Is He Dead or Alive?

Ravi is too late. He just finishes his work and leaves from his office to his home. That day he had some unfortunate experiences which he had never felt before in his whole life. Though small they had left a strong impact on him.

Remembering these incidents he is busy walking down the street. He has reached half way from his home and now it’s too late. It’s about few minutes left for the day to change. He is still on the road. No one is on the road &  he is still walking alone lost somewhere in his own thoughts.

Suddenly he hears the cries of a woman asking him for help. He quickly rushes to see where are the cries coming from. That’s the old graveyard which was more than a thousand years old  &  no one ever ventures over there nowadays. Then what a woman must be doing at this time & at such a place was the question that first came to his mind when he was unable to find anybody out there & the cries of that woman has suddenly disappeared now.

But now he is inside the graveyard gate. He knows a shortcut which is weird and requires walking between the graves but leads to his home quickly within 5 minutes. He thinks that he can save his time if  he goes through this route and also it’s already too late by now. So he moves ahead. His friend had discovered that route one day when they left from college in a hurry to avoid missing their classes.

After he reaches midway, he hears voices of as if someone is following him. He looks back many a times during his way back home but can’t see anyone behind him. He can also hear voices of crawling leaves in the dark and now he starts feeling a bit scared. The whole environment has suddenly changed into a haunted look and he is still a few meters away from his home.

He walks hurriedly but something comes in his way and he finds it stuck under his shoes. It looked as if a bangle of some lady but unlikely others which are totally round in shape.It’s oval in shape. It looks too precious & old & seems to be made up of pure sparkling diamonds whose reflection can be seen on his face in this dark night of no moon. He picks it up and thinks whether to take it with him or notBut he is too mesmerized by the charm of these diamonds and cannot stop himself and keeps it in his pocket without giving one more forethought to it & now he is only a few yards away from his home. Everything is alright till now. It’s just  now that he reaches the graveyard gate which is just opposite to his own house.He needs to cross it to reach his  home. But as he reaches in front of the gate, the gate closes rapidly with a bang. He tries to open it. But it is locked. He tries hard to pull it & even to climb over it but each trial results into one more failure & he is now totally exhausted.

He thinks to go back again to the front gate & curses himself from choosing this way to reach home quickly. But as he reaches the front gate he is amazed to find that it was closed too. He is too tired by now & it’s difficult for him to move his legs & he feels as if they had been stoned. Hopelessly he sits down near the graveyard’s gate. Still whole night is there to pass for him in this graveyard that wears a more haunted, deserted & scary look with each single moment passing by & he is  just waiting for the  morning  to come soon so that he can ask  for help from someone nearby.

Nobody is there to help him out of that trap which the graveyard has lain for him. He closes his eyes and tries to sleep. As he falls asleep he sees a woman asking him to return her bangle back. He refuses & she comes close to his neck & bites him.  She sucks his blood & takes her bangle back from him. His eyes open with a shout  full up of  fear as if all must have had really happened to him.

He looks outside the gate & can see it’s early morning now and a worker is busy in cleaning the road. He calls him & asks him to open the graveyard’s gate. The worker replies that the gate was not closed so there is no question of opening it. He looks back again towards the gate & finds that the worker was telling truth and wasn’t joking. Was he hallucinating throughout the night or has he gone insane ? This question starts haunting him.

He hurriedly gets out of the graveyard & finally returns to his home. He goes to bath and finds marks of being  bitten around the neck by something he doesn’t know what & when was he bitten & starts wondering about it as he sees his face into the mirror. He then recalls his dream & looks into his pocket where he had kept that bangle which he had found in the graveyard. He searches all the pockets of his clothes but unable to find that bangle anywhere.

Last night that he spent in the graveyard near to his house has changed him forever.  Now he has started drinking human blood & eating human flesh. He has  turned into a cannibal without letting anyone even doubt what he does each day. He hates sunlight & stays in the dark most of the time. His wounds now take no time at all to heal. All his hairs have shed & now he wears a cap to hide his baldness & keeps his face covered to hide himself from rest of the world. His new  friends are weird & they come to visit him only at night. He has left his job & now works in a graveyard. He eats dead people’s flesh & drinks blood of alive humans occasionally. He now likes those things which he previously used to hate and never ever had even thought of doing  for himself. Also he had left his parents in an old age home whom he used to love & respect earlier & never ever even cares to know about their well being nor he has visited them ever since he left them. He stays away from people and never ever allows anyone to come closer to him.

He  has no emotions left  for anyone now  & lives alone in his same house with boards put up in every corner of the house & even at the gates that say  ” Knock before you enter”  & “Please do not disturb”. And whosoever tries to enter his house without  his permission has never been heard to come back again. Every month when there is no moon night, he spends that whole night in the same manner as he did once when he was human and unfortunately trapped in that graveyard. Is he dead or alive?

Read more: http://authspot.com/short-stories/is-he-dead-or-alive/#ixzz24y1sn1Mg