By It was dark in the night. A man was walking all alone in the middle of nowhere. He put his hands on his torn black leather coat and pulled out a cigarette and a lighter. Looking at the burning tip of his cigarette, he wanted to disappear like the smoke of that cigarette. But he was already lost and fragile from inside.
Suddenly, he heard a piece of soft music being played somewhere. Mesmerized by the sound, he started walking towards it. He noticed a young girl nearby, with eyes like his, sitting on the grass, playing music out loud. He stood still, hiding behind a tree, as his heart pounded along with the rhythm of her music. And right then, an apple fell down from the tree. He got scared by the sound of that fallen apple and started searching for it with his dead eyes.
The apple was lying behind the fallen leaves. It was light brown in color similar to the young girl’s face. It indicated something common in between them. He looked up to the tree and noticed it was the only single apple on that tree. He thought this apple was a gift of God. So, he picked up the fallen apple and walked towards the girl. Stretching his arms forward, he gave that girl the apple he was carrying. The girl looked at his face, took the apple, and smiled. In amazement, she started chanting mantra instead of playing the melodious music. The man watched her perform without blinking an eye. Just by a minute, she stopped chanting and suddenly threw that apple at him.
It hit his head so hard that he fell down. Struggling to stand up on knees, he tried to pick the apple. But as he touched the apple, it disappeared in his finger’s tip and a white Lilly flower grew out of it. Without thinking much, he plucked the flower with his both hands and gave it to that chanting little girl. As she took the flower from him, a sharp bright light glowed from her body and she changed into an angel. He was astonished for a moment until he realized the angel was his own daughter who had died 2 years ago.
He couldn’t believe what he saw. It felt like a dream and a story of a fairy tale. He pinched his palms to feel the truth but they felt so real. He blinked his eyes several times but she was still there, smiling at him. The very moment, his heart started racing madly. He slowly walked closer to her. Standing an inch apart, he looked into her eyes and hugged her tightly in his arms. Tears of confusion rolled down his cheeks as he felt a cool chill in his lower legs.
He closed his eyes and recalled those moments he had spent with his daughter from the past few years back. His mind went back to those days when he played hide and seek with his daughter. Those days were so lively and beautiful. He remembered they had a big tree in the backyard where they used to play swings and his wife, in the kitchen, would bake loaves of bread for their lunch. He could imagine her face clearly. She was a slim, tall girl in her early twenties. She would call everyone for lunch and the whole family would sit together, eating bread and jams. Later, they would make cute Tiktok videos. Their family Tiktok account had millions of followers. But despite such popularity in his social media, they enjoyed their simple peaceful life.
One day, his account got seized and his bank was hacked. All his earnings and savings were gone in seconds. They were shocked and hopeless at what just happened. The next week after that incident they had to skip their lunch as they weren’t able to afford much food. He then decided to file a case against social media and registered a case for cybercrime. The following day they were anxious to know that the internet and the electricity were also cut off. That same night, a heavy storm hit the village and destroyed all the paddy. Nothing was working favorable or accordingly. Moments after moments, uncertainty was taking place. The tree in his backyard had also fallen down leaving a broken trunk hanging on the electricity poles.
On other hand, his daughter started crying; asking for food. He was helpless at the situation. He was running out of money but his bank account was empty. That night they all slept eating only a few crumbs of bread and water. Next day, early in the morning, he planned to go to a nearby river to catch fish without waking his wife and daughter. They looked tired and were still sleeping. He gently walked out of the house towards the river.
But as he reached the river bank, he realized that he forgot to bring the fishing rod. He somehow had managed to catch a big fish but unfortunately, it slipped from his hands and it swam away. He had no option left so he walked back home with a sad face.
On his way back, he noticed a fire truck beeping towards his house’s direction. Befuddled, he rushed towards his house and saw their house on fire. Panicking he screamed and called the firefighters to save his wife and daughter. They tried their best and in about 10 minutes the fire was put off. There was sad news for him. Neither his wife nor his daughter was alive. They were pronounced dead. They were said to have burnt inside their bedroom and had died miserably.
He screamed in pain and cried at his loss but there was no one to pamper him. He felt like he heard his daughter calling his name, but Alas ! he was just going crazy. The house was sealed down and he had to move away. That incident caused a traumatic turnover in his life. His pain and grief were unbearable. So, he ran away from that place, to a place where nobody knew him.
Life was getting difficult for him. It was already past 2 years after the incident but he still felt it like yesterday. That incident created a huge impact on his mind and he blamed himself for everything that had happened. He had started smoking heavily afterward and was always lost in nicotine’s world. He thought smoking would take him closer to her dead daughter’s soul and he used to smoke, again and again, all day long.
And one evening, like always, he took a cigarette from his torn black leather coat and lit it up. And that was when he heard the sound of that soft music being played and witnessed her daughter as an angel. It was the same dark night, his feet were getting colder and stiffer. He could feel that coolness rising towards his heart. He didn’t want to let go of her daughter or anything, so he held her as tightly as possible.
He then noticed a lighter and a burnt cigarette lying on the ground. That cigarette hit his mind. He remembered that he had left a cigarette and a lighter near the gas stove the day he went fishing. He also recalled that he had turned the stove on to make tea and went fishing forgetting to turn it off.
He realized it was because of his smoking habit that there was a fire in his house. This reality broke his heart into pieces. He felt cursed to know the reason for his daughter’s and wife’s death.
Anxiously, he threw the cigarette he was smoking that night. He promised not to smoke again in life. But it was too late to give up his smoking habit.
His daughter, who was shining brighter than before, looked at his face and leaning towards his ears softly whispered, “Dad, I am here to take you with me. Mom is waiting for us upstairs.”
That night, he died of a heart attack along with a burning cigarette still on his hand.
-Story
#NoTobaccoDay #SmokingIsInjuriousToHealth
*This story was completed by different writers in a ‘COMPLETE STORY CHALLENGE’ where one person wrote one sentence of the story and the next sentence of a story by another writer and so on.
Contributing Writers: Ashoo Agarwal, Unique Shrestha, Susan Chaudhary, Reuben Hughes, Nishu Shrestha, Sayal Chaudhary, Sujata Sah, Suntoss Paudel, Prasna Bimali, Bebika Bhandari, Shravan Luitel, Shravan Luitel, MùsKãn Pandey, Arnab Chaudhary
