Backstory
Sharvani(14 years ) :
I came back from school with my brother, and after entering the house, our first word was always the same: “Mumma,” because we were so hungry after spending a whole freaking 8 hours at school. I don’t like going to school because, as usual, I miss my mumma so much. I have never seen my dad, so for me, my mother is my dad and mom both.
mumma yelled at us to change and freshen up and then come to eat food. After freshening up, both of us went to the kitchen and sat at the dining table and started waiting for food. Mumma came out from the kitchen with 2 plates of food and started serving us, and I started ranting about my whole day, every single detail, and, like my best mumma, she listened to everything and started feeding both of us. After the lunch, as usual, my mother put both of us down for a nap and also lay with both of us. This is our usual routine after coming from school: to eat lunch and then take a power nap in the afternoon with my mother and brother.
But I will never ever think in my dream that this will be the last nap and this will be the last time I am going to see my brother and my mother.
When I woke up from my nap, my head felt so dizzy, and I had a terrible headache. I was struggling to open my eyes. I was in such pain that I never had after waking up from a nap before. Finally, I opened my eyes and saw the room was unexpectedly dark with no lights on, which was unusual because my mother never forgot to turn on lights, especially in the evenings, because she heard somewhere that we should never turn off lights fully in the evening because it’s called bad luck according to them. When I was processing all this, I felt that I was alone on the bed. My brother Anay was also not in bed, which seems quite off because he never wakes up before me, and when I saw the other side where my mother was lying with us, it was also empty, which means I am alone in bed in a dark room, which started scaring me. My mother never turns off the light fully because she knows that I get scared of the dark.
After gathering courage, I came out from bed and started to go towards the room gate to open it. Suddenly I heard the thunder of clouds, which means it is raining outside, and I got more frightened. But I was deliberately taking steps to open the door, and when I opened the door, I saw the whole house was also pitch dark, which made me so scared I started shivering and started screaming, Mumma, Mumma, but no voice was coming. The chill air coming from the open windows of the room and house gave me goosebumps. I started chanting Mother slowly under my breath and started getting down from the stairs to reach the ground floor. When I was almost at the last stair, I heard the creak of a door opening from the house. Which led me to scream more, and I felt faint due to fear, but my senses were there, so I was able to listen to every activity: the voice of rain, the thunder, everything. Then I heard the footsteps of someone who was in the house, the footsteps coming towards my direction because the voice was coming clear, or very clear, as he came near me. And then I smelled a cigarette, and then that someone reached near me and maybe watched me because after that, for some time, I heard no voice except the rain. I wasn’t able to move, but I was able to listen and smell everything going on near me, and then that someone started to walk towards the main gate. I could see because my face was towards the main gate. I was lying on the floor with teary eyes and able to see very blurry, and then he reached the main gate, and then I got to know he was a man because of his structure and clothes. That someone who is lurking around my house was the man, which man I don’t know, but I know that someone is the man. He was wearing pants and a hoodie because it had a cap. He was so tall. And then he opened the main gate and got out of the house, and then I completely fainted.
