Destiny

By Safdar Inamdar

A scratching sound echoed through the narrow dark tunnel as he dragged his bloodied and broken nails across the walls. The effort of supporting himself against the wall to walk was almost enough to make him faint. But without the support, he would’ve fallen face-first about a thousand steps ago.

Any normal person would have collapsed after getting their femur broken. Most would fall after the three broken ribs. Only a rare few would have gotten up after the broken collar bone. No one should have survived the hit to the face that broke their jaw.

But somehow, he kept going, his body running on pure adrenaline. He was almost at the end of the tunnel. The answers to all of his questions, the fruits of his long labors, the reasons behind all his tragedies finally lay within his reach.

His mind started to flashback to how he came to be here.

He was just an average person living an average life. No one would even notice him in a crowd. It was nothing special, but he was happy with his simple life. But all this changed the day he killed his family.

It was just a typical day of summer. He was building a treehouse in the woods behind their house while his son and wife helped by supplying the wooden boards and the lemonade from the house.

He was hanging on the tree from a sling, nailing the boards together. He accidentally nailed one incorrectly and had to pry it off. With that in hand, he was trying to get down when, unbeknownst to him, his son was running to him with a glass of lemonade and his wife behind him.

He was having some trouble with the sling when suddenly he had a strong impulse to drop the pried-off board with the nails, not knowing the horror that was about to befall him.

Later he had been told that the chances of that one board killing both his wife and son were less than one in a million.

He was brought back to reality as an arrow whizzed past his stomach, not impaling him, but cutting a very deep gash. He had to use his non-supporting hand to prevent anything from falling out.

‘A few more steps.’ That single line was the only thing that was carrying him forward now. He knew he had no chance of surviving long. He just had to survive long enough.

He finally emerged out of the tunnel and collapsed.

It took a few seconds for him to muster up the energy to look around. When he did, all he saw was an old man clad in old grey robes with a long white beard seated at the far end of the room.

The old man was looking at him, smiling.

“Ah! So you’ve finally arrived. I’ve been waiting.”

The man didn’t even have the energy to make a confused face.

“It’s okay. Don’t try to move. I’m sure you must have a ton of questions. After all, that is why you kept looking for this place. I will try my best to answer them all.

“You were right. That log falling on your family wasn’t your fault. You were made to drop it. It wasn’t an accident but a sick moment designed by a sick mind.

“And every single tragedy that befell you since then, till this very moment, was orchestrated by the same sick mind.

“To put it bluntly, your entire universe and everything in it was the creation of a writer. You were a side character in some author’s novel, and the death of your family at your hands was just a minor plot point for the protagonist’s sake.

“And you were doomed to relive that exact moment and continue down that same path every time someone read your book.

“The only reason you aren’t killing your family for the millionth time is that some other author had the sick idea to reveal your reality to you after putting you through hell ten times over, just for the sake of an article in a newsletter. If you ask me, it’s not even that good of an article.

“And the sole purpose of my existence here was to have this conversation with you.”

The man wanted to scream, scream till his lungs ruptured and he couldn’t anymore. But no voice came out. Maybe they had already ruptured, or perhaps his windpipe had collapsed. At this point, neither did he know nor did he care.

All he could do was stare, with his wide, bloodshot eyes, unable to blink, even as the blood from some unknown injury on his forehead dripped in them. And scream silently.

Unable to divert his gaze, he kept staring, staring straight at you, into your eyes while his silent screams rang in your ears, pleading you to put him out of his misery and stop reading, and never read his story again, so he might finally be at peace.

By Safdar Inamdar