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Pulkit

Pulkit video calling.

She stared at the screen.

She had blocked him. He was calling nevertheless. It was impossible she knew, but her eyes wouldn't lie to her; and Priyanka trusted her eyes more than anything. She was a journalist after all.

Pulkit video calling.

Journalist, yes, but this was no ordinary news.

She slid the green icon across the screen, and Pulkit's face materialised before her.

Had he turned fairer? Or were it the dark spots around his eyes making so? Was it simply the camera? Priyanka couldn't make out.

But his stare was same, blunt. It cut through her. "Hello Priyanka".

Priyanka shuddered. What's become of his voice? Has he a synthesiser attached to his throat?

"Tell" she replied.

"If you have the ears to listen, it's never too late.........Remember our first year at college. The college wi-fi used to fluctuate frequently, and once it didn't work for 50 days. The professors claimed that there was a fault with the leased lines, but I knew they were lying".

He cleared his throat with his left hand and for a moment Priyanka saw his hands, dark as velvet. Or were it only gloves? Priyanka had not more than a second to see and now the camera was back on his face. "One day us both went to watch a movie at Piccadilly, there I told you it was me who shut the wi-fi down. I'd broken into its security and hacked it. You didn't believe, exactly as I'd expected" He paused to spank a fly from his face. "The next day I brought my laptop with me to show you it was me indeed....Ah, the face you made then, I clearly remember, you thought that not only was I a liar but a madman too.....I was neither, I knew. I would prove it and once I would, I thought you'd blow me a kiss and say 'I know my honey's one in a million'. Anyways"

Pulkit shoved something in his mouth and chewed so fiercely that even Priyanka could hear it crunching between his teeth. "I told you to name a girl you would rather call a bitch; or anyone from the college you would like to hate most, and I would reveal her phonebook, her messages, all the pics she had in her phone and even the passwords she used to her accounts. You said you hated none and no lady's a bitch. I said okay you're right because I love you and also that no lady's a bitch; still say a name whose secrets you would love to know. You named yourself.....Well; I told you your Facebook password to start with. Ah I remember the voice in which you shrieked at me, 'it's not funny Pulkit. Delete all this now '. There and then, I deleted every bit of your data I had with me. Though you never appreciated me, I loved you still, so I deleted....... However your face didn't straighten and you screamed again ' Delete all the data you have, not mine alone'.........Well Priyanka tell me this, did you think I intended to misuse all that, blackmail people, or sell for money? I've had the data for months; I could've done anything I wanted without telling anybody, even you."

"But you said, 'delete it now, or I'll slap you'.........'No Priyanka I cannot, I've put in months of hard-work, all will come to dust'..........'I don't care, delete it or be done with me'........'I love you Priyanka, don't say so'............'You never love a bitch'...........'You're not a bitch, I love you'....... 'I am, as others are. Are you going to delete it nor not?'..........'I'm afraid I can't.......'Then it's over, you and me, it's over unless you do it'".

Priyanka put it straight "What you did was immoral. Peeping into someone's balcony isn't something I'll be proud of"

"I feel sorry for you Priyanka."

"You say you loved me. I ask you, was it love that though I approached you again and again, you never bothered to stand and look"

"Looking is different, and loving different. Take now, your face is same, my gaze is too, but love is gone...."

"I love you neither" Priyanka snapped.

"You never did, whereas I did once. A year later when you stayed in a rented room; one morning you switched on your PC to find your desktop sprawling with flowers, roses red and marigolds orange, and in the midst of all, in pink and red " still love you dear'. Who do you think had done it? Who other than Pulkit Devuria could build a remote connection as effective?"

"Pulkit Pulkit Pulkit, tell me this. I was in your class all those years, in front of you 8 hrs a day; and what you do to propose me is change my desktop background. How was I to know it were you?"

Pulkit sneered "You failed, and that took my life"

"None will take your life but you"

"Like Rahul and Manisha, is it?" his sneer went away "You are wrong. Neither of them took their lives. "

"Who then took their lives, Mister?"

In a voice that had all the chill of death itself, the reply came "The thing you have in your hand".

All of a sudden, the call disconnected.

She gazed at the smartphone clutched tightly in her left hand.

Alert! You may die soon. The message was still there. She had almost forgotten.

For the first time tonight, Priyanka wanted to scream. Lights started to flicker, curtains flapped and many a dozen shadows raced up and down the room. She could hear her heart, beating aloud, blood flowing in her veins as fiercely as water flowed in Beas.

Her phone beeped again. And again. Text messages.

'Tired of old, flickering lights. Try our latest product..............'

'Learn why drawing down curtains can prove fatal. Click..........'

She understood neither. Her head spun like a spinning wheel.

More messages. Dozens of them. Beep. Beep. Beep.

'The dark secrets of the dark web..........'

'Take a death quiz to know how .......'

'Don't look from your window..........."

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Priyanka whimpered. A gust of wind outside made the curtains flap, and all of a sudden, the flickering was gone. Darkness now. Another gust and the curtains morphed to white clad apparitions dancing a ghostly dance. She heard Pulkit call her name in a familiar manner of old, and yet so unfamiliar; and when she looked around, she saw that the voice came from her smartphone.

"Technology is great" she heard him say "Yet greater is the hand that made it". He spoke in a melodious tone, yet there was no melody in it, it was a dead man singing lullaby. "Many times those hands come back, to do what was undone; they are to be feared no less than the technology they created. Come, Priyanka pick up your phone and see my face"

The phone was clutched tight in Priyanka's hands but she dared not see. She'd decided to get out of here, finally. She pulled herself up from the bed but someone tugged at her hand.

Was it her phone?

The smart phone seemed unusually cold and wet. Once its fingers curled around hers, she realised it was no phone, but a hand; a hand that had been inside her phone and now had come out in the night, to take her.

"Take my hand, Priyanka"

It clutched tighter.

"You were the undone"

Priyanka screamed.

"Come with me, sweetie. Come to the dark. Come to my web"

With her strength failing her, Priyanka attempted one last attempt to break free. A frantic pull, a scream of agony, and the thing flew from her hand to land on the floor, hard. She heard her smartphone crash onto the polished marble and break into two.

It flickered for once. Then all was black.