Version 1 – The Ritual
A fine-tipped Black Permanent Marker, a tube of clear Super Glue, Alkaline Solution, and a box of Paraffin Tealights. This was Rebecca’s punishment for breaking the first rule: never, ever order supplies online. She stared at the worthless contents. How am I supposed to bind a nefarious spirit without the cow dung, jute twine, and charcoal briquettes? She had broken all three rules: never work during Mercury retrograde, never promise results, and never trust a faceless app.
Across the table, Mrs. Irani was rocking back and forth, her eyes—no longer her own—locked onto the Ouija board. Rebecca had set the wheels in motion. The spirit was stronger than she had calculated, and she was barely halfway through the séance.
Rebecca’s fingers had just brushed the cardboard box when—
CRASH.
The lone table lamp exploded. Every inch. Each corner of the room was covered in darkness.
She grabbed her phone.
Bleep! The battery went dead.
The box screeched. Dragged itself across the room inching towards Mrs. Irani.
Rebecca gasped as the tea lights skittered out of the carton. One by one.They arranged themselves in a circle.Their flickering wicks cast a sinister amber halo. Fetid fumes permeated through the room.
“Aah!” Mrs. Irani’s scream tore through the room as she jerked out of her trance. She collapsed against the wall like a puppet with severed strings.
Splatt…The seal of the tube burst open. Gooey, transparent glue smeared all across the Ouija board.
Bile flooded Rebecca’s mouth. Acrid. Acidic. Astringent.
YOU CAN’T BIND ME!
The words clawed their way across the ivory wall, each letter seared into the paint with surgical precision — the surface blistering as if something beneath had dragged its burning fingers up from the other side.
Rebecca wiped her sweaty forehead with trembling hands. Mrs. Irani remained motionless against the wall, her eyes now fixed on Rebecca—watching, unblinking, no longer afraid.
A shadowy figure darted towards Rebecca.
Her mouth opened.
No sound came.
“It’s time.” Someone whispered in her ears.
Hot breath—putrid, like spoiled meat—grazed the nape of her neck.
“Who is it?” She screamed amidst ragged breaths.
She tried to raise her dowsing rod. It slipped away from her numb fingers. A sudden gust of wind forced open the French windows.
In the unsettling dark, a calm and cold voice echoed, I AM ON MY WAY HOME
Version 2 The Route
Aarav’s hands trembled with fury, not at his deadlines, but at the package on his workbench. He was supposed to be restoring the 18th-century Portuguese map, a masterpiece of faded ink, water-damaged edges and intact coastal annotations. Instead, he stared at: Cow dung cakes. Jute twine. Charcoal briquettes.
He grabbed his phone and jabbed the app. The app showed his order: alkaline solution, marker, glue, and tealights. While the bot responded with maddeningly cheerful bubbles, he slammed the phone down and flipped the box over. Cow dung scattered across white tile. Charcoal dust bloomed upward.
The smell wrapped around him. Ancient earth. Temple smoke. Funeral ash.
The jute twine moved. Not fell. Moved.
One end lifted, snapped tight between his desk and wall. The desk scraped forward. Another piece whipped across the room with a crack.
The temperature plummeted. His breath became foggy. Moisture on his lips froze.
The lights died.
Every bulb. Every screen. Even the window went dark.
Breathing filled his apartment.
Not only his.
Slow. Rhythmic. Everywhere and nowhere.
He grabbed his phone. Found the flashlight. The beam died inches from the screen.
More twine came alive, threading through the room. Weaving a web.
The darkness between the strands thickened. Something was forming.
Bile flooded Aarav’s mouth. Acrid. Acidic. Astringent.
The darkness split open.
Not like a door. Like flesh tearing.
Something stepped through. Angles that bent wrong. Limbs that multiplied. A face that was every face and no face. Eyes that had watched civilizations burn.
It reached for him.
Fingers that were smoke and bone and rot and solid.
Behind it, the Portuguese map burst into flames. Not random—the coastal annotations ignited first, the trade routes he’d been so careful to preserve. The words burned one by one, spelling something ancient. A summoning he’d almost completed with his own careful hands.
Aarav’s mouth opened.
No sound came.
The thing pressed one finger to his forehead.
Ice and fire and every agony he’d ever known became a single point of white-hot nothing.
The phone glowed, mirroring the text on the burning map.
Three words: I AM HOME.
***
This story, The Ritual and The Route, was a collaborative entry by my friend Priya Washikar and me for the Two-to-Tango contest conducted by Beyond The Box. The prompt challenged us to craft a fictional tale that begins with a swapped Swiggy order—two strangers receiving each other’s deliveries by mistake—told through two distinct character perspectives, one written by each of us.
(Image created on Gemini)