Existence
Existence
"And cut it", said the man sitting on a chair behind the fake window. Paul, the male lead of this suspense-thriller series, grinned on completing the scene in one take.
‘The view is awesome, what say?’
I turned around to the origin of the sound. It was Zach, former actor and my closest friend. We were on a hill near a road sign I couldn’t recognize.
Suddenly a car hit Zach and he rolled down the road. He screamed my name, I wanted to help. I could see blood, so much blood. His eyes were still open, that gaze was hurting. I wanted to move but my legs were rigid. I struggled and struggled…
“Oh!”
He woke up with a start.
Paul entered the place of shoot disinterested. It seemed he was searching for something, he couldn’t recall what. ‘The script!’ it struck him. He hadn’t read it properly. He turned suddenly only to be hit by something on his head. Brushing the pain softly, he cursed under his breath. Retaining his sight after a few seconds, he was dumbstruck by what he saw.
It was Zach. Or a spirit of Zach to be precise. “Hey buddy”, Zach said. Paul, still silent, was noticing the spirit. It was exactly the last time he saw him except that his wounds were clean. “Quit staring dude, its freaking me out”, Zach said.
“Is it really?” Paul choked.
“Me? Yuss! Finally got the permission to come down here.”
“What are you talking about?!”
“Look, we have to clear tests before getting to come back to Earth, as in rebirth.”
“So, this is you reborn??”
“Haa, No man! Rebirth is nearly impossible in the present scenario with so many people living on Earth already. An idea was passed by the committee for increased the rate of generating new souls. Now we have to wait for almost thousand years to be reborn. I just hope Earth is not destroyed till then. I had cleared those tests so I just came to meet my beloved, till my time comes. Hehe!”
“Huh?”, still not believing his friend’s words, Paul asked, ”What’s in your hand?”
“It’s a DII.”
“Whaa...t?”
“Dimension Interfered Image”, explained Zach showing him a moving picture, on a tablet-like thing, which seemed as hell. “It’s sent by a friend. What do you think? That only you’ll have technology? We are way ahead than you. We too have umm... in your language, networks”, Zach said interpreting Paul’s confused look. “But you folks down here are disturbing it. Your planes are flying too high. They are shifting things higher up to deal with that problem.”
“Then why not share it here? I mean you can come here and all.”
“There are various issues. Peace could not be achieved between the living and the dead.”
“But why?”
“Our lot are ready to kill in order to come back to life again. You see, the souls nowadays aren’t the ‘pure energy’ as it used to be earlier. They are meddled with, mutated.”
“I miss you, and I am sorry”, sobbed Paul.
“That’s why I came here. To tell you it wasn’t your fault.”
Paul went to hug his friend but wham, the spirit vanished.
“He missed a line in between”, Paul heard someone saying. Lights returned and he came back to his senses. He realized it was a projection of his friend.
“For a while, I thought it was real. Ahh, thank God, it isn’t! Or is it? Could anyone ever find out..?
Catch the latest episode of Existence.”
It was a hit!
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PS: This article originally appeared as #3 on the official online blog of SIES Graduate School of Technology, Scintilla Weekly on July 23rd, 2013 [link].