It was during one of the hottest day of summer vacation. I was very tired after playing with my friends in the streets. Every inch of my body was aching and all I wanted to do was go home and sleep. And so I did. I slept at about 2 pm after having my lunch. It is one of the best things I do during holidays. I dint know for how long I have been sleeping but when I woke up everything around me was pitch dark. It was so dark that I couldn’t figure out where’s what. Soon my eyes became accustomed to the darkness and I was still in my house except that I dint seem to find anyone there and the place portrayed as if it was struck by a natural disaster. Everything was a mess, many valuable items were broken, broken mirror, broken chairs, and the scariest thing there was the rats. I am basically a person who fears all the reptiles in the world I would run to my neighbor’s house if I happened to see a cockroach in my living room. Now that I saw rats there was no stopping me. I ran away from that room until I made sure I never saw it anymore.
Just when I thought that things could never get worse, I felt something wet under my feet. Then there I saw blood spots. The thing about this was that it went all the way outside my house. I followed it even though I had no courage to do so. I just did it because I had to find my parents they could be in trouble. As I kept thinking about all the possibilities of what could have happened to my parents while following the blood spots it just disappeared suddenly. I lifted my head and found I was standing in the middle of the road. I then came back to my house there could have possibly been a car over there which took them. I found the main switch and switched it ON. Then frantically searched the telephone to dial to my uncle because he is the only person I could count on when I was in trouble. I took the receiver and I found out that the phone was dead. Imagine yourself getting up from sleep and figuring out that your parents are missing and that you could possibly not get any help from anyone. How much agony will you feel? How much pain will you have? I sat there for a few minutes staring at the receiver not knowing what to do.
Then I took all courage to enter my room (remember my fear of reptiles?) I took some money from the drawer and found my cell phone missing. I came out to the living room past the dining room and took a double look at the dining table; I saw a parchment with something written in it. It was some kind of a code word or could it be…
The parchment read,
Eh oys qmzzm umri oysv xmviztu xviuu vijmeb hvya tfi zimvlo lyytf.
The first thing that came to mind after seeing this was “is this some kind of practical joke?”. I know I was wasting time but I had no other option I sat with the code for 2 hours and finally figured out the pattern. It was the alphabets taken 13 at a time and reversed like a-m as a set and the rest taken separately and the order reversed. The message read:
If you wanna save your parents press redial from the nearby booth.
I ran to the telephone booth opposite my apartment and pressed redial. It was a voice mail. A man spoke up and said some address. I knew where it was so I took a cab to the place. Luckily I had money. As I got down I saw this worn out building right in front of me. I had no idea what danger I was facing. I had no self-defense plan or anything of that sort all I had in mind was to save my parents. I entered this haunted looking building and I climbed the stairs. As it was night time it made me imagine that a ghost is walking right being me and that I keep hearing strange noises. When I came to the second floor someone hit me hard on my head and I fell down knocked out.
When I woke, all I saw was bright white light glaring at me. My hands and legs were tied down and my parents in front of me sitting in a chair. Other than us there was no one in the room. My dad looked at me, and for the first time in life I saw fear in his eyes. I know him as this fearless, brave man but now he seemed to me like bait ready to be hooked in the fishing rope, scared to death. Mom on the other hand was unconscious. I tried shouting but I heard no voice coming out. My throat was as dry as sand. I suddenly felt stupid that I am just dreaming but no matter how much I tried I couldn’t wake up from the dream so that confirmed this wasn’t one. My dad tried to tell me something but I dint quiet understand.
I knew things would get worse if anyone entered in but I had to do something I cannot just be tied there, I would rather have had them tie one around my neck instead. Then it flashed to me I happened to have a small nail clipper in my dad’s pocket. I signaled him to pull it out of his pocket if he could. Atleast we had one ray of hope, he was able to take it out somehow and he freed himself and then he freed me too. When he was busy untying my mom, a man entered in and from the look in his face I was sure he was furious.(of course he will be duh!!!). He had a hand gun. When the man came close only then I realized who he was. He was one my dad’s client, my dad is an attorney and this man is a murderer since my father came to know the truth he had represented the opponent party in the court he wanted to kill him and his entire family. He had come home yesterday to warn my dad about this, but my dad was not scared of him and never took him seriously. That was where the whole problem started.
As the man explained this, everything seemed to have fallen in place. I knew what my dad did was wrong but it was for a good cause. The man raised his gun towards me and prepared himself to shoot me. I really had no idea what I was doing but because of fear my adrenaline seems to have secreted a lot of acid and I found my self running towards him and kicking him and a second later I found him on the ground and I was over him trying to tie him out. My dad quickly took his phone and called the police and they arrived to arrest this guy.
Well so much for the whole story we all know sometimes things like these are more likely to happen so all I want to say from this is believe in yourselves because you don’t who would. Sure this was not a true story but it was at least an interesting one I hope….
Contributed by
Ramya Krishnan
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