Desi Horror Stories

One Night Stand

Vansh was at the bar that had been his daily haunt for the last two weeks, sitting at the same table he occupied every day, fiddling with the keycard of his hotel room. This city had it all, and he was happy to be here for his extended two-week corporate training, but there was one thing he sorely missed. And that was the thing he was looking for tonight.

When he spotted her, his heart skipped a beat. There was this intuitive click that told him that. In fact, he believed that his instinct had led him to see her—dressed in that off-shoulder dress, her well-conditioned hair falling over one shoulder, the dusky beauty who had everything he craved. And she was alone. Why would such a girl be sitting alone in a bar at that hour? It meant only one thing.

He looked at her constantly then, hoping to make eye contact. When it happened, he gave her a lopsided grin. Her reaction was unfathomable. He took another chance when the waiter arrived. The waiter asked him his room number for the check and he said emphatically, "Room number 311. Did you get that right? Three hundred eleven. Three. One. One." This time she looked at him with a curious face.

Half an hour later, he walked into his room alone, disappointed that she had left despite all his efforts. He changed and was just about to retire for the night, when his room bell rang. With some annoyance, he opened it. What he saw made his jaw drop to the floor. She was standing out there, her sweet perfume riding right into his nose.

Soon, she was inside the room, and Vansh lost his mind. When she told him her name and told him she liked him too, he began gasping for air. Was it a dream? Was this girl one of those who would ask for a payment later? Well, what the heck! He'd give her half his property in that moment. Then she touched him on his arm—the first touch—and there were no further words needed.

Exhausted after a highly physical bout of lovemaking, Vansh slipped into bed. He thought she'd leave or ask for something, but she did nothing of the sort. Instead, she slipped into the covers with him and shut her eyes. Vansh fist-bumped the air, still not believing his luck. Gazing at her flawless face, he slowly drifted away to sleep.

It was somewhere in the middle of the night that he sensed something. It broke his sleep, but he was too tired to open his eyes yet. His arm reminded him of the adventure he had had before falling asleep, because it lay on the belly of the woman. His eyes still closed, his mouth twitched into a smile and he was just about to immerse himself into sweet dreams again when he felt something riding up his nose.

He felt it for sure—something rough and bristled, and it was on his face. In a terribly fast reflex, he swiped at it with his hand and in the same instant, his eyes fell open.

And that was his biggest mistake.

For, what his eyes showed him was the most horrifying sight he had ever seen.

The woman was above him now and in a very unreal sense. For, she was not reclining on anything. Instead, she was plainly hovering above him, stark naked, spread out horizontally, her arms outstretched, her eyes wide open and staring at him, and a scream dead on her face. It was her hair falling on his face that had prickled his nostrils.

"What... what are you?" Vansh said, breaking out in a sweat, and realizing that the woman was moving gradually down in a way that his body was locked under her. He tried to move, but the weight of the woman was suddenly so enormous that it was like having a block of lead on his chest.

And then another thought hit him. Who was his arm on? Whose soft flesh was it touching?

He barely moved his head to see, and then he saw her—another of her—lying beside him, and her eyes were open and staring at the ceiling too.

As he saw her, she turned to look at him and sat up. The next instant, a horrific grimace appeared on her face, as if she was in some kind of terrible pain, and then she made as if she was gagging. The next thing she did was utterly revolting. There was something stuck in her mouth, and she put her fingers into it and took it out. She showed them to him as if she were showing off a prize, and Vansh would have screamed like a madman if he could—what she was showing him were three bloodied teeth.

They were with him now—one trapping his body in a horizontal stance and the other sitting beside him. And even as he looked, the one sitting raised her head to face the sky, and then making a peculiar contortion of her mouth, she made a sound that seemed to come from the depths of her throat. It was an unproduceable sound that went something like "Krrrrriiiiiiiiii... rrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiii... kkkkrrrrrrriiiiiiiii..."

It sounded very much like the mating call of the spirits. That was all Vansh could take. Somewhere in the middle of the sound, he plunged into darkness again.

He woke up the next morning and instantly jumped out of bed. There was no sign of anyone having been there. The bedsheet was decent; apart from his own depression on the mattress, there was no other. He looked at his body in the mirror where she had given him a couple of bites the last night, but there were no bitemarks.

Without wasting any further time, he threw all his stuff into his bags and almost ran to the reception to check out. It was probably all a terrible nightmare. He had had too much to drink, after all. In any case, no part of the story—starting from the fact that the beautiful girl came herself to his room—sounded like something that'd happen in reality.

Three months later, Vansh was at another conference in another city, in another hotel room. This time, he drank nothing more than iced tea. He decided to sleep with the lights on. On the first night, he grabbed his travel pajamas (the ones he never unpacked) and put them on. He felt something in its pocket. Without a thought, he thrust his hand in and pulled it out.

He almost died when he saw what it was. In his hand, still smeared with the blood he had seen on it the first time, were three broken teeth.

He was still looking at them, stunned beyond disbelief, when there was a soft knock on his hotel room door.

[Hope you liked the story! For my novels and short story collections, check out my Amazon page: https://amzn.to/2NZf7JQ]