Part 9: The De-ja-vu

“Something’s not right!”, she said. She knew something was not right.

“Shut up, stupid woman!”, the man shouted,”I know where I’m going”

The woman looked out of the window. Darkness was setting in. She could hear the sound of the trees and the occasional whistling of the wind. The scenery was getting dim and the horizon painted orange-red by the setting sun.

The woman looked out and saw a shop. The shop was beneath a huge oak tree. It was a thatched hut and had a humongous red bin beside it. As the car rode past the oak tree, the woman saw that the shop was closed.

“Isn’t it strange that there is no one on the road?”, the woman asked.

“We are passing through a forest. Of course, there would be no one!”, the man replied.

The woman said nothing. She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. After an hour, she looked out, amazed and called out to her husband.

“Haven’t we passed by that shop; like an hour ago”

“Stop talking nonsense!”, the man snapped at her.

“I think I’m having a De-Ja-Vu. I clearly remember passing by that shop”.

It was almost getting dark and the couple hasn’t reached their destination yet. They have been driving for hours.

The woman checked her phone. There was no network. The air was getting cold. The woman pulled up the car window and laid back on her seat. She watched the night sky with an infinite number of stars twinkling. It was the night of a full moon and the light of the moon illuminated the sky.

At a distance, the woman saw the same shop. As they passed by it, she looked out to make sure that it was the same shop. Indeed it was! The same thatched hut with a huge red bin. The woman was taken aback. That was the third time that they went past that hut. Perplexed, she again told her husband,”This is the third time that we went past that shop. Something isn’t right. I can feel it. We should have reached your friend’s house by now”

“Everything is alright. This is a rural area. There might be huts looking similar. Besides, you think too much”

As the woman turned to look outside, she saw a shadow float by her window. She turned back to see what it was but was only greeted by darkness. There was nothing.

Again they went past the same shop.

After a few miles, they saw a car standing on the road-side. It was an old white ambassador. There was a man waving his hands at them as if to ask them for a lift. The man was dressed in a white shirt and grey trousers. The man’s shirt was stained with blood. There were drops of blood trickling from his forehead through his cheeks. It was clear that the man had met with an accident.

“Do not stop the car. No matter what happens, just keep driving”, the woman ordered.

“The man needs our help. There is no one on the road beside us”, the man replied.

“He could be a thug or worse, a bandit. What if he robs us of our car and leaves us stranded here. Such accidents happen around places like this.”

“For God’s sake, please don’t stop!”

“Fine, I’ll keep driving.”

As the car came near the man in white shirt, suddenly he leaped right in front of the car. The man pressed hard on the brakes as the car came screeching to a halt. But even though the driver managed to stop the car it was too late. Too late because the car collided with the man which sent him high up in the sky. The couple was terrified out of their wits. Startled, the woman looked behind only to be greeted by dark emptiness and hollow silence. There was no man in white shirt or car. As if none of that ever existed in that unending road.

The couple looked at each other, alarmed. The woman did not utter another word as the man started the engine drove as fast as he could.

Suddenly, on the driving mirror, the woman saw a man sitting in the back seat of their car. A man wearing a white shirt stained with blood, with blood trickling down his forehead. He had a broken jaw and there was blood on his nose. Her husband saw the man too. The couple looked at each other in panic.

Suddenly the man screamed from behind,”Why didn’t you stop ?”

The car collided with a tree and everything went dark.

“wake up darling!”, the husband called to his wife.

“We are getting late. We have to hurry.”

It was late afternoon.

The woman got up. “What a strange dream!”, she thought to herself.

The couple got ready and drove off in their car. They were headed to a friend’s house for a party.

“I had the weirdest of the weird dream.”

“Tell me about it”

The woman narrated her strange dream to her husband. When she finished narrating, she looked outside the car. The sun was about to set on the horizon. She looked ahead and was so petrified that she couldn’t utter another word.

At a distance, she saw a thatched hut. It was a shop beneath an oak tree with a huge red bin beside it.


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