HE could never imagine he would be chosen for this bizarre game… to watch a horror movie in an auditorium…. alone.
But here he was and as the lights began to fade and the screen about to come to life, he wondered whether he had made the right decision or not and the darkness started to produce an eerie sensation within him. He remembered the exact line in the newspaper: out of 200 entries, he had been the ‘lucky’ guy who was chosen. But now he started to ponder… would ‘unlucky’ have been a more suitable adjective?
He felt even worse when he looked around the auditorium. Wherever he looked… everything was black...and that started to make him feel uneasy. The silence of this place was even unsettling. The movie began – the nightmare had begun.
The very first scene sent the adrenaline pumping through his veins. He had not expected this: the hair on his neck stood on end.
On that giant screen he saw himself sitting all alone in that very same auditorium. It hit him like a blast… a feeling of suffocation... caused him to loosen his top button. He looked up at the screen only to see himself looking back at him. He raised a hand and his screen-self raised a hand too. He didn’t know what to do. Maybe it was some sort of a joke. He was about to get up and run for it when he stopped, white with fear.
On the screen he saw someone standing behind him… around 50 feet away from him. He started to sweat now. He didn’t want to turn around. He just sat there mesmerized, waiting for it to do something first. But it didn’t. He turned around and found no one. He was paralysed now, his senses were numb.
He turned to look back at the screen to see if the figure had gone too. But it hadn’t. It was still there, the only difference being it wasn’t on the screen… it was standing in front of him.
The shock of the moment made his entire body numb. He keeled over. The darkness was everlasting.
Headline article in the Times of India the next day:
Youth dies tragically in spine chilling game… five people arrested
Extracts from the paper…
“….five arrested for fatal hoax…their intention being to capture real fear and upload it on the internet….court calls psychiatrists to evaluate mindset…….friends and family shocked….”
By Stanley Ambrose , Times of India, Kolkata