With my frightened fingers drumming on our dining table, I was staring at my nails, zoning out. My wife was doing her chores in the kitchen room. “Ding, Dong!”, a sudden door-bell scared me abjectly. My heart pounded. I, with a palpitating heart, stood up and went to open the door. I lifted the latch and pulled the door open. With scared eyes, I sneaked a peek at the vicinity of my home, but saw none. When my eyes slowly dropped down on our front porch, there was the same delivery laying on it : a whole dead human body packed in a plastic cover. I was scared as hell. “Honey! We got ANOTHER one! We're gonna DIE!”, my fear-stricken voice whined while my torso was shivering. She in a cooking dress came running towards me, unable to catch her breath. “What happened?,” she cried. I was so petrified that I couldn’t muster words to reply to her. “GOOD HEAVEN! ANOTHER ONE?,” she exclaimed out of fear, with her eyes wild with terror. We stared at each other, both filled with trepidation.
Last evening, when the sun left the valley to go climbing up the slopes of the mountains, I found a similar parcel with plastic cover on our front porch. The first glance at the parcel intimidated both of us that we were perspiring heavily. After about an hour of daunting silence, we decided to go on for an evening walk so as to be fresh, leaving behind the deadly parcel in the living room.
Her soft but perspiring hands were locked with mine. We were walking down a tree-lined avenue, occasionally tightening our grip out of foreboding. The light of the day was slowly draining away while we were on the way. Meanwhile, an old woman in black robe and pointed hat was plodding towards us. “Where are you going, my children?,” she asked with her hoarse voice. Little awkward and little perturbed, we answered her that we were on an evening walk. She came a little closer to us and started to explain, “Children, don’t walk down this avenue at this time. This whole valley is under an unfortunate spell.” “Spell? what sort of spell, grandma’?,” my wife asked her immediately. “Few unfortunate houses were chosen to be delivered with a parcel of a dead body. The household receiving altogether three such parcels will be murdered,” she finished her sentence with a cough and left us. Our wide-opened eyes with terror met. We then knew that we were in a vicious circle, facing impending doom.
All the incidents that happened that day were whirling in our mind. With such a state of mind, we decided not to have dinner that night. I was laying in our bed, with my hand on my forehead, when my wife curled into the blanket, putting her right hand on my chest. We both were silent. We didn’t have a dint of idea what we should do in such a situation. Suddenly, a phone ranged. We convulsed with fear. I slowly picked up my phone and looked at the number. It was my friend’s call. We both heaved a sigh of relief. “Yes, buddy! How are you doing?,” I faked my tone so as not to let him feel that I was in trouble -- big trouble. “Broda, I recently got a dead body as a parcel,” his voice was infused with dread and apprehension. “WHAT??” I exclaimed. I was about to tell him that I received a similar parcel twice, but my wife gestured to me not to explain it to him. “I will call you later. There is hella lot of work to do! I’m sorry, buddy,” I replied to him unsympathetically. He, Aryan, didn’t insist me to listen to him - maybe he was in extreme confusion and panic that he couldn’t figure out what he was doing. The call ended.
Again, I was lost in confusion. After a few seconds, my wife exclaimed, “I’ve got an idea!” “What idea?,” I responded to her exclamation with indifference. She began to explain assuringly. “Your friend has also gotten the parcel, and we too have. When we were examining the parcel last evening, we didn’t see any reference to our home address. That means those parcels weren’t specified. If we leave one of our parcels on the porch of your friend's house, we won’t be the victim of the spell about which the old woman explained,” she explained everything with a tone of relief. The idea to me, at that time, was the only solution of the trouble we were bogged down into.
I quickly looked at the wall-clock whose hour hand was pointing at ten. It was really dark outside. I immediately jerked out of the bed, and picked up the parcel and my car keys. My wife shouted and waved her hand, “Drive carefully!” as I drove my car passed my house, with alarming speed.
Bulged with frustration and perturbation, I accelerated my car as much as I could. The road was dauntily silent. The dead body, the unknown parcel, the old woman, my friend - all was whirling in my mind like a tornado. The only thing I wanted at that moment was to get rid of that parcel. After about half an hour of driving, I was near my friend’s house. I parked my car about a hundred meters ahead. I took out that parcel with my petrified hands, and locked the car. I looked around with my vigilant eyes. No-one was there. I slowly walked towards Aryan’s house. Each step was taken with close attention. “What are you doing here?,” someone patted on my shoulder. I freaked out with prominent convulsion. I turned immediately and saw that it was Rustam with a similar parcel in his hand. I didn’t know how to react to the situation. I was utterly out of my mind. After a few seconds of an unexpected encounter, he explained everything to me about what happened with him for the last two days - his parcel, his encounter with an old woman, Aryan’s phone call. I was awed.
At the outskirts of Aryan’s house, amidst the chilling breeze of midnight, we planned to make Aryan the ultimate victim of the unfortunate spell, leaving our two parcels on the front porch of his house. “If we did so, we would be free from the trouble,” Rustam encouraged me to accept the plan. I nodded.
Rustam handed me his parcel and directed me the way to the front porch. “You put these dead bodies on the porch, ring the bell and run towards the backyard. I will be waiting for you there,” Rustam whispered out. I tiptoed toward the porch, carefully placed the two parcels on it, and ringed the door-bell. With the palpitating heart and the perspiring body, I hurriedly ran toward the backyard. I heaved a sigh when I saw Rustam there. “Calm down! Now, let’s go into his house from here,” he handed me a knife, and we both jumped into the room. I saw Aryan returning to his room with a contorted face. “There he is!” I shouted. We both ran towards him. He got so scared that his eyes and mouth were wide-opened. Rustam flew his hand in the air, and stabbed into Aryan’s belly. “Ahhhhhhh!” Aryan cried in pain. I stabbed another shot into his chest. The blood was flowing out of his body incessantly. The floor was all red with his blood. I got so panicked that I lost the grip of my knife. It dropped. With final unbearable crescendo, Aryan breathed his last air.
I became unsettled. My eyes moved furtively around the vicinity. Outside the window, the face of the old woman whom we met on the avenue appeared mysteriously. In a jiffy, the old woman entered the house, and caressed the corpse of Aryan with love. Rustam and I looked at each other with an air of confusion and regret. “Kaliyug!” the old woman sighed and walked away.
