Hi there! Welcome to  my quest to explore beauty in the overlooked and share with you the world through my lens.
This week’s picture ‘upside-down’ continues the weird and mystical adventure started last week. You can read the story so far below and be a part of the exciting adventure. And yes, don’t forget to see how this week’s shot blends in the tale!
If you would like to see the capture first, just scroll down and just a bit more down 😉

Story so far:

The protagonist is visiting her grandma’s when she ventures out to check out her kitchen garden. She is about to leave when weird things start happening, all attracting her to a mystical tree at the exit of the garden. Her hunches tell her to get out of that place when she hears her name being called out, the voice coming from the tree! She forgets her fear and is hypnotically drawn towards the tree. She touches its callous bark in a daze and goes blank. The next memory she has is of the situation when she is awakened by the voice of her grandmother, calling out , searching her. She finds herself in a puzzling situation, standing at the same spot, her hand against the bark. She out unable to fathom what could have happened in all that time she was standing there, touching the tree’s bark.. ?
You can access the full first part with all its thrills and mystery here
Now read the next part to get enlightened, just as the protagonist does…. or does she?

 

I followed grandma into the house, not sure what to tell her when she asked what was I doing out there for an hour. Would she believe what I had to say or will she take it to be a case of sun poisoning or even  lunacy?

I was not sure what would be the best thing to tell her when I was myself uncertain  of what had happened. Had I hallucinated? I was still in a daze over what had happened and that daze when mixed with fear of the unknown, was not exactly a pleasant feeling. I wanted it to go away.

‘I should probable drive back home’, I thought. ‘Maybe getting away from that place can help in forgetting the whole incident.’

So I told grandma I had to leave a bit early due to some office work and would drop by some other day, while she insisted I joined then for evening tea at least, if not dinner.

“I would have loved to, but I can’t”, I said in a sad tone. I had expected to spend a lovely day at grandma’s, but I guess it wasn’t meant to be.

My mind was caught in the web of these spoiler thoughts when I realized the adventures were not over yet..

I had got out the house, consciously keeping my head turned away from the garden. Hurriedly, I had opened the driver’s door only to see that my car was covered in cobwebs! The entrance to the driver’s seat, that whole area had a film of cobweb. I brushed that aside, disgusted, only to find the opposite window’s glass frame had a film of web too.

‘This is as horrible as it can get…’, I sighed. The only bright spot I could see in all that was that I had a very logical and probable reasoning for this. Just that morning, I had kept a big bunch of Neem leaves, complete with tender branches , in the car’s dicky and it was reasonable that this bunch housed spiders. This thing had been kept in the open for two whole days after being cut from the nearby tree by the gardener. What else could I expect from it? I nodded my head in frustration and started the engine. There was a good amount of cleaning to do once I reached home and I still couldn’t imagine how the dicky was going to be like.

The whole way back to home, I was trying to ward off the memories of that incident away, but the cobwebs here and there were only making it worse. Finally, I reached home, only to find it locked. ‘Must have left for the vegetable market’, I thought. I took out my spare key, opened the door  and ran straight to get a dusting cloth. I wanted to get rid of those cobwebs before anything else. After a through cleaning of the car and after putting those leaves at their place, I felt utterly exhausted.

My room seemed like heaven, I had not been so happy to see it in a long time.

And there I was, sprawled on it in the next moment ,if only my mind could be at peace! It was still struggling to unlock the impenetrable locks that covered the incident. There was block, a closed door which would not budge, however hard I tried. I could not recollect anything except the realisation that I went to the tree in a trance of some sort, as I would never do that in my right senses. I hated the prospect of somebody else controlling my mind and actions and shivered at the mere thought of it.My mental rant continued for some time and I did not realize when I went into a deep slumber.

I stood at the staircase, staring at the stairs. They looked different….were they upside down? There was bright light coming from the end of it. What could be up there? I crept up the stairs, curious again, my hands touching vines of a climbing plant trailing the wall as I climbed up. But this light was not the only bewitching thing about this place, which was drawing me closer to it. It was the sound of somebody, probably a woman crying which caused to go and see what was happening.

There she was, sitting on the floor, leaned against the wall, crying. She looked 16-17 of age and was clad in yellow. The ambience of the room, which was stacked with every wooden thing possible, was soothing. Was that cupboard actually upside down or I was it my imagination, I was never able to analyze because now the wailing had got a lot more louder. I rushed over to her and put a comforting hand over her shoulder. “Why are you crying dear? Are you okay?” I asked. She replied with some more incessant sobbing. I rubbed her shoulder, trying to quieten her down. “Maybe I can help if you tell me”, I said comfortingly, kneeling beside her. It was then I noticed her lower body was covered in something like black grease, or had her feet blackened? Puzzled, as I tried to look closely. “There was an aa-attack on my family..”, she said trying to control her sobs. “..they sprayed a poisonous liquid on our food and …and I accidently sat on some of it spilled on the petal…” She said drawing long breaths and sobbing in between, while I took her shaking hand in mine and listened intently. “It killed them a..all…before I could know what was happening. I just heard papa yell not to drink any of the nectar before I saw them leave me alone in this cruel world.”, She started waling again.

“I’m sorry..” That was all I could say. Her state was heart wrenching. “It will be okay…please stop crying”, I was trying my best to pacify her, but it all seemed vain, given the situation.

“I tried to end my life but it would not let me…even after what that liquid has done to my feet!” my gaze shifted to the feet she turned towards me. They looked charred, I noticed, horrified. This was the blackness I had seen before. I turned my head away only to see a strangely beautiful pair of cup and a saucer on my left. The cup was made of a flower while a green leaf served as its saucer, kept over the cup to cover it. I couldn’t help but admire them. Suddenly, my thoughts were diverted  by the noise of frantic banging…somebody was calling out my name!

I got up from my slumber, anxious. What was this noise? I rushed in its direction, half asleep only to find mom standing at the door with a bag of vegetables in her hand. I lousily opened the latch and let her in. “Why..You are back quite early. I wasn’t expecting you too be home”, she said, keeping the veggies on the kitchen counter while I filled a glass with water. “Me neither”, I was feeling rather groggy and an unusual heaviness in my head. “I need to catch on some sleep..” I said and returned to my room, without another word, as she looked at me quizzically.

As I lay there again, the dream broken in the mid came rushing back to me, its negativity seeping into my present. That was the only reason I could fathom for my sudden foul mood. Also, there was something quite wrong with it and it was now thatI could analyse it with sanity as each detail of that strange dream came rushing back to me, surprisingly, crystal clear. This had never happened before. Moreover, the dream seemed connected to my past, present and future somehow, as I went through it again. I saw myself going up that strange staircase, with a creeper along its walls. My mind raced and as I recollected each thing; there was wood all around, and a girl in yellow and the happening thereafter. ‘Wait, did she say she drank ‘nectar’?’ I wondered. ‘And Wasn’t that crockery made of flowers and leaves ?!’ I thought if I was over analysing this, after all it was just a dream. But then I remembered an ‘it’ something  had stopped it from committing suicide, after her feet were charred by a poisonous liquid. And where had she said she sat and drank nectar? A flower! The events of the morning at the kitchen garden came before my eyes and suddenly everything started making sense, a lot more than it did before. Astonished, I sat up. Like a bolt, the whole reality hit me a with a huge force.

‘I think I just connected the dots’, I rejoiced, just as I feel back on my pillow. There was a lot to be done the next day. The first one being going over to grandma’s, again.

 

The strange dream and her mystical encounter at her grandma’s seem to be connected. See her connect the fragmented pieces and complete the puzzle in the next part, to be released next sunday, June 5, 2016 – same time, same place. What is our protagonist chosen to do?

Stay tuned!