#SaraReads: Spooky Story- Bicycle

Story-The Bicycle Adventure

The night was pitch dark and the atmosphere was rather gloomy. I have  absolutely no idea why I thought this was the perfect night to spend some time alone. 

Reflecting upon my life, thinking about how in childhood I used to promise myself that I am going to be a billionaire but here I am, at a dhaba (roadside restaurant) in the outskirts of my city travelling on my bike. Just don’t interpret something wrong from the above sentence, actually to be precise, it’s a bicycle. 

It was around 11:50 pm, so I started an hour’s journey back to my house thinking if I had a car, how much faster it would have been. The way back home, all that I was thinking about was me as a failure but then suddenly I got a rather eerie vibe. I just thought that it was normal as I was the only person in midnight going through the woods besides a river… until it wasn’t. After some time, out of nowhere a boy appeared in front of me. I stopped my bike beside him and went towards him. 

Normally under these circumstances, any boy would have been scared, but this particular boy had something special about him. He stood all alone in the dark at a corner without even hesitating about his surroundings. I asked him what he was doing here. To my surprise what the boy said was a bit hard to digest. He told me that his parents were traveling across the forest with him and they told him the story of a fresh lake full of blue water. He had been so excited to reach there that he had wandered away from his parents.

I nodded but found that hard to believe. A blue river, here? In the middle of the desert? Surely, the parents were just making up a story to keep the little one entertained. Or maybe the boy was bluffing, but then I thought that what would a 6 year old child, who is blinded from one eye, earn by lying? 

There were many questions in my mind at that moment, but then I neglected all the thoughts that occurred to me and told myself that right now my first priority was to take this child back to his parents and ensure his safety. I immediately felt that this was the reason why I happened to chose this particular night for self-reflection and self-pity. 

I knew that god had directed me to this unfortunate event in the child’s life and my job was to take this innocent child back to protection. I offered him a seat on my bicycle and told him not to worry as I will be taking him back to his parents. I turned around and asked him about his home address. He gave me a confused look from which I understood that he did not know the address of his house. At that moment I thought that we were in a fix, but then the idea of taking him to a police station struck my mind. 

I told the child not to worry and hold me tightly on the bicycle so that he doesn’t fall. I gave him the good news that soon he would be with his family but shockingly even after hearing this news, not a glimpse of happiness on his face; it was as if he had not even heard what I said. I heard him mutter something about ‘blue river’. Ignoring this reaction of his, I moved on but then came the terrifying part of the journey. 

Slowly and steadily the bike started getting heavier and I started losing my balance. It was not long before I fell down. I quickly turned back to see if the kid was safe but to my surprise, he wasn’t there. It was as if he had disappeared into thin air. I looked all around, I even searched the woods to some extent but he just vanished. I got worried. This boy wasn’t communicative plus he had only one eye. I wondered how could he just disappear in front of my eyes, but then something else happened. 

I spotted something gleaming like water. It was a river! Sparkling blue, just like the boy had told me. I crossed this road everyday and I had never seen that before. 

I went closer and found a small elephant near the bank of the river splashing water happily on itself. It looked at me in the moonlight and gave a big smile. It had only one eye.