...The immortal wait...

                     The old man sat rocking back and forth on the oak chair creaking due to the lack of oiling. His large frame spectacles lay askew on his belly which had shrunk considerably, while the newspaper lay drapped over over his once wide chest. He gazed into the distance as far as his dwindling eyesight could reach out. The door of the cottage lay open and the wall withering due to the onslaught of the natural forces. He thought of the good old days when he was a commander in the Royal army. The days when you had to kill each individual enemy with a stab or a shot in the chest, when there were no missiles or bombs to aid you. Only the treacherous short range rifles which gave way at the wrong moment. As a heavy curtain of nostalgia closed around his consciousness. The day when he left his wife and son for war duty. His memory still vividly remembered the pleading look in the eyes of his son. Those innocent eyes begged for his father with such intensity which could melt the hardest and cruelest of hearts. His son, ohh.. his son the topic of pride of the family was his life. Every moment of his life had been spent striving for the well being of his dearest child. The days when the boy would fall sick, the days when he would hurt himself, all these cursed days the old man had spent praying and pampering his son.
                His son had been a bright student. The old man had sold all his possessions, his war medals, his rifle, his land, everything he possessed, only for his son. To send him abroad so that he could study and make him even prouder. And the son had made him proud. Grabbing all scholarships and laurels to give away. The old man lay waiting, he was pretty excited today, his son was to return that day. This pleasant thought brought back the old man to the present. As he stood to light the kerosene lamp. He lit the match stick and put it to the lamp to dispel the dimness being induced by the fast approaching twilight.
                  'Damn it' the professor cursed as the sharp swish indicated that his cycle tyre had punctured. As he stumbled off the cycle. The cycle had chosen the worst place possible. He could sense eerie aura of the rumoured cottage which loomed behind him. The villagers had told him a wide variety of rumours about this very dilapidated cottage. It wasn't as if he believed in these childish tales, a professor of science as he was. Old folk tales as he had dismissed them. But now as he turned to look at the cottage a cold hand of fear clutched at his hammering heart. He saw the improbable. The dull glow of an antique kerosene lamp and heard the creak of a oak chair. Just had the villagers had made him picturise. Every evening for the last 37 years one could hear the incessant creak and the dull glow in this cottage whose owner, grumpy old man had been killed by his own son...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

5 ways to Simplicity

Ending your life?

Always correct