul. Akshita climbed out of the jeep and began zooming in her eyes in all possible directions to get a sign of her friend. It didn’t take her long to locate a body lying beside a tree at a distance of a few meters from where they had parked the jeep. Her heart quickened its pace in accordance to her feet. She was running towards Anchal. The policemen followed her. Anchal lay there with scratches laced on her arms and her face all red. One of the policemen brought the jeep and they quickly took her to the nearby hospital. Akshita was weeping. Anchal lay unconscious on the seat of the vehicle. They headed straight to the emergency ward. From there the attendants took over. The receptionist asked Akshita what had happened. Akshita was not in a state to talk let alone explain the series of events. And what drove her mad was how she had come to know about Anchal’s condition. It was a precognition. Now she started fearing her own self. She didn’t want to sleep any more.
To be continued………
