Cold, wet and dripping, Mia realized she had forgotten to carry her umbrella to work. The season of oncoming winter brings exceptionally anticipated rains to the city, preparing the folks for the Fall. Mia checked the time, it was 3.10 a.m., which meant there were another forty minutes to wait till her designated night bus came in. She packed her bags, heated up her leftover coffee, and headed out to lock the safety trailer. Mia works night shifts as a safety officer at a subway construction site, hence, dead of the night is something she is used to now. She wrapped the hoodie around her head, grabbed her belongings, and plugged in her earphones to walk to her favorite leisure place.
She expected to find shelter at the park where she was walking for the 30 minutes of her trek outside. The cold wind touched her face, and her hands started getting wet when she noticed her band-aid had almost ripped off of her palm. As usual, she did not give much attention to it, because she was dying for a smoke with that coffee, which of course had a debatable taste by then. In approximately fifty meters of walking, the park gave off a forest vibe, but the weirdest thing in the park was the pathway light. She had been going to that location for eight months now, and never once saw that light fixed; it kept flickering throughout the night. This creates a false sense of fear, but as per Mia, but she adores the darkness, the tranquility, and the serenity of the place, post-midnight. She firmly believed that when we left them alone and observed from a distance, nature could be seen in its most beautiful state. Mia was different than all of her friends and family, she has always claimed that unseen things can be seen if genuinely manifested or called upon.
Half drenched and almost stumbling on the staircase, Mia went to her spot, the bench under the canopy of a Bigleaf Maple tree that hugged the other shorter trees in that area. She positioned her tumbler and kept her bag on the bench, closed her eyes, and removed the earphones, simply to inhale the park’s uplifting, earthly aroma. But she was suddenly astonished to smell something else, it was not new, but left her perplexed. She opened her eyes, gaping in wonder since it had been a while since she had smelled that scent. It was a mixture of betel leaf, lime paste, and strong tobacco mixed together, giving a very different, pungent odor that she was well aware of. It was her grandmother’s cherished refreshment, back in the gilded age of her existence. Mia vividly reminisced, she would call upon the scent to encompass her when the longing for her grandmother was too much to bear. In these moments of olfactory communion, Mia found comfort. She cultivated a firm belief that any old memories could be revived through a potent sensory web woven by well-known scents, and fragrances that had a deeper meaning to one’s past.
Never complained or spoke any details about it; she immersed herself in this secret indulgence to call on her grandmother when she felt low. But it has been almost a couple of years since she stopped doing that, because, as Mia now believes, unnecessary meddling can cause trouble in that realm. But why now again? She did not even ask for it this time or remember to even faintly desire it.
A sudden burst of thunder broke her chain of thoughts, and she decided to ignore that fact since she had some more time to spend there. So she smiled and let it go, focusing on her ripped-off band-aid which she threw off then. She went through her backpack to get the lighter and a Marlboro Smooth, trying to find her way through the pitch-dark spot. She plugged in her left earphones and started humming to her favorite Lana Del Ray radio song, “Sweet like a cinnamon”. Immersed in that zone, Mia suddenly felt something lick her bruised hand and shuddered all of a sudden. “What was that!? Am I hallucinating or did I actually feel something weird brushed against my hand?” She lifted her hand to check the blemish on the back of the hand, to her surprise, it was wet with something sticky. Yes, she was right, it looked like saliva. So what was she licked by? Mia had been visiting that place for months now at this time of the night, but she never did mind anybody’s presence. Lost souls, orbs, and dead spirits were something she was never scared of because she herself called upon her grandmother the night she passed on. She understood that night, she could summon her dead grandmother’s spirit quite easily, but her smell lingered on for quite some months. However, Mia was not used to this, and that too in a dark, damp place where there was not a single person in her vicinity to call for.
She stood up, trying to hear if anything popped up, but nothing. She did not see or hear anything anymore, which led her to believe it was nothing, but some weird rainwater trickling down the maple tree. It was almost time for her to leave, so Mia wrapped up, and the moment she turned to put on her earphones, the hairs on her spine stood up in fear. She heard a whisper, “I warned you before”, so close to her ears, she could feel the breath on her. She was neither a witch nor trained to conjure spirits, but Mia knew, this was something else, most importantly, not her grandmother. She knew she had to get out of the place as soon as she could, and for one last time, she could feel a strong sting to her wound, but she did not stop. She ran down the stairs and did not look back, until she was at the bus bay, where the N9 night bus just arrived in, right on time.
Mia entered the empty bus with a few vagrants here and there, who made a mess of the place, but she did not care about it that night. She glanced at the bruise and it looked bad, definitely, something disturbed the wound. The cut was open and it had to be cleaned with saline, the moment she reached home. Mia was so consumed with the idea of that phrase, “...warned you before”, but she knew she had heard that voice before. She did not know if she shook in fear or the cold, but it was not her grandmother this time. Mia knew this dated back more than a decade to her boarding school days, when a few unnatural incidents took place. She wondered, “Why tonight? Why after so many years? I thought she was gone long ago!” She could anticipate the darkness that the entity held and tried to shut her eyes, till her stop came in.