The Message
His thumb hovered over the message.
Still trembling.
Still unsure.
Mansh wasn't even sure what was that.
Suddenly one more message came with a loud *beep*
his thumb moved on its own.
The message opened.
A photo filled the screen.
And everything in him--
Collapsed.
It was Ankush.
No mistake.
His best friend.
His only real friend.
Slumped against a wall in that same corridor from the nightmare -- pale, limp, lifeless.
Eyes wide open.
Staring into nothing.
Glass-like.
Empty.
The image was blurry, dimly lit by the sickly hallway lights -- but clear enough to see the blood trailing from his temple… the unnatural way his neck tilted to the side.
Mansh's stomach turned violently. The phone slipped from his hand, clattering onto the floor.
His lungs refused to fill.
He stared forward, vision blurring, hearing dissolving into a high-pitched ring.
"No…" he whispered. "No no no--"
He pressed his palms into his temples.
Tried to breathe.
Tried to understand.
But nothing made sense.
The world around him felt wrong again.
Too quiet.
Too still.
He blinked.
The hallway outside was gone.
The waiting room… gone.
Everything…
Gone.
And then--
The scream returned.
That same inhuman shriek from the corridor. But this time, it wasn't coming from outside.
It was inside his head.
Mansh screamed.
He clutched his ears and fell sideways off the bench, hitting the floor hard. The tiles rippled under him like liquid, shifting into that same gray color from the nightmare.
"No--wake up--wake up--WAKE UP--!"
Darkness surged around him like water rising too fast.
He was drowning in the sound. In the horror. In the sight of Ankush's lifeless body flashing again and again behind his eyelids.
Until-- Until--
He woke again.
But this time, something was different.
The light didn't sting.
The air didn't hum strangely.
The bench beneath him felt solid. The floor didn't ripple. The hospital looked real -- felt real.
He sat up slowly.
His heart raced like a jackhammer.
But no sweat clung to his skin now.
No high-pitched ringing.
Just… silence.
Faint chatter of nurses in the distance.
The television above the desk played the news with the volume low.
Mansh blinked several times, then looked down.
The phone was still in his hand.
His breath caught.
He unlocked it -- fingers trembling.
No messages.
No image.
No record of any call.
He stared.
Then stared longer.
He should've felt relief.
But instead, his blood ran cold.
Because as he sat there, trying to convince himself this was reality--
He noticed something.
His palm.
A faint red smear.
Blood.
And on the floor beside him…
A single photo printout.
Curled at the edges.
Faded.
But unmistakable.
Ankush.
Slumped.
Dead.
Just like in the image.
He faints.
And wakes again.
***
A/N: what the hell is going on.
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