Read the Winning Story from the ‘Lost Girl’ Story Writing Contest!

Read the winning story from the Lost Girl story writing contest!

Termites Ate Your Bed, by Rahul Vishnoi

It was that sound again, like someone was sweeping right under Sarita’s bed, rather under her floor. Rows upon rows of insects scratching under her bed with thorny legs. It gave her the chills. How could that be? Sarita and Shantanu slept on the first floor and under their bed was the ceiling of ground floor.

Sarita shook Shantanu, but he was sound asleep. Nobody was in the house except that wretched girl her husband had found in the Lantana bushes; and there was no chance she could be up to anything, let alone making weird noises to scare her away. Sarita had made sure of that. Muttering and cursing, she got up slowly—one hand held protectively against the small of her back.

Sarita wrapped herself in her stole, picked up the emergency light—there were too many power-cuts this year in Shimla—and went downstairs to check on the girl.

Forgot to wear the socks again, she thought and cursed her fading memory. Shimla was not so cold these days as it used to be, still it was cold enough to freeze her old bones.

This was the third girl Shantanu had brought home since Ritu. It had been 10 years. Their Ritu. If only her loss could go blunt by bringing girls to their home, feeding them, protecting them…

Shanaya was sitting in bed, tied up in the chains. 100 years old and 100 kg heavy teak bed that Sarita had secured the chains to had come in her dowry.

‘Why don’t you sleep? Want another shot?’ Sarita pointed a gnarly finger towards a syringe and a vial kept in a Buddha plant-potter. 24 years of being a nurse in Shimla District

hospital came in handy in keeping such rowdy girls sedate. 90 days and all the rowdiness would be gone out of her, Sarita thought.

‘I’m cold,’ Shanaya said, looking at the crack in the window glass.

‘Why do I hear strange sounds every night?’ Sarita asked, ‘are you trying to unlock your chains?’

‘Please,’ Shanaya whimpered, spit drooling out of her mouth, ‘at least wrap some newspaper into the crack. It’s freezing.’

When Shanaya began to sob, Sarita snorted and started towards the window. The chains were long enough for the girl to move but Sarita was sure the Alprazolam she had given to Shanaya in the evening was enough to keep even a horse glued to its hooves.

That sweeping sound, again. Sarita turned and saw Shanaya almost flying towards her. Sarita opened her mouth but instead of a scream, a jumble of broken teeth and blood spilled out. A brilliant flash of pain exploded somewhere in her throat and travelled up and down her body, hitting the top of her head and her toes together.

‘Termites ate your bed, bitch,’ Shanaya snarled and hit Sarita in face again with the hunk of wood she had clawed out of the bed. It had taken her 5 days to dig into the cracks the termites had made.

Sarita felt her eyes sink deep inside her head. She saw a bright flash of green, heard a little girl crying and tasted almond oil.

‘Next time you sedate a drug junkie, give triple the dose,’ Shanaya said and brought the foot of the teak bed in a resounding crunch on top of Sarita’s head. Shanaya then went upstairs to find that creepy old man who found her while she had almost died from a drug overdose, only to tie her to a bed and call her ‘Ritu’.

The End

In the nondescript town of Fagu, a few kilometres from Shimla, retired police officer Vanessa and her husband Aidan are coasting through a blissful post-retirement life and running their quaint cafe. One day, on their usual morning trek in the mountains, they notice something in the bushes, something that shouldn’t be there. At the end of a hidden track, there’s a young girl, barely in her twenties, badly hurt and unconscious.

Sana Shetty’s Lost Girl is a chilling story of a past that once forgotten, returns to haunt Shanaya… To know more, get the book today—available wherever books are sold!