It was a long walk from my home to somewhere I don’t recall. It was late, very late. The air was cold; cold enough that I distinctively remember shivering even in four layers of clothes. I walked down the road as I glanced back, Hotel Preet it read. I was in Manali, I realized, walking away from he inn I stayed at. The market was ahead, after a police station, that’s all I had known of that city. My hands were gloved and in my pocket. The wind blew faster pricking my body like a thousand knives. In no time I reached a place to see nothing around, or perhaps, I can’t picture it anymore.

‘I walk a lonely road, the only one that I had ever known…’ My humming echoed in the silent hills around. It was haunting. ‘I walk this empty street on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams…’ And a shadow lied in front of me, a large shadow, casted by a not so tall lady. Where’s the light coming from to cast this shadow? Then I heard a wolf howl from behind her. There are no wolves in Manali. I doubt there are wolves in India! I went closer. She wore a red overcoat that looked scarlet in the dark. She wore a hood that covered her forehead. ‘Have you forgotten me?’ She asked with a straight voice, the most beautiful I had ever heard. ‘Can I forget someone I never knew?’ She smiled and removed her hood. Her green eyes were deeper than the deepest trenches of the ocean. Her skin was white and haunting, as pale as the moon. Her face highlighted strongly due to her silky blonde long hair. ‘You do know me, I am the best part of you.’ I grunted. I have walked a million fathoms in the last two years, and I have lost the best part of me in that. But even my best cannot be as good as she was.

‘Who are you?’ I asked firmly. She had a deep sadness in her voice. ‘You dreamed of being a man, a man onto which the greatest of men look upto. A code of righteousness so blessed, that it’d be an heavenly hymn itself.’ The ground started to shake. The images of nothingness became nothing. ‘I am a man, and I do have a code.’ ‘Only if…’ Her voice echoed with gloom. A crystal tear rolled down her green eyes. I then did, what I always had, creeping anger, waiting for me to be swolled in it. ‘A doe does not interrupt a lion.’ As my sentence ended, the roaring voice echoed, ‘LION! LION! LION!…’

She put her hood back up, turning back as her eye stared into mine, green turned to yellow, yellow to orange and orange to red, the color of fury. The best of me had now taken a shade of my worst. The ground cracked and the wind gave me a strong push. Earth pulled me into its bowels. As I fell, she stood there, the lady in red, whose eyes were now closing. Another tear fell, clear like the finest of all diamonds. The falling year touched my cheek, piercing me like a needle. As I fell deeper, the visions turned to darkness. My eyes were open, and I was wide awake. I looked around and saw my roommate taking a shot of vodka. Who drinks vodka at 7AM?

–N