Isn't life just perfect?
For everyone else but yourself, of course.
Leaning on the edge of a worn-out bed, while sitting on a newly bought chair that was meant only for eyes and not comfort, Ahaan wondered exactly that as he blindly watched a streamer play his favourite game on the small screen of his phone, trying his best not to spill his lunch all over himself.
But "Ugh," sighed a pretty lady on the other side, and just like that, all his sorrows were veiled in obscurity.
"I do not…" she spoke, gasping a little too much for air, "I do not for the life of me have any faith that I am going to win this 5050," she was speaking without grace, almost sobbing in front of her perfectly catered camera setup.
She was, of course, acting that part out for the many viewers who seemed to love that part of her routine.
And what came just a moment later was what everyone was excited for — it was a wicked smile that glimmered on her face, shining like the brightest light in the night, and she cheerfully clasped her hands, as she started, "Screw it! I don't even care at this point."
"Even if I lose, I have these people," she said, snapping her hands, after which they came out, three men tied to stretchers, their mouths covered in tape, without which their screams would burst down a dozen ears.
They were carried in by women in golden cloaks, in made-up cardboard armour, who laid them upright and downward facing, and then they immediately proceeded to walk out gracefully.
"The bidding starts now," spoke up the streamer finally, barely containing her laugh. "Whoever pays the highest can take my big brothers on a date," she said, "No questions asked!"
"Um, now! Here we go again," she shivered, as she blankly stared at the camera, her eyes blue, and her hair coral, eagerly closing towards her monitor, to finally click the mouse, gasping yet again, following which she proceeded to press her palms against her eyes to not jinx whatever the outcome was.
Yet for some reason unknown, Ahaan's phone stopped working the moment after.
"Ah, shit!" he muttered the words close to his ears, "Shit!" he whispered to act composed, but then immediately jumped right at the screen on his table to check, consciously putting the lunch bowl on the table, and sprang confused to check what had happened.
"No," he thought, as his mind raced.
Did he forget to charge his phone?
He was supposed to go back to work after this, even on a Sunday, because he had much of his work pending. He was supposed to send a report after lunch.
"Screw work," he thought. "Screw them all."
He just wanted to watch what happened in the stream. Could she have won? How was she going to build the new character? Did she have the materials for a decent build farmed before?
But then again, the load of work dumped on him today, and the stress it'll give if he doesn't complete it, can't simply be ignored. Argh, the lectures about not keeping up, even with great potential!
Still, his mind started racing again. It was a Sunday.
Who would even want to work on a Sunday? Isn't that blasphemous?
Of course it was.
But ever since the government had announced that all tech workers were supposed to clock in for a seventy-hour work week, his colleagues had petitioned to work on Sundays too, if only they could go home early (which was mostly late at night anyway) on weekdays to their families and spouses.
And that was exactly what the corporation wanted.
Even Sundays were now somehow a full workday, because no one was supposedly meeting the required work quota, and with the amount of work pushed on everyone, no amount of labour was ever going to fill their dues for any week, for many years to come.
But Ahaan thought being sick to his bones could give him some amount of relief, that he would be offered a little concession from the whole grinding for a living.
And yet, nothing of that sort was presented.
Instead, the universe decided not to give him a moment to sigh when he was assigned the pending work of his colleague to be finished, right before the next day. The one who had recently quit, and now his phone had stopped working too, just when he had decided to take a small break for lunch.
This couldn't possibly be only happening to him, he thought, as he tried hard to reboot his phone, pressing whatever buttons his scrawny fingers could hold from the muscle memory he had mastered after using it day after day.
But nothing happened even after a whole minute.
Is this how he was going to end it all?
His phone was the only reason why Ahaan had endured whatever was thrown at him, the only reason why he clung to dear life even if everything was hard.
There is no way he can afford repairs on that phone.
It had cost him a fortune to just buy it, and it would cost him another to get it fixed.
And it wasn't like any other phone could run that game he so desperately loved, even though he didn't have any time to play it anymore.
All he could do was rush through his dailies and hope that he would sit down one day to actually enjoy the game with the characters he had recently wished for and gotten.
But now, all of those dreams were flushed down a torrent of despair, like every other dream of his before.
What was he going to do?
He hadn't even considered the many missed calls from his manager, who was calling him every fifteen minutes to check if he was actually working or slacking off.
The manager would, of course, blame him for everything, even though he is too sick to even stand up. Even if his phone had somehow stopped working, Ahaan would be blamed for being irresponsible.
What could he possibly tell him that would let him off his back?
What could he do so that the prick who always hated him wouldn't cut down his already watered-down salary this month?
Just when all hope seemed lost, and his eyes were shut close, the spike of his fever hit even harder than before. He could barely sit on the chair before, and now, he was even worse as his head started spinning.
But right when he was ready to give up, and wondered what exactly would free him from this misery, the shiny melody of his phone booting back to life almost lit his pale face like magical nourishment.
"Oh my god," he almost fell out of his chair, arching his sore back, waiting for everything to go back to normal again.
He could finally see if his favourite streamer got the new character she had wished for. And even though his comments will be ignored, he would still very much like to congratulate her, or at least console her.
It wouldn't matter to him even if she had already swiped her credit cards to redeem money for in-game currency to get what she wanted. Or actually sold off her brothers for the money, he just wanted to hear her voice again.
But for some reason, his phone was stuck again.
The logo of the company had long since vanished as the phone rebooted, and then the black screen, which was supposed to open up to a poorly drawn portrait of a human heart on his phone's lock screen, never came to be.
Instead, it was filled with a static of color in the background, while a tiny figure, too small to be discerned, cycled on a unicycle above a solid bar that said "LOADING"
This wasn't happening to him.
Not today.
Was there a new update to the system that he didn't know of? Did his phone download an update even without his permission?
Ahaan was supposed to disable that function. But he was too forgetful to do it. And now, with the hazy blur of his eyes masking everything in front of him as his fever rose without conflict, every small thing was adding to the buzzing in his head, and now everything was intolerable.
He wished to throw the phone at the wall. But neither the phone nor the wall was going to survive the impact, though he didn't even have half the power he usually does.
So, all he could do was choose to be wiser and calmer, to wait for it to bring everything back to normal at its own pace.
"Ugh," was the word of his day.
"Ugh!" Ughhhh!!"
Maybe he should try switching it off and turning it on again.
Yes, the instructions specifically say not to do that. But from when exactly did he start paying attention to anything of that sort? After all, if only he had done the same in those horrendous hour-long lectures back in college, maybe he'd be in a better place today.
So, after careful consideration, which wasn't even a whole minute in retrospect, Ahaan pressed the power button on his phone to restart it.
But instead, boom! came a noise from the outside. And the heater in the ceiling, which was keeping him warm and alive, had slowly lost its vigour.
It didn't take the latent cold in the air to strike his bones, as they slowly started to freeze him to death, when he realized, as a stroke of pure horror struck his nerves, that the fuse of the power transmitter had blown out.
"No!" he could almost cry.
Maybe he should just go back to sleep. Of course, he would be yelled at, but with the temperature rising and his brain mass melting to steam inside, he would barely remember anything if he were still alive after the whole ordeal.
But just as he was about to throw himself off on the bed and under the comforts of the blankets, he was startled by a voice.
"Huh?" his instincts darted his gaze without consent, looking for any possible sources where it could have come from.
"Is someone there?" moved his lips on its own to push out the words of caution or curiosity, as his body had been slowly turning into a different entity, gradually gaining sentience.
Still, nothing peculiar caught his eye.
Nothing seemed out of place, except his soul in his body.
Argh! His back was starting to hurt again. And just before he finally jumped on the bed, Ahaan had declared that he would never want to wake up if whatever he was feeling persisted.
He was about to shut his eyes and rest for good; however, an unusually creepy voice came yet again. And this time, right next to him.
Ahaan's eyes sharpened as his heart started pounding, and when his blood started pumping the right hormones for situations like these, he dared to turn right and see what was happening.
With a quick motion, he turned his body, only to see nothing again. Was he imagining things? He could be. But twice in a row? It felt highly unlikely.
His eyes didn't shut this time, and he waited for something, anything that would give him a clue to what was happening, and right then, he heard it again. A whimper of a child, followed by a giggle.
No, he wasn't imagining anything. The sound was real, and he had heard it.
But where exactly was it coming from? The only thing next to him was his stupid phone, which had stopped working. "Unless," he thought as he grabbed hold of it.
And "Blasphemous!" screamed a voice from the inside.
"Unhand me immediately, you filthy scum!" spoke a woman's voice from his phone, as his eyes caught a glimpse of something half-naked on his phone.
Before he could blink, however, something reached out from the screen to grab hold of him. It was a dark, struggling form of matter, which collapsed back into the screen before he knew what had happened.
When he looked again, rubbing his eyes, he thought it was just another figment of his imagination when he saw it.
And it looked right back.
What appeared to be trapped behind the screen was a clown, feminine in body, but with some sort of corruption glitching one second after another, as it smiled.
"Greetings, oh honoured one," it spoke in mischief.
"You have awakened me from my long slumber, and for that I shall spare your life if you let go of me," it said with an unsettling smile.
Ahaan, however, was still in a daze, drowning in the dizziness that made his head spin. So, his thoughts immediately went to, "Maybe I must have clicked something," and he proceeded to press the power button to shut it down.
But a loud screech stopped him, as "No!" cried the clown.
"Please don't kill me," it said. "Please don't turn me off, I will give you anything. Everything," it begged.
Ahaan seemed visibly shaken, but he couldn't comprehend what was going on.
If only he were well and more sound, he probably would have screamed and run away from the phone.
But right now, it was different.
"I'm sorry," he apologized. "I think I might have called you by mistake," he said to whatever it was on the other side.
And then proceeded to look for a button to cut the video transmission, which he couldn't find. So, he tried the power button again, only to hear a more distressed cry from the clown trapped in his phone.
"Fine!" it yelled, gasping.
"I shall grant you one wish if you don't turn off your phone," it said.
"Sir, I don't want to buy anything from you," said Ahaan, visibly asleep. Still "Noo," pleaded the clown, hitting its forehead on its palms.
Dressed in red and white, a pale mask of intricate carving covered its face, and three pointy ends extended from its headpiece to its knees. The clown, almost brought to tears ever since it had supposedly woken up, started, "If you spare my life, dear sir, I will grant you three wishes," it said.
Without wavering so as to not let the boy try to turn off his phone again, the clown offered, "I can add millions to your bank account in an instant, or I can have the worst secrets of your enemies exposed."
Wishing nothing more than to sleep, Ahaan, asleep, asked, "Trillion," foaming around his mouth.
"Ahh," frowned the clown.
"A billion," asked Ahaan, now almost in a different world.
"I cannot give it right now," the clown rolled its eyes, giggling. "But if you let me out of here, I will send you even more than that," it said.
But Ahaan's body couldn't possibly hold on any longer. As his eyes shut down, just when his brain did. "Hello?" called out the clown consciously, only to get no answer in return.
Giggling without restraint, it leaned towards the screen and saw the man sound asleep.
"Filthy bug," he called him out. "Almost making me cry? How dare he? I will kill you once I get out of here," it said.
The clown tried to push its gloved hands against the screen, and the dark substance that reached out to Ahaan before took shape and form again, as purple lighting struck without cursed clouds, urging the screen to break.
But right when the clown seemed to have supposedly made it out, a snapping sound loud enough to wake the dead cracked every other glass in the vicinity. All except the glass of the screen, which pushed the clown back.
The shock from the blast had pumped the last consciousness back into Ahaan, and he screamed at the clown, which was visibly horrendous, and the clown screamed back at him.
"What the…?"
"Who are you?" asked Ahaan.
"Who are you??" replied the clown, still smirking.
"I have no idea what you are… But," Ahaan started panicking, just when, "Look out!" cried the clown.
But just as his gaze moved away from the clown behind the screen, the clown tried escaping again, putting all of its strength this time. But instead of trying to escape, the clown redirected the impact towards Ahaan's skull, and right as he was about to turn, boom came the sound as he was knocked out.
"Fall asleep, little bug," spoke the clown to him in a song, grinning menacingly. "Just follow my instructions," it said.
"As you fall asleep, picture a sword. And you will wake up in a world you will love."
"If I cannot take over your body when you are awake, then maybe I can try when you are asleep,"