The Chime Of The Bell- Chapter 12

(Dishani's narration)

We had been crying for help for so long that our voices were almost choked. The radio went out of order before we could communicate with anyone and we had tried every means of reaching that ventilator but to no avail.

In the deep silence, we sat together with our backs to each other. We were not talking. From my part, I felt a bit guilty and for her part…well, she was mad and scared. I sat there trying to figure out some good words to apologize.

Trapped, confined, isolated, lost, cut-off…there were so many words that described our situation but not a single word to express my sorrow came across my mind.

“Hey, Dishani…”, Rileena suddenly said. In that creep place, even her lousy voice sounded scary.

“Yes”

“You know we are about to die here.”

“Yes,” I replied, still not feeling sad about it.

“So before we get crazy out of hunger and probably start eating each other I would like to have a last friendly conversation with you”. “By the way, I haven’t forgiven you”, she added after a pause.

“What do you want to talk about Rileena?”, I asked in a low voice feeling more guilty than I already was.

She was quiet for some time before replying “I don’t know. I just want to go home. I miss my dog” With that, she buried her face in her palms and started crying. I wanted to console her but I was already running out of words. So I decided to remain quite trying to deviate my mind into something else.

It was getting late. I could tell that from the appearance of the old plank- the little light that had been slipping in through the pores had now stopped. The stridulating of crickets had set a weird monotonous harmony in the environment. The rest of the world appeared very peaceful, very quiet. The silence was occasionally broken by the distant cries of an owl or the sounds of sobbing coming from behind me. Only last night I was finding this sounds of the jungle so adventurous but that day everything sounded so deadly as if with every ticking second death was coming to a step closer.

We were alone in the room but I could hear voices coming from the other side of the wall. It felt like I could hear low whispers of the dead spirits. Even Rileena’s occasional sobbing was appearing scary. I tightened my grip around my pocket knife. A sudden thought came to my mind- what if Rileena gets possessed? At that point, I was so vulnerable that she just had to make a weird noise or look at me with a creepy face and I would have slit her throat. Yea, I was literally one step away from slitting her throat. In the silence, we sat waiting for someone to rescue us from this death trap or maybe waiting to meet our doom.