The Waiting Room - By Inganathi Pupuma

Written By: Inganathi Pupuma

Category: Short Story

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

Inganathi Pupuma brings us "The Waiting Room," a compelling entry in the Short Story category of the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. This narrative is filled with suspense and introspection, artfully capturing the eeriness of a moment suspended in time and space. Pupuma's work invites readers to step into a world where every character is waiting for something undefined, yet profoundly significant. The story challenges the reader to explore themes of anticipation, uncertainty, and the human condition, all set within a vividly described setting.

About the Work

"The Waiting Room" is a masterful exploration of suspense and surrealism. Pupuma crafts a narrative filled with vivid imagery and complex emotions, where each character's presence contributes to the unfolding mystery. The mood is tense and contemplative, with a style that seamlessly blends dialogue and description. Through the interactions and silent observations of the characters, Pupuma invites readers to question the nature of waiting and the unseen forces that shape our lives.

The Waiting Room

Original Submission by Inganathi Pupuma

“When did you get here?”

“Who?” Douglas Winds asks with his back against the wall. His blue denim jacket bellows against the white walls, the colour nearly as loud as the red telephone’s mounted next to him.

Nix frowns, “You, Douglas.” She sits up on the couch, its plush pink leather too squishy and lived in, “When did you come in?”

“After you,” Douglas Winds says, voice dismissive and impatient, “Didn’t you see me? The door’s right there.” He points to his left, to the opposite side of the room. Nix follows his hand and sees a faded brown door carved into the wall.

She can’t remember seeing him come in but seeing as he’s here, he must have. As she swims closer to wakefulness, Nix scans the room around her, catching sight of the stark white walls and the brown door.

Next to Douglas Winds is a bright red telephone, the cord connected to the receiver swinging in the stale air. Across from him, in the corner of the room near the door, is a changing screen, with Annabella Marie weeping behind it.

The screen itself is a pale cream, near white but not close enough for it to matter, with two doves in flight painted on it. As her eyes scan the screen, Nix hears the gentle rise and fall of Annabella Marie’s sorrow, the valleys it sinks into, the heights it can never quite reach.

A ways away from the changing screen stands the man in the green hat, in front of the kitchen sink. His back is to Nix so she can’t see his facial expression but there’s something relaxed in his shoulders. A distinct lack of panic. Though, when her eyes fall to the clenched fists hanging at his sides, she thinks there must be something worrying him. In the seconds of her observation, twice now, the man in the green hat uncurls his left fist, lifts his hand, pulls back the sleeve of his striped button up shirt and looks at his watch. Nix hears him say quietly to himself, “Any minute now.”

Matching the hands of the man in the green hat’s watch, Nix ticks her head side to side in thought.

The kitchen sink itself is a pale blue, jutting out of the wall like a misaligned chin, assertive and incorrect. The taps of the sink dip into the wall but Nix can’t see where they go. There are no pipes running underneath it.

“Is there any water?”

The man in the green hat turns to her, glaring heat, frown a knife’s edge. He doesn’t answer the question. Instead, he turns back to the sink, takes two steps forward, opens the left tap, watches the water gush into the abyss below then closes it again.

Nix takes that as answer enough. She doesn’t remember seeing the man in the green hat come in either.

She moves on.

To her right, on the other side of the couch, crouched on the floor, is the girl covered in blood. As she sits on her haunches, she stares into the soil of the potted sunflower in front of her, a single stem of green blooming into a bright yellow, her eyes unblinking.

Nix frowns again, the sight of the girl a curious one. Her clothes are tattered, ripped across the chest and down both sides of her skirt. She’s got blood up to her elbows, behind each shin, across her left eye and on the tips of her hair.

Nix can’t understand why she would choose to be filthy when the kitchen sink, with running water, is right there.

The lack of bloody footprints leading to the potted plant tells Nix that the girl’s presence in the room must precede even Annabella Marie’s.

She turns back to Douglas Winds, who is now facing the phone, hands trapping it to his chest, frowning in agitation.

“Why are you here?” Nix asks Douglas Winds.

He turns at the question, annoyance colouring his eyes a startling green, “I’m waiting for my sister. She’s gone in to see the doctor.”

Nix can’t remember Douglas Winds ever having a sister. The word itself is one she’d never associate with him. Something about it is strange. She knows Douglas Winds. They grew up together. She knows he used to live on a farm out in the country, knows that he loves to eat strawberries, knows that he would do anything for anyone but himself.

Knows that he does not have a sister.

Nix decides not to question it and instead, see where this will go, “What happened to her?”

Sighing hard through his nose, Douglas Winds takes off his beanie and pushes his hair back, before putting it back on, “She woke up, in the middle of the night, with her heart racing. Palpitations or something. I brought her here. And now I’m waiting.”

Eyes catching on Douglas Winds green sweatpants, yellow hoodie, denim jacket and black beanie, beg Nix to examine the legitimacy of his story. She decides not to.

Nix’s head ticks to the right, a question sitting on the tip of her tongue. She wants to ask but isn’t sure she could handle the answer.

Perpendicular to the kitchen sink is the coffee maker, three paces in front of Nix. It sits on the floor, plugged into an outlet, bleeding black and silver. There are no cups. Not around it and not in the sink.

Douglas Winds paces between the coffee maker and the mounted phone.

Nix takes the question she wanted to ask and tucks it under her teeth, near her molars, then shoves her tongue into the pocket of her cheek.

Annabella Marie’s wailing picks up again.

The man in the green hat glances at his watch, taps his foot, whispers, “Any minute now.”

Nix shifts in her seat, tucking her socked feet into the side of the couch, curling in on herself, “Why did you bring her here?”

Douglas Winds stops his pacing and gives her a scathing look, “Where else was I supposed to take her?”

With no answer, Nix leaves him be. She turns her attention to the man in the green hat just as Annabella Marie’s sorrow fades, “Why are you here?”

The man in the green hat seems to know that the question is for him. He turns to Nix, gives her a once over, frowns, looks down at his watch before sighing loudly, “The teller will be back any minute now.”

“The teller?”

“Yes,” the man in the green hat says in frustration, “She went to the safe to get the rest of the money I need. She’ll be back any minute now. Then I can finish my withdrawal.”

He turns away from her, eyes stuck to the watch’s face, other hand tapping an impatient beat on the edge of the kitchen sink. Nix frowns in thought. Douglas Winds is waiting for his sister, the man in the green hat for the teller.

The girl has not moved an inch. The blood, which appears to still be wet, does not drip onto the floor. Nix wonders if she’s hurt or if she hurt someone else.

“Why are you here?”

The girl doesn’t answer. She keeps her eyes planted in the sunflower’s soil, unblinking and empty.

Annabella Marie wails again.

Nix ticks her head to the left.

Douglas Winds paces in front of the telephone and the coffee maker.

“Did they say that they would call you?” Nix asks after a beat of silence.

Douglas Winds stutters in his steps before turning about face and starting again, “Yes, they said they would call when it’s time.”

“Time for what?”

Douglas Winds gives Nix no answer and instead asks his own question, “Why are you asking all of these questions?”

Taking a breath, Nix sinks deeper into the couch, turns and stretches her legs out, perpendicular to Annabella Marie, “Why wouldn’t I?”

“That’s not an answer, Nix, and you know that!” Douglas Winds yells.

“What is an answer?" Nix counters with her arms crossed, “When that phone rings and they tell you it’s time, will that be an answer? Or when they tell you that your sister’s dead, will that be an answer? You’re in here, waiting and waiting, and you don’t know for what. Does getting your answer mean you aren’t waiting anymore?”

“Don’t say that about my sister, Nix,” Douglas Winds comes menacingly closer but Nix is unafraid. She knows, somehow, that he won’t hurt her.

She remembers when they were much younger, the lines on their faces less sharp, the eyeliner in their eyes much darker. They crossed paths in the club, Breadcrumbs, on Third Avenue, somewhere between the end of high school and the end of university, tipsy with the taste of youth, drunk on the idea of death.

Nix had seen Douglas Winds across the room, cuddled up between the bar, a boy in a striped shirt and a bottle of rum. She hadn’t said anything, didn’t see the need to, but she’d watched, she’d waited.

She remembers the music at that club, the singer’s soprano scream an echolocation to Annabella Marie’s sobs.

She can still hear it now.

The man in the green hat lifts his hand to his face, again, whispers, like a prayer, a desperate plea, “Any minute now.”

Nix ignores him.

“Why not?” She asks in a rushed, heartless voice, “Why can’t I say that about your sister? What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with her?”

The questions bludgeon Douglas Winds’s senses, stoking the fire of his fury.

“I don’t know!” He screams, “I can’t be with her. I have to be here! This is where I have to be!” The tips of his ears burn crimson, a heat so hot he takes off his beanie, “She can’t be dead! You’re not allowed to say that!”

Nix thinks he’s being ridiculous. If she had a sister who was dying, a sister whose heart tried to outrace her breath, she would be there. She would be right at her side.

She thinks.

She’s not sure.

Trying to remember, Nix thinks of her own family. Her friends. Anyone from before this room. Anyone out there who could possibly need her. Anyone who would notice her own heart’s beat, counting out its rhythm, keeping it in check. Anyone who would notice if it was gone.

She draws a blank.

“That’s stupid, Douglas, and you know it!” Nix yells back, her frustration climbing with the sounds of Annabella Marie’s distress. She sits, still, behind the changing screen, a silhouette of misery.

The white walls seem to shift, moving closer to the centre of Nix’s mind, trapping her within. The room has no windows. She can’t tell what time it is. She doesn’t know if that matters.

Breathless, Nix glares at Douglas Winds and his endless pacing. The squeak of his sneakers stabs at her perception, keeping in time with the tick of the man in the green’s hat watch.

The walls shift.

The room is shrinking.

Furious, Nix leaps off the couch, and turns to the girl covered in blood, “Why are you here? What are you waiting for?”

The rage in her voice shocks the girl out of her stupor. Blinking, she breaks her stare at the sunflower soil, glances up at the yellow petals then turns her eyes on Nix.

They’re bloodshot. Stained too red to be anything but a mirror for revenge.

The girl speaks, her voice cracking down the middle of every word.

“I am waiting for the train.”

A confused silence sits in the middle of the room, broken only by Annabella Marie’s sobs.

The man in the green hat taps his foot on the hardwood floor, “Any minute now.”

Nix stumbles back into the couch, tucks her legs to her chest, eyes still locked on the girl covered in blood, waiting for the train. Flits to Douglas Winds pacing between the coffee maker and the phone, waiting for the call, moves to Annabella Marie’s shadowed existence, lands on the man in the green hat, praying for the teller.

Her head ticks and tocks to the left and right. She hears the singer from the club hit a note just out of reach, hears the silence that follows her climactic finish.

Douglas Winds stops his pacing, cutting parallel lines in the air between the phone and the coffee maker.

The man in the green hat steps up to the kitchen sink and turns on the taps. The basin fills and fills, the water rising.

The girl drips blood into the sunflower’s soil.

Douglas Winds turns his furious eyes on Nix, and with their claws deep in her eyelash beds, he asks, voice just off kilter, “What are you waiting for?”

The water spills over the edge of the kitchen sink.

Annabella Marie screams.

Nix feels her heart start to race, the rhythm a palpitation.

The phone rings.

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, hosted by Hashtag Kalakar, is a prestigious platform celebrating literary talent across the globe. This competition provides writers with the opportunity to showcase their creativity and passion for storytelling in various categories, including poetry, short stories, and creative writing. Participants engage with a community of like-minded individuals while contributing to a rich tapestry of global narratives.

Thank you, Inganathi Pupuma, for sharing "The Waiting Room" with us as part of the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Your narrative invites reflection and engages the reader with its depth and complexity. We appreciate your contribution and look forward to seeing more of your creative work in the future.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.