Imaginary Friend

Little Shikha loved beads.

She had jars of them - reds like dried blood, blues like frozen glass, blacks that swallowed the light. She scattered them across the floor of her room, arranging them into crooked animals, broken birds, and smiling faces that always seemed a little too sharp.

Her aunt hated the sight of them. “Always making a mess,” she spat, slapping Shikha’s hand away. “A cursed little thing with cursed toys.”

But beads never shouted at Shikha. They never burned her with tongs when vases fell or chores went wrong. Beads listened. Beads stayed.

It began the day she stopped making patterns.

She tipped the jar over, letting the beads scatter like drops of rain. Then she just sat. Waiting.

One bead twitched. Another rolled. Soon they slithered together, forming the outline of a hand. Fingers. A palm. It waved.

Shikha laughed. A bright, unnatural sound that echoed too long in the small room.

From that day, she didn’t just play with beads. She summoned them.

Her aunt grew restless. Beads appeared in places they shouldn’t. Coiled tight around the bedposts like restraints. Embedded in food - hard against the teeth. Once, she found them pressed into her own skin when she woke, leaving tiny circular bruises across her arms.

At night, she heard whispers - the scrape of beads dragging themselves across the floorboards, the muffled giggle of a child speaking to someone unseen.

“Who are you talking to?” she demanded once.

Shikha’s eyes were blank. Her lips curled into a smile too wide for her small face.

“My friend.”

The breaking point came one stormy evening. The aunt, trembling with fury, stormed into the girl’s room, seized the jar, and smashed it against the wall.

Beads spilled everywhere. They rolled with purpose, like insects scattering and then returning. The floor rippled with motion as they spiraled into the corner, building upon one another, stacking, fusing, until a figure stood tall and crooked - a man-shaped thing, faceless, dripping beads from its limbs like pearls of blood.

It stepped forward.

The aunt stumbled back, choking on a scream. The beads slithered up her legs, burrowing into her skin, tearing it open in neat round holes. She clawed at them, shrieking, as they disappeared beneath her flesh. Her veins swelled, black and bulging, writhing like strings of beads moving beneath her skin.

“Stop!” she screamed, falling to her knees. Her body jerked violently. Beads began to pour from her mouth, glistening with saliva and blood, clattering across the floor to rejoin the figure. Her eyes rolled back, leaving only the whites, before bursting wetly - each socket gushing with beads that clinked as they hit the floor.

Shikha watched, calm, her hands folded in her lap.

“He doesn’t like you,” she whispered.

The figure bent over the twitching body, consuming it piece by piece, until nothing remained but scraps of clothing and a spreading dark stain on the floor.

Hours later, the uncle returned. The house was silent.

He called for his wife. Called for Shikha. No answer.

In the child’s room, he found only beads - scattered everywhere, glittering in the lamplight. He knelt to gather them, whispering, “Where are you, little one?”

A bead twitched in his hand. Then another. They rolled together across the floor, forming a spiral around his feet. The door slammed shut.

And from the shadows came a child’s laughter - high, sharp, endless. . .