The Story
It was a beautiful morning. The smell of wet mud was in the early morning air, after the previous night’s rain. The streets were wet, and almost empty. The peaceful stillness of the morning gave way to a loud ‘thud’. The body was on the ground, lying there, still, calm, lifeless. By the time one realized what had happened, a little pool of blood gathered around A’s head. His jaw was crushed and deformed, and the body looked like a broken stick figure. His eyes were shut, as if he was having the most peaceful dream. The dream, it was nothing like what he had wanted. Something was wrong. There was a twitch in his eye all of a sudden, and the pool of blood got sucked back into his head, and before you could finish blinking, A’s body flew back. It all reversed. He was up on his terrace, 26 storeys above the ground, and when his eyes opened, he was on his bed, and had just woken up from a dream. The morning was still beautiful, or whatever of the morning A could see outside his window. The inside was miles away from the outside world. The room was small, the bed stuck to one wall, which was full of posters of everything under the sun. On the bedside table were a phone, a table clock, and a nailclipper which was resting on a notebook. The other contents of the room were a study table, a chair, and a book shelf. The table was under the window, which was on the wall adjacent to the wall with the posters. The ruffled sheets on the bed showed how uncomfortably A slept. He was still recovering from the shock of his insanely realistic dream, breathing deep, and then he turned to his right, to the bedside table, and picked up his phone as he let out a deep sigh. He was sitting on his bed now, wearing a dirty old t-shirt and boxers, hair all over the place, and an almost skinny built. His posture was not the most cheerful and upright posture one would expect to see, and something made it clear that it was not just fatigue that led to his state. He sat there, staring at his phone, expressionless. His brain was registering the fact that he had missed 7 calls and not checked 1 message. He also noticed that today he woke up earlier than usual. It was only 11.22am. he wanted to go back to sleep and that would be just the most simple solution to everything, if only somehow it would undo all that had been done, but that not how it worked in real life. And so concluding that, he called B back. She had called him 7 times. The message that she had left was not pretty, for obvious reasons. The reasons were obvious to both of them. “Why did I have to be so fucking stupid!?” he thought, and finding no real answer, he waited. He waited for her to answer. She didn’t. Another deep sigh and he got up and walked towards the bathroom door.