Friday the 13th

It was the voice of a child. It was a child definitely, she thought as she turned around looking for the source of the gurgling voice.

“Mama”, the voice had called out, but the kid was invisible to her eyes.

She was on a deserted street. There were traffic lights on each end of the street. At one end the street turned right. That was where the voice was coming from. She felt the kid would come soon, to her through that street which turned right. There was a stop sign at the point where the street took a turn.

“Mama”, she heard the voice again and then a laughter of a kid not more than a year and a half old.

“Mama, it will be hell when I arrive”, the voice told her and it was followed by more giggling.

She ran towards the street which turned to the right. The street on which she was running seemed longer than she had imagined. She ran, her white gown trailing behind her. Her back was soaked in sweat. She ran on the unending street.  The gurgling laughter now seemed to be coming from behind her as if the kid was following her.

“It will be Friday the 13^th when I arrive”, she heard the nasal voice one last time.

She forced her eyes open. She was lying on her bed. Her white night gown was sweaty and her hair stuck on her forehead and cheeks.

She felt a gush of fluid between her legs. She sat up. She looked at the clock. The time was exactly a minute away from midnight of the sixth day of the week and twelfth day of the month. Her water broke.

The stalker

The wind blowing from the Arabian Sea ruffled her hair. She pushed them away from her forehead. The pages of the book that she held in her hands fluttered in the wind. The shopkeeper pulled out another book from the stack from the far end of the stall and showed it to the girl as if he knew what she wanted to read. I tried to read the name of the author on the spine of the book as she held it limp while trying to read the name on the cover of the book that the shopkeeper held out for her. She shook her head, dropped the book in her hands on one of the stacks near her and walked away.

I followed the book and picked it up. It was a dilapidated copy of Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls. I tried to find the page that she was reading. I turned around and saw that she had moved on to another shop and had picked up another book. I looked at the pages that she was turning. She was trying to find something in the book, a word, a sentence, a character, a story. I couldn’t know what. I looked on just to get a hint of her quest. What stories had her eyes read? Which authors had she known?

I kept the ruins of Gogol back on the stack where she had left it, walked to a lamp post and stood there leaning against it. My eyes never wandered to her shoulder length hair or her slim waist. I kept looking at the pages that she was turning. My eyes sometimes caught her long fingers, and nails colored sky blue. A dull pain began to rise within my heart. It hurt that I couldn't help her in her quest. In the black of her eyes I tried to catch the words she was reading.

The homeward bound evening crowd started milling out of the offices. As the crowd thickened I could see just the back of her head. The fear of losing the book that she was reading gripped me. Will I ever be able to know which book she had picked up? Did she take it home? I tried to make my way through the crowd coming toward me. I saw her white kurta and then she disappeared. I tried to weave my way. I saw her turning around and then I lost her again. I moved swiftly and reached the book shop, but she wasn’t there. I looked around, tried to get a glimpse of the pink bag that hung on her left shoulder but it wasn’t anywhere to be found.

I turned around and looked at the stacks of books. Which book did she hold in her hands? I looked around desperately trying to remember the color of the book cover. I couldn’t. I tried to look for any sign of disarray amongst the neatly stacked books. There were none. I turned around and stood on my tip toes to get a better look but I knew I had lost her in the crowd. I looked at the books lying in the shop waiting for their turn to be picked up, to be devoured by keen eyes.

By now the crowd had thinned. Far away the sun was slowly dying in the sea. It seemed like I had lost a part of me again.