The Dinner Read online

  The Dinner

  by

  Umair Ali

  HCBN 101-010-0006

  This e-book is published by

  Hiddencave

  Southampton, UK

  www.hiddencave.com

  [email protected]

  Published by Hiddencave UK 2001

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright © 2001 by Umair Ali

  Biography:

  Well my name is Umair Ali and I am 16 years old. I am doing A-Levels and want to become a Brain Surgeon. This is my first story. As English is not my first language and so I hope any lingual mistakes will be ignored in my case. My first language is Urdu. I live in Lahore Pakistan.

  The Dinner

  Today I am going to tell you about an experience that I had but first a little about myself.

  My name is Danish. I am a teenager in collage. I want to work for Microsoft as Windows operating system developer. I want to get my name on top of the Forbes magazine’s world richest people replacing Bill Gates. Well I think I am a very proud person. I believe that I am a genius and have extraordinary capabilities that others lack however I show no sign of vanity to others rather I try to pretend in front of them as if I think I am dumb or below average. This may be to prevent embarrassment in case of a failure or to prevent others from building very high expectations from me or may be I like when others say that my work is excellent. In reality I am an average person with no extraordinary capabilities. I sometime get amazed at the complexity of my nature. Something I feel that I am very proud while on other occasions I feel like I am in inferiority complex. I pay a lot of attention towards my mistakes. Even before a big occasion or an event I often ponder over what mistakes I can make and what embarrassing situations can arise on that event and often try to prevent them. I am also a very selfish person. I don’t care about anyone except myself. I have often tried to change this part of my personality but have failed. Its like build inside me. I am not even sincere to my friends. I also, like many other people try to show things that I don’t posses as inferior to comfort myself. I am a very pessimistic person and always emphasize on the bad aspects of things rather then looking at their good qualities or attributes. This makes me a person who should never be asked for comments and advice as I often dishearten and discourage people. I often consider my things to be superior but I never show others what I really think of my work rather I show them that I think my work is menial and then enjoy the appreciation which I later receive however when someone criticizes my work I really feel like killing him. I also find it difficult to accept my mistakes although I do appreciate that if one does not accepts and corrects his mistakes he can never succeed. I am a very double minded person and find it very difficult to make decisions in which I have many options. I am also a very ambitious and stubborn person but get influenced very easily, of course I don’t admit that. I think I like solitude but sometimes I feel that I am saying this to myself to comfort my mind. In truth I like to have many friends but I have failed at making many however I do get very nervous and uncomfortable in crowds. This may be due to my lack of interaction with people as I have spent most of my life in isolation. Well I can go on and on describing myself but I think its hard to put in words my intricate nature which I myself have been unable to understand completely. Now I will tell you an experience that I had.

  I was very nervous! I had never been so nervous in my whole life. The reason was simple I was going on a blind date. I had never seen her but had chatted with her many times on the Internet. It had been a month since I knew her. Her name was Amna. Every day at nine I chatted with her. We had become very good friends. She was my age. I realized that we had many things in common except that she wanted to become a doctor. She is a very narrow minded person. Often her conservative thinking annoyed me but I am myself a very narrow minded and conservative person and may be this is the reason why we have come along so well. We would chat for hours exchanging our ideas, talking about our daily activities and the events that occurred in our lives. We would also give each other suggestions and help each other in making any decisions. She would tell me about her experiences and what she learnt from them and I told her about mine. This made us benefit from each other. We often learnt about things from each other which one of us had never experienced. I was very curious to see her but we were unable to meet because she lived in Islamabad. A few days back she told me that she was coming to Lahore and I immediately asked her to have dinner with me. At first she said no but then agreed when I persistently insisted.

  After getting dressed in my best clothes I opened my moneybox. I quickly counted the money in the moneybox and got relieved as I had two thousand rupees. I had just got my pocket money and hadn’t spent it because I was saving it so that I can buy a digital video camera. It was six and I had to reach her house at seven. I drove quickly so that I don’t get late. I was very nervous. Millions of thoughts were going in my mind. I had heard of a lot of stories in which people fell in love with someone they met on the Net but when they met the other people he or she was either the age of their parents or of the same sex or a close relative. This is one of the biggest disadvantage and advantage of the Internet. It provides you with the capability to lie very easily. Often old men and women chat with teenagers pretending that they themselves are teenagers What am I going to do if she lied to me about her age? If she is the age of my mother or my aunt? Or if she is a he i.e. a male disguised as a female? I literally felt sick when these thoughts came into my mind. Other questions on which I pondered on during my journey included, would she like me? is she beautiful? Etc.

  She lived in Johar town. It is situated in the outskirts of Lahore. It is totally isolated from the main city. It took me half an hour to reach there. The town was deserted. There were no streetlights and the roads were in a very bad condition. I had the bumpiest ride of my life there. It was 7 but it appeared as if it was 12 as it was completely dark. There were very few houses. There were no lights in those houses as if people living in them had gone to sleep. At last I reached the lane in which she lived but I couldn’t see any houses there. This was partially because of the fog but the major cause was that there were truly very few houses there. What was the most prominent thing there was the big cemetery that spread across acres in that region. Although there were very few houses in that lane but the housing arrangement was so confusing that I couldn’t find her house. I was feeling a little afraid but I didn’t lost hope and continued to search for her house. There was not a single person who I could ask for help. Forget about humans I couldn’t see any living organism in that area but I could hear the calls of the coyotes AOOOOO! The whole area had the look of places you can only see in horror movies. Except for mine there were no cars neither moving nor parked. I couldn’t see anyone on a bicycle or on a motorcycle. Then suddenly through the thick mist appeared the sight for which I had been wandering in this deserted area. After searching for ten minutes I at last found it.

  It was a big bungalow that looked quite old. In front of the house was a big graveyard that looked quite spooky. It could easily scare the hell out of anyone. I couldn’t understand how anyone can live next to a graveyard. There were no houses in the vicinity of that palace, as I would call it. The house had a Mughal touch to it. At first glimpse it looked deserted and transpired that no one had been living there for years. It revealed the appearance of a haunted house. It was strange but they had a large painting mounted on one of the wall of their garage. On it were drawn fruits and delicious food that made me hungry. My salivary glands got hyperactive. I quickly got out of my car, combed my hair and moved toward the house when sudden something came under my feet. I looked down and what I saw amazed me. It was a carcass! Not of a human but of a dog that had been brutally killed b
y someone with a stick. It was strange who could have committed such a terrible act. Whoever has done this must be a psycho. I moved forward and began to search for the doorbell. I was so nervous that I could not even find the button. At last I found it. I pressed the button and got a mild electric shock. After I recovered from it I began to wait anxiously to see her. There was complete silence and no one opened the door. I decided to ring the bell again but was afraid that I may get electrocuted again and may be this time it will be more severe, so I decided to wait a little more. I was waiting but the door never opened and so I decided to ring the bell again.

  As I was just about to press the button when suddenly the silence was broken by the noise of an opening door. The rusted door made a shriek sound that was quite uncomfortable and represented that the door had not been oiled or even opened for years. An old lady in her late 90’s was standing on the door with a stick in her hand. She had a big smile on her wrinkled face. She had symptoms typical to people suffering from arthritis. A completely black cat with yellow eyes that looked quite ferocious to me was standing next to her. She said, "Who are you looking for?" in a high-pitched sound. Her shrill voice echoed although there were no reflecting surfaces and resonated the atoms of the glass of my watch and so it broke. It reverberated for a very long time. Her voice simply disobeyed the laws of physics. Before I could reply the cat meowed As if it was asking me the same question who are you looking for but in its own language. Is this Amna? have my worst fears become a reality? No it can’t be her I thought. I replied, "Amna". My voice appeared very grave in front of her high-pitched voice. She said, "Ok I will call her" and shouted at the top of her lungs Amna as if saying Amma. Thank God she is not Amna I said to myself. Then she asked me to come inside. I said no I am alright here but she insisted that its very cold outside and that Amna will take sometime to come. I had to agree and entered that creepy mansion. Its strange but it was very dark inside. They had no lights except for the lighted candles. I was thinking how can anyone in the twenty first century use candles for light which were used in the past for this purpose. I noticed that her stick was either painted red or it was had the blood of that dog I saw on the road but the dim light never allowed me to find out exactly and moreover why would an old lady kill a dog. She took me into a big room. I had only one lighted candle and so it was very dark in there. The black cat followed us. Its eyes glowed in the darkness and looked analogous to the headlights of cars. The room had a big cupboard in which were placed books. As it was very dark consequently I was unable to observe the room properly but it was definitely not furnished as any sound produced echoed and reverberated. Echoes do not occur in furnished rooms however there was a sofa and a rocking chair. The old women asked me to sit on the sofa. As I sat on the sofa a huge cloud of dust emerged from it representing that it hadn’t been cleaned to years. The old lady sat on the rocking chair and started reading a book titled Dracula by Bram stoker. I noticed that she had a wicked smile on her face when she paused reading and this happened quite frequently. I couldn’t hear any sounds from the house which showed that there was no one in the house but that was impossible. I was surprised at what was taking Amna so long as she knew that I was to take her to dinner. I was feeling very terrified and uncomfortable in that room and so I asked the old lady and came out of the house. The cat followed me like a body guard. I could see the flashes of lightening on the cloudy sky which were accompanied by thunder. A mild wind was blowing which made strange sounds HOOO! As it passed through the branches of trees. The sound appeared like a wicked laughs. Then I felt like the door moved. I thought it must be Amna. My heart started beating faster. Adrenaline rushed through my veins I felt like I was going to faint but to my sad surprise it was the cat that went back into the house after escorting me outside.

  Then there was again a deep silence I had been waiting for quite some time but she didn’t appeared. As I was waiting for her I noticed a huge shadow that may have been caste by someone who was blocking the headlights of my car but I saw no one out there before. The shadow was moving towards me. I was feeling afraid. I didn’t had the courage to look back and see who it was. The shadow grew larger and larger and then someone placed his hand on my shoulder. I was terribly frightened and the loud noise of the opening door made me even more frightened. I quickly turned back and saw a tall man with a frightening face. His face was covered with chicken pox. " Who are you?" I asked, "I am the watchman of this house" he replied " in a very gruff voice "oh I see!" I then turned toward the door an ugly young girl stepped out of the door. She was suffering from obesity and was wearing tight jeans. The jeans look as if it will burst open any second as she must have forcibly put it on. Her face had a lot of pimples. It was strange but her face was actually not symmetrical. She was eating a big hamburger. I was heart broken. "Is this the girl I am taking for dinner?" I said to myself. "This can’t be Amna! "But then to my surprise a beautiful young girl stepped out following the ugly one. She was gorgeous, well dressed and looked quite modest. I was mesmerized to see her beauty. I was extremely confused which one was Amna. I had decided that if the ugly one was Amna I would go back the way I came from. The two girls came toward me and looked at me from top to bottom then the gorgeous one said "hi Danish I am Gul Amna’s friend" and continued pointing toward the ugly young girl "she is Amna". I was heart broken. I couldn’t speak as if someone had taken my voice box out of my neck. My emotions were blocked inside me. I couldn’t think of anything. I was frozen. I was just about to run towards my car as I had planned when suddenly the old lady cried from inside the house Gul and the ugly one turned and shouted coming mother. I immediately realized what was happening. The ugly one said sorry Danish we were just joking I am Gul and she is Amna. Her voice was very strange as if she had some kind of vocal problem. I was relieved, suddenly my emotions began to floods onto my face I replied, "Hi Amna and Gul, How are you two doing?" They both replied simultaneously "fine". Then there was pin drop silence and so to break the ice I said, "Amna if you are ready we better be going now" and she agreed. Amna’s voice was as sweet as a cuckoo. She might have inherited it from that old lady.

  I opened the door of the car and she stepped into the car. Then I closed the door and she said "thank you". I then quickly went into the car. Gul was staring at us without uttering a word and then Amna began to wave at Gul and I did the same. As the car passed by Gul she said have a good time. I noticed that she had the same wicked smile on her face as the old lady had. As I moved the car that black cat cut across our path. It is a superstition that if a black cat comes across your path something terrible is bound to happen. As I was very superstitious I began to get afraid. My feeling that something terrible is going to happen came true when the car suddenly stopped. Something was wrong with it. I quickly went out of the car opened the bonnet and tried to identify the problem. The engine had overheated. The radiator had no water. I cursed the driver and then looked around me. I could not see anything except for the graveyard that surrounded me. I began to think where could I get water. I asked her and she told me that there will be a tap in the cemetery. I was very afraid to go in the graveyard but I had to as I had no other option and so I went in the graveyard. It was spooky in there. I could hear the termites and other insects moving. Many graves were in very bad conditions. Some even had cracks exposing their inner contents. I felt like any moment the graves will open and the residents of this graveyard will gather around me like moth scattered around light to take me with them into their world. I was trying to search for the tap but I couldn’t find it. I had left no stone unturned but no success. As I was about to lose hope when suddenly I saw a tap. It was behind a large tree. The tree appeared to be very old. I predicted this from its size. It must have grown this tall by extracting the nutrients that the decaying dead bodies have added to the soil increasing its fertility. I quickly went toward the tap and started filling the bottle with water. I was wondering how was she aware that there is a tap in this cemetery, as women usually d
on’t go in cemeteries. The water was as cold as ice. As I was filling the bottle I heard a noise. I looked back but there was nothing there. I comforted my self by thinking that it might have been caused by some animal. After I finished filling the bottle with water I turned back and was terrified to see what was in front of me. I felt like someone had taken life out of my body. No it was not a ghost! It was a tall dark man. He looked just like a ghost. His hairs were very long as if he hadn’t seen a barber for years. It appeared from his looks that he hadn’t taken bath for decades. "Who are you?" I enquired. "I am the caretaker of this cemetery" he replied. "What do you want?" he asked and I said "some water, I have got it" and then I quickly left.

  After filling the radiator with water the car started. I quickly drove the car out of that deserted place. For a few minutes we both were quite and then I asked her whether she liked Lahore. She replied, "Yes it’s nice but not as good as Islamabad". We always had an argument about this topic but I didn’t wanted to ruin our evening and so I kept quite. I noticed that she was wearing a diamond ring. The diamond sparked from the headlights of other cars and made driving for me more difficult. Her perfume appeared like pheromones. It was the first time I was going on a date and so I was very nervous. I found it difficult to utter a word in front of her. On the net there is no eye to eye contact and so having a conversation is no problem but chatting face to face with a girl that’s a different story. I built up my confidence and asked her politely what she would like to have for dinner Chinese, Continental or Thai? She replied, "Chinese". I told her that there are many Chinese restaurants in Lahore, which one she would like to try and she replied, "I think pearl continental". My heart sank. I knew I could not afford PC but I couldn’t very well tell her that so I tried to convince her by saying that Chinese food offered at PC is not very delicious but she replied promptly "no its not the food that I am going there for I have heard that it is very beautiful and so I want to see it and furthermore I don’t have dinner I am having this for you". I replied, "if this is the reason I can show you the hotel and then we can go somewhere else to have the dinner". She responded "what?" and I said, "just joking". However I got a little relieved that she wont eat too much. I knew she was stubborn but still tried other tactics to persuade her that PC won’t be a good option but she was persistent. At last I gave up.