SECOND CHANCE

01
The Mysterious Phone Call

How-is-it-possible? The same nightmare for the 12th time this month? thought Shekhar Kapoor while driving the black raven Cadillac. His forehead wrinkled. The Cadillac coasted on the surface of the road. Shekhar Kapoor, the chairman of Aerowalk—a leading shoe company—pressed the accelerator and, as the sedan overtook a Toyota, he eyed the speedometer—104 Km per hour.

The soft breeze sifted through the half-opened window-pane and touched Shekhar's face.

A woman on the radio said, "Indian rupee falls by twenty-seven paisa as compared to the US dollar and it is the biggest fall of the summer..."

Shekhar looked around as a blow of wind struck the half-opened window. He felt something, a sudden change in atmosphere; he was certain he could smell something besides the smell of the car perfume. Inside the sedan, the ambience was suddenly different but he was not sure what had changed. He felt a dark feeling. He frowned and squinted to look far into the sky; a tiny structure was emerging but his vision was foggy due to something steamy before the windshield, hovering over the dashboard. Shekhar tried to touch it with his left hand but he only touched thin air.

"Brazil football team beat Argentina and it was not just..."

I need glasses. What is it?

He looked up again at the sky, but then he ignored what he saw and concentrated on the news. After all, it was football.

"Next match is between Italy and France on Monday and it would be interesti..."
As soon as Shekhar reached out to increase the volume, the nightmare flashed before his eyes. In a feeble attempt to ignore it, he rapidly tapped his right index finger on the steering wheel. His chest vibrated with an intensity, that drew his attention and the vibration increased so suddenly and violently that it almost alarmed him and made him immediately pull out the quivering Blackberry from his coat pocket.

What he saw made him frown. On the black screen of his cell phone glowed two green words--First Warning. Shekhar wondered why there was no number on the screen, or the option to decline the phone call. He looked around; there were many vehicles on the road moving speedily. He again looked at the sky through the steamy haziness before the windshield. The tiny structure emerging from the sky had become an inverted whirlpool of white snowy clouds spinning slowly. Shekhar looked confused. The vibration of the cell phone rose even more. “Is it going to explode?” he thought. He didn’t know what he should do. Wherever Shekhar tried to touch the mobile screen, the word First Warning shifted and an answer key appeared. He didn’t see any option to decline the phone call. He pressed the button to switch off the phone but it didn’t respond. Reluctantly, he pressed the answer key and, as his thumb touched the screen, the pearly white clouds swirling in the sky slowly turned dark. The spinning turned violent and the whole sky was consumed by dark clouds.

He gulped and looked around and his eyes widened in shock as he noticed the road around him deserted. There was not a single vehicle on the road. His hand trembled as he placed the mobile phone on his left ear.

‘H... hello...’ stammered Shekhar.

‘Shekhar Kapoor,’ a low-pitched dull voice said.

As Shekhar heard the voice, he sensed it was the reason for the unpleasant feeling. Shekhar again felt something, or someone, hovering over his dashboard, something invisible. He, with an impending fear as something was going to tear him apart, again tried to touch the invisible thing over his dashboard. Still nothing.

‘Beware while driving the car, it is dangerous and it is an indication to change yourself,’ warned the voice.

‘W-who’s speaking?’ asked Shekhar, worried.

‘Your question is wrong,’ the voice said. Shekhar realised that the voice wasn’t coming through the mobile phone. It was as if someone was speaking to him directly, barely two feet away.

Shekhar gulped, ‘Where are you calling from?’

‘Now this is the right question,’ the voice laughed. ‘From the City of Justice.’
‘Where is the City of Justice?’ Shekhar winced in annoyance. ‘And what the hell is this? What do you want from me? And from where did you get my number? And if you think you can threaten me and can get some money, then you are wrong.’ Shekhar felt a pang of fear after uttering those words. I shouldn't have shouted, came an afterthought.

The voice laughed. ‘All the questions are worthless,’ the voice said. ‘You did wrong, change it. And since you are talking about money, I want to ask you, how much do you think the flooring you saw in your nightmare cost?’

Shekhar was gaping, how could the voice know about his dream? He hadn't mentioned the dream to anyone in the whole wide world. He opened his mouth to speak but the voice was gone. He kept staring at his mobile phone not knowing what to do, what to believe, or what to think. No one could possibly know about someone else's dream then how did he? Panic-stricken, Shekhar threw the mobile phone on the passenger seat.

He looked through the windshield and the sight before his eyes astounded him. The highway was again full of vehicles, even though just minutes ago, Shekhar could swear that the road was desolated. Where had all that vehicles vanished? Shekhar asked himself and looked up at the whirlpool of clouds spinning. To his amazement, the dark clouds twirling above his head had turned white—pearly white­––and had stopped spinning, arranging themselves in the most usual way.

Shekhar was utterly confused. What was it? What did he see? Were his eyes doing some tricks on him? Was it an illusion? Or a dream like the one that woke him earlier in the morning from his slumber? Dismal expressions on his face had turned into confusion. Did it have any relation with that dream? Or…

Am I going mad?

Shekhar felt as if he was being entangled in the cobweb of his thoughts, and the harder he was trying to get out of it, the more he found himself trapped. A phone call without any number, the instant change in the weather, the man knew what he had dreamed of, all the questions were bothering him and he had not been able to find a single answer. Shekhar was certain that he had heard the voice for the first time.

Fifteen minutes later, Shekhar was still pondering in the high speed sedan. Who was he? Whatever he had said, did it have some meaning? Shekhar thought. He was just two kilometre away from Aerowalk Shoe Company and he again sensed a familiar feeling—an ominous feeling. He looked around, everything seemed normal. He drove the car, thinking about the nightmare, the phone call and the weather change, and felt something terrible was going to happen, albeit he did not know what. Oh no… perhaps he knew what it was. It was under his palm—the steering wheel! Shekhar tried to steer it, but it could not be swivelled even slightly. He applied more force but it was completely stuck, as if it had been left untouched for a hundred years.

The Cadillac’s steering wheel cannot jam, thought Shekhar.

Beware while driving the car, it is dangerous and it is an indication to change yourself.           

Shekhar’s eyes were wide open with dread and his hands made a firm grip on the steering wheel. How is this possible? Shekhar thought. The car was moving slightly towards the left, fast as a rocket. Shekhar knew that the only way to avoid an accident would be to twiddle the steering wheel. The warning couldn’t have been true, Shekhar thought.

He could see the shadow of his death waiting for him and he, himself, was moving towards it with great speed. Shekhar’s adrenal gland squeezed itself and the hormone poured with intensity in his blood stream. He felt the blood rushing in his muscles. His heart pounded, pupils widened, eyes bulged, and sweat beads popped profusely on his forehead. Shekhar gasped for air.

The Cadillac passed like a bullet, almost brushing a Nissan. Shekhar pressed his foot with as much force he could gather, and the tyres of sedan shrieked and skidded uncontrollably. The tyres on the left side of the Cadillac almost hoisted up in the air. Shekhar, with an enormous cloud of fear suffocating him, thought, it’ll overturn, I’m dying. The sedan halted in the middle of the highway, and as the tyres slumped down, Shekhar thanked God that the car hadn’t capsized.

His bulged-eyes scanned his surroundings to ensure he was safe. He took a deep breath and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. After checking all his body parts, Shekhar sighed, I am alive. He closed his eyes and thanked his mother for his safety and got out of the sedan.

Other vehicles, to avoid collision, had to take a diversion.

‘Are you sleeping, bloody id…’ Shekhar heard someone comment as a Ford passed by him, but he avoided it. He had just refused the invitation of death.

Now other vehicles were slowing down as they passed by the Cadillac. With every passing vehicle, the lines of fear on Shekhar’s face were weakening.

A Maruti overtook him and the middle aged driver in a white kurta asked, ‘Hey! What happened? Can I do anything for you?’

Shekhar stared at him and kept staring at him until the Maruti driver started to feel uncomfortable. Without saying anything further, the Maruti driver pressed the accelerator and went away.

Shekhar looked for scratches on his favourite car and hoped not to find any. He scrutinized the Cadillac from every possible angle. When he did not find any scratches on his car, he felt a sense of smugness, but as soon as he opened the door of the sedan, the smugness violently turned into a sense of alarm. Shekhar somehow convinced himself to get in and drive off. As he was getting in, an SUV halted next to him and a woman in the back seat asked, ‘Is everything okay?’
Shekhar didn’t answer her as he had not heard anything and got in the sedan, started the engine and slowly moved ahead. Even in the randomness of his thoughts, he knew he had to drive carefully and slowly.

The nightmare, the ominous feeling, the vibrating mobile phone, the phone call, the warning, the cloud and the stuck steering wheel, all this in a single day? What is happening? Shekhar was dazed and was unable to think clearly, but he was not able to stop thinking either. Beware while driving the car, it is dangerous, the voice reverberated in his head and filled his whole body with the fear of death, the same fear that he had felt a few minutes ago.

Shekhar was baffled; his head was full of only intertwined questions, nothing else. He mused over and over on the questions sputtering in his head. He was sinking down in confusion laced with fear and something astounded him. He realised that it was the steering wheel again. He slowly twiddled the steering wheel and, to his amazement, it turned as smoothly as ever, as if it never had any flaw.
Although the steering wheel was swirling smoothly, Shekhar drove the Cadillac slowly as he felt that something had vaguely ordered him to do so. The sedan was inching towards Aerowalk Shoe Company with Shekhar’s eyes on the road but his mind roaming. His face was revealing apprehension and perplexity.

Shekhar turned right and entered the premises of his company through the front gate, parked the Cadillac awkwardly in the middle of the limestone-paved ground and, as usual, left the key in it. While getting out of the sedan, he eyed his cell phone and, with an uneasy feeling, picked it up and put it in his coat pocket.
​
I should look normal, he thought. And for him, it meant swell-headed.
                       *** 
​                          ​1
Page     1     2     3     4     5     6     7  
If you want to read the book on your Android phone, first download "Amazon kindle app" from google play and purchase the e-book from amazon. It will appear in your kindle app, open the book in the app and enjoy it with a cup of coffee.
Proudly powered by Weebly