The Boy Who Brought Death
The rain hadn’t stopped in hours. It tapped against the windows like impatient fingers, cold and relentless, as if time itself were trying to remind Aarav that nothing ever stayed dry, clean, or safe for long.
He sat in the corner of his dim apartment, legs folded under him, his back pressed against the bare wall. The soft yellow of the room’s lighting flickered once, then settled into a tired glow. Across from him, half-packed boxes waited, untouched for days.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
There were thirteen deaths before Meera. Thirteen names he never dared to write down. Every one of them had taken him in, fed him, smiled at him like family, and within days—sometimes hours—they were gone. Mysterious fires. Car crashes. Poisoning. Disappearances. The police said coincidence. Psychologists said trauma. But Aarav knew better.
He didn’t carry a curse.
He was the curse.
He pressed his forehead to his knees. His fingers shook, not from cold but from the memory of Meera’s parents — kind-hearted, trusting people — lying in twisted shapes on the kitchen floor. No blood. No signs of forced entry. Just the same vacant stares that all the others had worn before death.
It had happened two nights ago. They were hosting dinner. Meera was in the shower, humming some old Hindi tune. He had stepped into the hallway to answer a call. Just five minutes. Five minutes. When he returned, he found silence. No clinking of dishes. No laughter.
Just silence.
And then the bodies.
He hadn’t cried. He hadn’t screamed. He had just… stared.
Not again.
Now, alone in the apartment, Aarav opened a small, battered notebook hidden behind a torn plank in the wooden floor. The pages were yellowed and frayed. A few names had been scribbled there, then scratched out violently. He added two more.
Vinay Sharma Priya Sharma
He paused. Then, hesitantly, underlined them.
This time, he couldn’t convince himself it was coincidence.
Meera hadn’t spoken to him since. She was staying at a friend’s place. Her last message was short.
“I don’t know what’s going on, Aarav. I just need space. Please don’t call.”
The word please hurt more than the silence.
He stared at the message until the screen dimmed.
In the stillness of the night, Aarav wandered to the cracked mirror above the sink. He looked at himself — not the bags under his eyes, not the fading bruises from sleepless nights — but the person behind those tired brown eyes. There was something foreign there. Something growing.
Fear.
Not of someone else.
But of himself.
He splashed water on his face and stared harder. His mind whispered the question it had buried for years.
“What if… what if it’s not a curse following me? What if it’s someone?”
Later that night, he stood at the window and watched the rain blur the streetlights into bleeding halos. The city looked peaceful. Deceptively so.
A glint of movement caught his eye in the alley below. A figure in a dark hood stood perfectly still beneath a flickering streetlamp. He couldn’t see the face, only the posture — familiar. Oddly familiar. Too still to be ordinary.
Aarav blinked.
The figure was gone.
A chill ran down his spine.
For the first time in years, he felt it clearly — like a breath against the back of his neck.
He was being watched.
