She was excited
to see the front gate of her future destination. She has been craving for some
change from her mundane job and the associated lifestyle for some time now.
Although pursuing a master’s in technology was not her primary idea of a
discourse but for now it will have to do. On first sight the campus seemed
wonderful. It maintained a perfect sync between the urban chaos it was part of
and the tranquil natural abode it aspired to be. She loved the very sight of
it.
The
happiness she felt upon her arrival was slightly curtailed when she got a
glimpse of her room, or rather when she got a feel of her room. It felt a bit
chilly when compared to the bright and sunny weather outside. This slight
unexplained difference, though barely noticeable, was quite unnerving to her.
She ignored it and got busy adjusting her huge consignment of baggage in the
small confined room. It took another
half an hour of herculean effort to haul her stuff from the ground floor. For the next few hours she arranged and
rearranged her new living quarters in all the creative ways she could think of
and finally rested on her bed, triumphantly. She was instantly off to a sound
satisfying sleep barely remembering the uneasiness she noticed upon her
entrance into the room. The night was even chillier than the day but she was
yet to notice it.
She woke up
at around 3:00 in the night.
Despite being a heavy sleeper and being dead tired
she was still not able to sleep with the strange wooshing sound made by the
turbulent wind. The lights were out in room and the slit of light coming from
her door was the only source of it. She got up and tried to search for the
light switch by groping around the room. She was still new to the layout of the
room and so she bumped into something on the floor, losing her footing. She
landed straight in front of the window. In the painful agony she blurted out a
mouthful of expletives and tried to get up. The eerie feeling which she had in
the morning intensified. Her curtains were fluttering uncontrollably, which was
odd since she distinctively remembered shutting her window. She cautiously
approached the window trying to shut it down. Suddenly the drapes were pushed far back by a
strong gust of wind and she screamed at the top of her voice before she
fainted.
For the next
hour she was describing what she felt on the tree outside her window, still
trembling from the experience. Every time she told the story she could feel
people doubting her, strangely she was unsure of it herself too. She was not
sure whether it was a figment of her tired imagination or something real. She could have sworn that the disturbance of
the leaves was not normal; she felt something leap at her, though she had no
idea what. The only silver lining of it all was that she made a new friend.
They chatted deep into the night and barely slept. She was relieved that
someone found her story slightly believable rather than giving that terrible judgmental
look. But she still was not sure what she felt but thinking about it gave her an inexplicable feeling of fear.
