That Night.....

‘Are you sure you’ll be fine….I mean I can still call her up….’ he said, getting up from his chair and straightening his back.
‘I think we’ve gone through this enough,’ she smirked.
‘No…I mean, yes it’s just that there isn’t a soul on this goddamn floor…it’s practically haunted, Neha’ he said.
‘It’s Friday…and just look at your watch.’
‘Yeah you are right, but this thing won’t take more than an hour.’
‘Anant!’ she looked at him with disdain, ‘I’ll be fine, now go and enjoy your weekend.’
‘OK.’ he sighed with relief. ‘You are a darling, thanks.’
‘Tell me something new.’ she smiled and he returned it.
‘Well, bye then…..I guess I should move now, Megha will be getting really mad.’
‘Scoot……’
Anant left with hasty steps, humming a tune to himself.

She sat back on the reclining chair and stretched her limbs. It had been a maddening week, with deadlines, deadlines and more deadlines to meet.
‘An hour or so more and then I’ll just hit the sack, never to get up till Monday morning’ she vowed to herself and threw a contemptuous glance at the green screen of the monitor. ‘But how is it that apparently everyone else in this office packs his bag at five, while I have to toil till midnight…. Tell me, Mr. Bijoy?’ she smiled at the photograph on her desk. Picking it up she traced a finger absentmindedly over the frame.
‘Where are you, Bij…..? Another weekend without you…. It’s really not fair you know.’ She kept the frame back on her desk.
‘Another five minutes.’ she mumbled, ‘A cup of coffee and then, by Jove, I’ll just finish this damn thing off.’

She stood up. Throwing one last accusing glance at her monitor; walked with calculated steps towards the coffee vending machine at the end of the floor. It was then that the awful silence hit her like a bolt of lightning. The dark floor with the menacing silhouettes of partitioned cubicles greeted her. She stopped before the coffee machine, reached for the paper cup and instinctively pressed the button reading CAPPUCINO. The machine came alive with a gurgling note. A stream of hot milk was followed by thick black coffee. She emptied three sachets of saccharine in her cup, dropped in a stirrer and turned back. At the end of the hall was her cubicle, the only one still lighted. For the first time in three years, she was aware that the a/c after all did make a constant whirring sound, an unnerving, endless mechanical whirr. She walked back towards her cubicle, slowly, stirring her coffee, the stirrer moving to and fro.

She stopped a step short from her chair. Did she keep the frame face down? She had never done it before. She pondered over it for a second and shrugged, ‘What the hell?’ Picking up the frame she replaced it on it’s stand. Bijoy beamed at her. She sank into the chair; cracked her fingers and began typing furiously. She typed for sometime and then struck the “Return” key. Meaningless text started scrolling up on her monitor. The server was performing a check on the program and it would take at least another fifteen minutes to do so. She sunk deeper in her chair and picked up the cup of coffee. EMPTY? Not a drop, she drained the whole cup in a matter of minutes, and didn’t even realise it! …..Strange?

She drifted into thoughts, as the server mechanically performed a million checks on the small utility program she had just completed. She wanted to think of Bij and his warm smile. She wanted to guess when he would actually propose her and how? Not that it really mattered now, as they were practically living together! She wanted to think all these nice things, but her mind kept drifting to the other mundane, annoying things of her life. She couldn’t help but think of Bakshi, her team leader. The short, plump, sarcastic buffalo. She thought of Anant, a harmless fellow, nice in his own way and helpful too. But there was something nauseating about his overtly sugary behaviour; and she couldn’t help but think of Mahesh. An involuntary ‘Bastard’ escaped her lips. The chair to her left creaked lightly as if protesting on behalf of its owner. She looked to her left and found Mahesh’s chair staring at her.
‘What the hell?’ She gasped . ‘Isn’t everybody supposed to
arrange his furniture before leaving? But then who can expect
decency from that jerk? Wait a minute, wasn’t the chair in place
a few minutes ago?’ She was thinking aloud now. A loud tone
on her mobile startled her; she picked it up only to see a “Battery low phone switching off” warning on it. The monitor was going crazy with loads of text appearing on it, but that at least was normal. She sat down unsure of what to make of it all, here she was at half past ten on a Friday night, alone in the entire floor with the nearest human being two floors down at the security and strange things happening all around her.

She sighed to herself ‘you are just, plain tired.’ and picked up her handbag, not sure for what. The belt of the handbag caught the cup unawares and sent it tumbling down like a drunkard, spilling coffee….on her jeans. COFFEE? She looked at the fallen cup, rolling in a pool of coffee now and she looked at her jeans. Perplexed she looked at the monitor and at the suffocating clutter around her. She looked at Bijoy for comfort and found him grinning at her with just a hint of devilish gleam in his eyes. Taken aback, she stood up, the brooding cubicle walls barely reached her breasts. All around her was an endless gloom and a nasty emptiness. At the end of the hall a small amber dot glowed on the coffee machine, but it seemed miles away. The hugeness of the hall finally sank into her. What if she wasn’t alone here, what if someone, some runaway convict was hiding in one of these cubicles here…. ‘Oh! Shut up.’ ….and what did Anant mean when he said that this floor was practically haunted?
‘That isn’t possible.’ OK it’s not haunted but there might be someone from the office here…… Someone like Mahesh………
‘Don’t act paranoid!’ She believed that such terms applied to characters in Hollywood thrillers.

She took a couple of deep breaths and sank back in her chair. The monitor was still acting crazy, and this was the only normal thing tonight. Closing her eyes she heard her own heart drumming against her bosom…. And then in that silence she finally heard it, FOOTSTEPS, light and distant, but they were; She opened her terrified eyes, picked up the landline on her desk and dialled security, a long beeping tone blared in her ears. The footsteps were louder now. She felt her ears grow hot and moist behind the lobes, beads of perspiration appeared on her forehead. She stood there for what seemed like an eternity and then grabbing her handbag she ran towards the door. She reached the hallway in what would have been a record time and instinctively turned right towards the elevators. There he was striding towards her, the six-foot menace, moving with unhurried cruel steps in the dim-lit hallway. A drop of sweat trickled down her spine. She turned left and sprinted towards the staircase. She ran, drenched in sweat by now, skidded near the stairs and then ran down. She ran for her life as the walls of that dreadful office closed in on her. She ran as the six-foot creature followed her with easy strides. She didn’t hear a thing, she didn’t see a thing, she just ran, till she crossed the security gate. She still ran, not daring to turn back and look, stopping only when she reached the crossroads where a streetlamp glowed majestically ten feet above and a couple of auto rickshaw drivers chatted leisurely with a fruit vendor. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding and her face still ashen…but she was glad to be here in this buzz and she was glad to be out of that…haunted house.

Back at the security gate, Madan the new guard looked at Rajesh, both equally surprised. ‘What’s the matter with her?’ He asked still out of breath from the run through the office.’ I just went in there to tell her about the telephones and it seemed like she saw a ghost!’

....and in that dark hall of the third floor, the chairs creaked one by one as if on cue while meaningless text kept scrolling up on the monitor screen.