SWAPPED

PART I

Priya swiped the card at the KFC counter and punched in the pin #1122.  The prompt 'wrong pin'  flashed back.  Her friends kept chatting behind her, laughing, unaware of this.  Priya tried again  and it flashed the same prompt.  Confused, she took a closer look at the card.  It looked the same  except it didn't have her boss' name on it.  She spun around and told her best friend, Anu, that  there was something wrong with her card, and Anu used her own card to pay the bill.

A few moments later, her friends except Anu left in an Uber bringing their get-together to an end.
"Everything alright?" Anu said noticing the look on Priya's face.
"I think someone accidentally swapped our card," she said.
"Was it the pani puri guy??" Anu said.
A few hours ago, they had come across a teenager selling pani puris on a push cart.  They had been  surprised when they found out that he accepted cards.  It was a new trend that was catching up.  Almost  every small shop seemed to have a card machine these days.
"Lets go back there!" Priya said.  They caught a rickshaw and were on their way to the spot where  the pani puri guy had been.

About 10 minutes later, they were at the spot, and there was no sign of the push cart.
"Shit!" Priya cursed.
"Its late.  May be he went home," Anu said noticing that it was 11 p.m. "May be we should come back  tomorrow."
Priya thought for a moment and said,
"Better call up my boss.  Ask him to block the card."

On her speed dial was a contact which was plain without a picture and the name "Boss."  His phone  rang for a long time before he picked it up.
"Why are you calling me at home??!" the Boss said in a forced whisper.
"I am sorry, but its an emergency.  I.... I lost your card. I was just..."
"What?? Great!" he said sarcastically.  This was followed by a distant feminine voice asking him  who it was.
"I will call you back!" her boss said hurriedly.
"Block it!" Priya shouted urgently before the call went dead.

Priya sighed.
"Have you talked to Ajay about... you know..." Anu said.
"The divorce? Ya, I am working on it. I can't seem to get myself to have that talk. Its so  diffic...." Priya's phone began to buzz.  The call was from an unknown number.  She received the call.
"Didhi, have you changed your mind?."
"Who is this??"
"Its me, didhi, from the hospital.  My dad's condition is getting very tough.  Only you can save  him."
"Listen!! You can't keep calling me like this.  This is harassment, okay? I will file a complaint  against you if you call me again?"
"But didhi, you are a donor."
"That means, when I die, they can harvest my organs, not before that. Do you understand??"
"But, didhi, my dad's quite old.  He doesn't have time to wait, didhi.  Lemme take you home so that  you can meet him and have a...."
"Fuck off!" Priya shouted and ended the call.

"Him again???!" Anu said frustrated.  Priya nodded, trying to calm herself.
"You know, you should file a compliant against the hospital for giving them your medical info," Anu  added.
Priya opened her mouth to say something when her phone buzzed again.  It was her boss this time.
"Its all gone! The money is all spent at some jewelry stores!" he said, irritated.
Priya was shocked.  It took her a moment to collect her thoughts.
"Can't.... can't we get it back??"
"Its gone, Priya!  Wait, I will come ov....." the voice began to break and then silence.
Priya tried calling him back, but the call wouldn't go through.
"Guess it wasn't an accident.  The pani puri guy robbed us!" Priya said to Anu.

***

Ajay, Priya's husband, was 10 minutes into Game of Thrones.  Crumbs of potato chips and a couple of  caps of beer bottles were scattered all over his living room floor. He took a sip of the beer and  took a bite of the potato chips when the door burst open.  A couple of guys rushed in holding metal  rods and machetes.
"Hey man, what the fuck! Who are you!?" Ajay said almost falling to the floor in the confusion.  One of  the men getting irritated by the loud noise of the TV pulled its plug from the wall socket  forcefully.
"Hey, be careful with the TV maan." Ajay said while one of the men caught him by his collar and  punched him in his face.
"Stop it, maan! Who are you guys??" he said, as the man continued to pound him across his face.

***

Priya and Anu decided to do some investigating.  A shopkeeper nearby knew where the pani puri guy  lived:  At a nearby slum.  With the new information of the pani puri guy's name and a vague idea of  where his house was in the overcrowded slum, Priya and Anu were on their way.

A few minutes later, they were walking in the slum.  There were no lights except the glare from the  TVs and the light from low watt bulbs burning inside the worn down houses filtered through their  windows.  Rowdy looking men sat outside watching the 2 women walk by.  Anu's fingernails dug into  Priya's hand as they walked.

Priya gathered up the courage to ask some of the men about the pani puri guy's house.  After about  half an hour of asking for directions and walking, they finally noticed the push cart parked  outside one of the rundown houses.

Priya felt a mixture of relief and dread. Before they could take another step, the door opened and  out came the pani puri guy with a busy look on his face, and he headed towards his pushcart.  From  inside his house came the noise of a woman shouting at him.  He stopped in his path when he  realized someone was watching him.  He turned around and faced them.  A few seconds passed as they  looked at each other.  The guy spun around in an instant and bolted.

"Hey wait!!" Priya shouted running after him.  The woman from inside the house, the pani puri guy's  mother, rushed out to see what was happening.  Anu ran after them.  The woman too followed suit  although her age slowed her down.

The guy zigzagged through the tiny pathways of the slum.  There were rubble all over the place.   The guy seemed to be very familiar with it and jumped at the right places avoiding the obstacles.   Priya hit her foot on a stone lying right in the middle of the path and fell down.  Anu helped her  up.  Without wasting another moment, Priya brushed aside her bruises and continued to run after the  guy, shouting.

After a couple more minutes of exhausting running, the guy ran out of the slum's edge and onto what  seemed like a mud road.  Just as he did that, a mini van slammed into him hurling his body to the  side.  Priya and Anu who witnessed this stood stunned.  They rushed to him, but he was lying still in a pool  of blood.

There was a lot of shouting from the slum.  A crowd was gathering from the slum and headed towards them.  The mini van driver, realizing what was about to happen, sped away.

"Lets go!" Anu urged Priya who was knelt beside the guy, shocked.  Anu pulled Priya up.  It took  another minute for Priya to snap back into her senses, and they both ran down the dark muddy road.

They kept running till they reached a more familiar and quieter part of the city.  They both sat  down at an abandoned bus stop.  Both breathing hard.  Priya's phone vibrated.  She took it out of  her pocket.  It's screen foggy from her sweat.  She wiped the screen and saw that she had 14  missed calls from "Boss" and 7 missed calls from an unknown number.  She also had 2 msgs from the unknown  number.

Unknown Number:  We are with your husband at your home. All you have to do to save his life is come  home within an hour.  If you try to get the police involved, we will just leave his body for you to  find.
Unknown Number:  [Video]

The video was of Ajay with a bloody face and looking scared, sitting on the couch in their living  room.  Burly men sat on either side of him shouting at him and threatening him.

As the video ended, Priya and Anu looked at each other with blank looks on their faces.
"Was it the...." Anu was interrupted by an SUV racing down the abandoned road, then screeching to  a stop in front of them.

"Priya babe? Is that you?" a familiar voice came from within the SUV.
"Oh, thank god!" Priya said filled with relief and jumping up.  "I need your help. I am in soo much  deep trouble!"
"Get in.  We will sort everything out!" the Boss said smiling and unlocking the doors.

Even though she felt relief, she couldn't brush aside the tiny gnawing  feeling that things were only beginning to get worse.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE WAY OUT - A SHORT STORY

Thomas opened his eyes.  At the foot of his hospital bed stood a doctor talking to his daughter and son-in-law.

"He works at the old chemical plant, doesn't he?" the doctor said.
"Yes. How did you...."
"I found traces of the chemical in his blood.  The workers end up inhaling some it, so I always know who they are," the doctor said beaming.
"I have been trying to get him to retire.  He started working there with his childhood friend who killed himself.  Dad thinks he will somehow be letting his friend down if he quit," his daughter said.  The doctor noded his head understandably as if to show that he understood how old people sometimes have weird values.

Thomas felt enranged that his daugther was sharing this personal information with a stranger.  He tried to shout at her, to silence her, but all that came out of his mouth were groans reminding him once again that he had suffered a stroke paralysing his entire body except for some movement in his right hand.

2 days later, his daughter and son-in-law brought him home and placed him on his bed.  He felt caged in his own body.  This bed was probably the last resting place for him before he dies and be placed in a permanent one.  But the wait was already making him mad.  He was used to being physically and mentally active, but now he was trapped and a burden to his family.  That's when he remembered the 'way out.'  Something he had put in place a long time ago for when and if things were to turn bad.

A week had passed before he had his first opportunity.  His daughter was out to get his grandson from school.  His son-in-law was feeding him lunch.  Thomas groaned raising his right hand to point to the top of the cupboard.

"Do you want to read a book?" the son-in-law said looking at the books atop the cupboard.  Thomas groaned and jabbed at the air towards it again.  The son-in-law climbed on a chair and pushed away the books to see a bottle of water tucked away in the corner.

Thomas groaned again and signed him to bring it over.
"I can get you fresh water from the kitchen.  This looks like it had been out here for a while," the son-in-law said placing the bottle on the table and about to walk out when Thomas groaned urgently.  The son-in-law panicked for a moment and screwed open the bottle and proceeded to give Thomas a sip of it when a sweet smell hit him.  He stopped and took a sniff at the bottle's mouth.
"Dad, is this Vodka?  Oh my.... your daughter's going to kill me if you got drunk!" he said, taking another sniff.  It smelled so inviting.  He took a sip.  Then proceeded to take a gulp.  Thomas watched in horror.  The son-in-law broke out into a coughing spell.  He placed the bottle on the table and rushed to the kitchen to get some water.  A moment later, Thomas heard the coughing stop followed by a thud.

A couple of hours later, his daughter came home.  Thomas heard her shriek.  An ambulance followed.  A few minutes later, he was left all alone in the house.  He knew he will never see his son-in-law again.

Everyone recognised the chemical at his plant as this bottled gooey green colored liquid, but that was the result of all the processes that it went through.  The raw material that they get from another chemical plant is a crystal clear water-like liquid, the purest form of the chemical, and very potent.  It can kill an human adult with just a sip of the stuff.  Just like his friend had done about 40 years ago.

***

Two days later, his daughter told him that she had asked their old maid to bring by some food for him while she left for the funeral.  After a couple of hours, the maid arrived with her 10-year-old son holding a food parcel.

Retrieving a plate from the kitchen, she began to feed Thomas.  Soon, she figured out the extent of Thomas' damage:  He couldn't speak and she could get away with almost anything.  The 3 rice cakes that were supposed to be his became 1 rice cake for him while she proceeded to eat the other 2.  Thomas groaned realizing this was his life now, being taken advantage off by people and he couldn't do anything.  That's when he heard the noise of liquid swishing inside a container.  It was the boy.  He was playing with the bottle of the chemical.  Thomas was filled with renewed hope.

Thomas used his right hand to sign him to bring it to him, groaning.  The boy, frightened by the groans for a moment, brought it to him with a blank face, but before he could hand it over, his mom began to choke on her food.  She extended her hand out to him for the bottle.  Thomas groaned violently at the boy to hand it over to him.  The body stood turning white with fear.  His mom, now going red in her face, jumped up and grabbed the bottle from the boy and took a gulp of it.  She sat back, relieved, taking deep breaths.  But then her face contorted, and she began to cough violently.  The boy panicked, grabbed the bottle, and placed it to her mouth to help her drink more of what he thought was water.  She pushed it away and, a moment later, collapsed on the ground.

***

"Dad, I need to tell you something," his daughter said a couple of days later, sitting at the edge of his bed.

Thomas moved his eyes to look at her.

"My husband killed himself.  They found toxins in his blood work," she cried.  "I dont know if it was me, if it was something I did, but he pretended to be happy, I just....."

Thomas wanted to comfort her, but found himself helpless.  He wanted to tell her that it wasn't her fault, that her husband didn't kill himself, that it was all a mistake.

"I am quitting my job.  I can't afford to have help to look after you, so i am going to get some work that can be done from home.  It may not pay as much, but I think we will be fine," she said as she bend down to nonchalantly pick something off the floor.  Thomas' pulse raised when he realized that it was the bottle, now almost empty, with may be just enough for a sip left.  She sighed looking down the floor.  Then, to Thomas' horror, she raised the bottle to her mouth.  In a moment of frenzy, Thomas used his working arm to lunged it at the bottle.  Surprising himself, he grabbed it out of her hands.  She looked stunned and confused.  Thomas looked at the bottle with awe.  Now, finally, he had it in his hand.  He took one last look at his daughter.  He wished he could say it out loud that he would no longer be a burden to her.  He brought the bottle to his mouth and emptied it.

***

He woke up abruptly to the familiar sound of the beeps.  At the foot of his hospital bed, he saw the familiar scene from a few weeks ago of the doctor talking to his daugther, only this time, his son-in-law wasn't in the picture.  The doctor noticing Thomas was awake, rushed to him beaming and exclaimed,
"Welcome back, Thomas! You are one lucky guy!  What you thought was water was actually the chemical from your plant.  But guess what!? All those decades you spent inhaling the fumes actually let your body build up tolerance.  It did take a bit of a toll on your kidneys though, so you will need to have dialysis for sometime, but other than that, you are completely fine!"

Thomas groaned.

The End.

- Rejo John

The Reception - A Short Story

The Reception - A Short Story


"I hate to just stand there being stared at by everybody, you know, being judged by people who barely even know me," said Stella gripping tighter onto Kiran to stabilize herself as the bike hit yet another speed bump.  With her right hand, she was busy selecting all the groups and contacts in her Whatsapp to forward her scanned wedding invite to.

"I was under the impression that girls dreamt about the day they get to dress up as a pretty bride and stand before everybody," Kiran said with a chuckle.

"I am sorry I dont fit the typical stereotype," she said sarcastically, then frowned at her phone.  She carefully deselected the contact named "Bitch from work" that she accidentally selected, and touched 'Send.'

"There! Forwarded the invitation to about 200 people," she said finally putting her phone away.

"Wow.. okay! I guess we are going to have a lot of people at our wedding!"

"I expect only 5 or 10 of them to actually turn up.  Its the internet! In a few seconds, I am going to start receiving congratulatory messages, and by tomorrow, everybody would have forgotten about it.  The next time, they are even going to remember about the wedding is when they see the snaps on my Facebook wall," Stella said, and already she could feel her phone buzzing in her pocket with the messages.  She unlocked it and started to read the messages when the bike jerked to a stop.  She almost dropped her mobile.

In the street stood 3 men, blocking them.  Kiran revved up the accelerator as if a warning that he was going to drive through them, but one of the men jumped at him and forcefully pulled his hand off the accelerator.  He could feel Stella's nails digging into his back through his shirt.

"What are you doing?" Kiran shouted at the man.
"Who is she?" one of the men asked Kiran.
"The girl I am engaged to.  Does it matter?" Kiran said.
"Oh! So you are not even married! And what are you doing together in the middle of the night?" the man said, his face now inches away from Kiran's.  The man's breath stank of alcohol.

"None of your business," Kiran said pushing him away.  One of the other men shouted obscenities and rushed towards Kiran with his fist raised high only to stop abruptly when the man who Kiran pushed held up his hand.  Everybody was quiet.  The man once again came closer and stood inches away from Kiran's face, observing him, with a sneer.  The man seemed to slightly wobble from side to side as if the wind was pushing him about.  His eyes slowly tracked down to Kiran's breast pocket, and he pulled out Kiran's phone from within it.  Kiran tried to grab it back only to have one of the other men catch his arm and forcefully hold it back.

"I understand you rich kids.  Full of raging hormones and ....." the man's words slurred away.

"What's your name?  Does your parents know you are out with him??" the third man was now next to Stella, shouting at her.  Kiran quickly got off the bike and pushed him away.  The other man shouted and jumped at Kiran.  Kiran punched him across his face.  The other 2 men shouted and rushed to defend him.  Stella stood stunned at what was happening.  Loud words were being exchanged when all of a sudden the men went quiet.  There was a tiny flicker of a light from the far end of the road.  The 3 drunk men looked at it with a look of worry on their faces.  A moment later, it was clear that it was a police patrol car.  The 3 men rushed to their bike parked at the side of the road, piled onto it, and sped away.

Kiran had been pushed to the ground.  He stood up and dusted away the dirt from his clothes.
"Are you all right?" Stella said.
"Ye.. yeah," Kiran said noticing the patrol car approach and stop beside them.
"What are you guys doing here?" the cop asked them.

Kiran hesitated at first, but then told them about the men who harassed them.  The cops took down the description and after asking them to go home, drove away in the direction that the men had gone.

"What a bunch of drunk losers!" Stella said.
"Ya, lets just ge......" Kiran stopped midsentence when he realized something.
"What?" Stella said noticing his blank stare.
"He took my phone."
"Forget it! Lets just go home before some other losers come around!" she said.  But Kiran didn't budge and had a grave look on his face.
"What........?" a look of realization came over her face, "Oh no! You didn't delete it??"
"I was going to... after I went home.... I.." Kiran said trying to rationalize himself.
"Oh my God!" Stella shouted.
"But you know what, you are right.  The phone's passcode protected. They are probably going to flash the memory and sell it to someone, so we..."
"Kiran! This is exactly how those videos end up on the internet! I want that video deleted!  Lets go find them!"
"What then? Fight them??" Kiran said.
"No! We....we pay them and get the phone back!  They are doing this for the money, right?" she said.

They stood there debating what to do when they noticed the familiar flash of lights again.

"Oh no, its the cops again.  Lets go before this gets worse," Kiran said about to get on his bike.
"No, wait! Lets tell them about the phone," Stella said standing her ground.

The patrol car stopped next to them again,
"Still here?" the cop said.
"Sir, they stole his phone," Stella said.

The cop turned around to look at the dark backseat of the car and shouted,
"Did you take his phone?!?"
Very obedient voices from the back of the car said that they didn't.

"We caught them near the lake.  This is everything we took off them.  See if your phone is in there," the cop said producing a plastic bag that rattled with things.  Stella went through them, but there was no sign of Kiran's phone.

The cop shouted threateningly at the men asking where the phone was, and they finally admitted that they panicked when they saw the cops and threw it in the lake.  The cop told the couple to come to the station the next morning and file a complaint of harassment and stolen phone.  A moment later, the cops had left.

Kiran and Stella decided to go to the lake and take a look.  When Stella called his phone, it said the phone was switched off.  Using Stella's phone's flashlight, they searched the area around the lake until her phone's battery finally gave out, but the search had turned up nothing.

Kiran returned to the same place the next morning and still found nothing.  They finally concluded that the men must have thrown the phone into the lake.
**

4 MONTHS LATER

A couple of young kids from the nearby slum, on their way home from school, stopped by the lake to throw stones at it.  As one of the boys searched for the smoothest stone that he could find, he noticed something strange in the undergrowth.  It was a phone.

A minute later, all the kids were huddled together as each grabbed at it and desperately pressed at the power and volume buttons in the hope that they can turn it on.  Failing to do so, they finally decided to take it to the only mobile repair shop in the area.

Rohit, who ran the shop, was playing a first person shooter game when one of the kids came over and gave him the phone saying it needed to be fixed.

Rohit knew the kid and his parents well, and he knew that the phone in question cost a fortune and they couldn't afford it.

"Where did you steal this from??" he shouted at the kid, grabbing his arm.
"I didn't steal it! Its mine!" the boy said struggling against his hold.
"Ok, I will ask your father about it then," Rohit added, and the boy began to wail.  He finally escaped Rohit's grip on his arm and ran away.  He was immediately joined on his run by his schoolmates who had been hiding nearby and watching the entire thing in anticipation.

Rohit continued with his game while he let the phone charge.  He finally turned it on and came face to face with the security protocol requesting a passcode.  He knew that if the OS hadn't been updated to the most recent version, overriding this was child's play.  He connected it to his PC and ran a software which forced a large number of characters into the passcode field, overwhelming it and causing it to crash.  A second later, the screen produced an error message saying an application had to be terminated unexpectedly.  He pressed ok, and he was now looking  at the homescreen.

Then Rohit did what he always did after he fixed his customer's phones.  Go through their personal items, their banking information, their personal pictures and videos.  He considered this one of the perks of his job.

He found this phone had been used to make banking transactions.  Yes, his buddies in the hacker community were going to be pleased.  But what caught his attention more was the last recorded video in the camera folder.  The video of a beautiful young couple recording themselves having sex.

A few minutes later, Rohit had shared the video to all his online forum buddies and his Whatsapp contacts.
***

4 DAYS LATER.

Stella was getting her wedding makeup done when her phone buzzed.  It was a message from the contact named "Bitch from work."  Stella sighed.  It was probably a sarcastic message supposedly wishing her a happy married life.  They hated each other's guts, but were forced to work in the same office.  Stella opened the message:

"My invitation must have been lost in the spam folder.  Anyways, I am happy for you! You guys have great chemistry in the video.  Congo! <3"

Stella felt her heart skip a beat.  She stared at the dark block below the message.  Her phone chimed as it finished downloading the video onto her phone and waited coldly with the play button poised in the middle of the block.

"Everything alright?" the makeup lady said noticing the grave look on Stella's face.

"Ya... yes.. excuse me," she said standing up and heading to the ladies room.  There, locking herself up in a cubicle she watched the intimate video of her and Kiran in horror.

Kiran stood in the reception area being introduced to his father-in-law's friends.
"Meet Mr. Shekar.  We worked together at the steel mill," his father-in-law said.  Kiran smiled and shook hands with Mr. Shekar.

"This is Mr. Babu.  He is an old school friend of mine," his father-in-law said showing to a man with a very familiar face.  Mr. Babu, now clean shaven and looking sharp in his suit, was the drunk man who had stopped Kiran and Stella 4 months ago.  But right now, Mr. Babu grabbed Kiran's hand and shook it joyously with no hint of recognition on his face.  It seemed obvious that he was drunk out of his wits on that night 4 months ago and didn't even remember any of what had  happened.  Kiran forced himself to smile.  Mr. Babu walked past him nonchalantly, and his father-in-law proceeded to introduce him to the next guest when Kiran felt his phone buzz.  It was Stella.

Kiran excused himself to answer his phone.
"Kiran, get here, right now!" he heard Stella say.
"Okay," said Kiran without a second thought about the tone of her voice.  For the past few days, that has been everybody's tone around him.  It was always some emergency.  Always something that needed to get done right then and there.  It had been the most stressful few days of his life.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Kiran noticed a couple of boys still in their school uniforms and carrying bags quietly making their way through the crowd and towards the food hall.  Kiran chuckled at the thought of the little wedding crashers.  He wished they would have at least had the foresight to not show up in their school uniforms.  He remembered about Stella's call and hurried to the back of the reception stage where Stella was supposed to be.

He found her pacing back and forth in her wedding dress, her eyes crimson red.
"What happened??" Kiran said realizing something was very wrong.
"This, Kiran!!" she thrust her phone to his face with the paused video on it.  It took only a split second for Kiran to realize what it was.
"Oh...... that!" he sighed loudly.
"Wait a minute!" Stella said, her expression changing to one that of dawning realization, "You knew about this??"
"A friend told me about this yesterday," Kiran said, sighing again.
"Kiran!! God knows how many people has seen this!" Stella said.
"Relax!! Its just...."  Kiran stopped midsentence when he noticed both their parents enter the room, urging them to hurry up and get on the stage.

Kiran held her hand reassuringly, and they both went out up on the stage.  One by one, the guests came over the stage, congratulated the couple, and then would go into the food hall.

Kiran heard her sniffle.
"Its the internet!  There are hundreds of such videos cropping up every day.  By tomorrow, this video will be buried deep down and forgotten," Kiran whispered to her.

Stella didn't answer him, instead forced a smile to the next guest and shook their hands.  That’s when she noticed the man, Mr. Babu, standing in a corner, chatting and joyously laughing with a couple of other men his age.

"Isn't he....?"
"Dont even ask.  Apparently, he's one of your father's old friends.  The guy didn't even recognize me!" Kiran said.
"What...?" Stella whispered back looking stunned and looked at Mr. Babu and his buddies again.  He was now pointing at his phone, and the men around him moved closer to look at it.  Then, as Stella stared at them, they all looked up at her in unison.  She felt a shiver travel down her spine.  It took a moment for Kiran to realize what she was thinking.

"Stella, you are imagining things.  They are NOT watching our video.  Just relax, alright?" he whispered to her.
"How can you be so sure?" she mumbled back.  Her throat felt dry.  Her legs felt weak.

Her eyes scanned all the guests in the hall, and almost every other person sat staring at their phones, and then they would look up at her, judging her, a look of disgust on their faces.  May be Kiran was right.  May be she was imagining things.  That’s when the walls started to move.  A moment later, she felt the stage itself move away from under her feet causing her to fall down.

***
 - Rejo John.