Kritvik Bhatt

“Kids vape to look cool, huh?”

My head was tilted down as I was sitting on the desk at the corner of my room. The bed was behind my back, a little rightward, and the door to the room was on my right. My head was tilted down as I was spinning my pen slowly between my fingers. My eyes were staring aimlessly at the notebook, lost in their own thoughts. For some reason, that sentence had struck my head.

“Does that mean that… Aaryan, Rohit, and others vape only to look cool?”

I remembered the figure of Rohit as he stood in front of the mirror in his room shining brightly with LED bulbs, staring into the darkness, with his hands inside his pockets.

“He does look cool. But, he seems disturbed by something, no doubt,” I thought, my face straight.

“Man, I gotta focus on my math exam right now!”

***

Aaryan Khanna

It was nighttime. The sun had set long ago, and the roundish moon shone brightly in the sky, ya see.

That ground was empty, and it consisted of nothing but some benches on the edges. There was no grass, nor it seemed like a fucking park, and it seemed like it used to be a park, perhaps, until some asshole did some shit and turned it that way.

On the bench sat two guys. First one was Akshay, the black guy with a tight narrow pair of black jeans and white shirt, and Amit, with a loose pair of pants and plain red shirt.

Both Amit and Akshay had eerie smiles on their faces, their eyes hidden in the darkness.

“Ya caught one of the big fishes this time, huh?” Akshay said.

“Eh? It was so easy to catch one of the big fishes?” Amit asked.

“Yer efforts ain’t going in vain, fucker.”

***

Aaryan Khanna

My father, my mother, and I were sitting on the sofa. We all had our eyes on the television, which showed some Indian daily soap or some shit. Our plates were in our hands as we took one bite after another. As I chewed, my head was tilted down on the plate.

“I… I just can’t believe it,” My mom said, her eyes wide open. She was on the leftmost side of the sofa.

“Stop it now! We’ve already talked about it!” My father shouted, his eyes glued to the television. He then gulped in and turned to her. “Now we’ll just talk to the principal now and ask him what we can do with a child like him! Until then, don’t talk about it!” He shouted.

My mom turned at him. “But can you believe this?! Our child…”

My father turned to the front, his eyes frowning with rage.

I kept my head tilted down.

“Our child has become an addict! Can you believe it?! That’s how we raised him!”

I kept my head down as I chewed my food.

My mom then turned to me. “Can you believe it?! It’s a shame on us! He’s drowned the name of our family!”

“Don’t speak about it now!”

“Why shouldn’t I?!”

“My life… was slowly turning into a living hell. The shit that I was caught in… That shit just kept on getting worse and worse and worse. I just hope that I could go back in time and… and beat the shit up of that asshole.”

***

“And ya know the best part, eh? Aaryan might just never even get to know about us!”

“Yeah, fucker!” Akshay replied.

***

“Tomorrow is gonna be another harsh day…”

“Fuck this all!”