Category Archives: BTB

What’s Beneath Ian’s Bed?

Ian hates silence. Silence traps him. He always hums for a while before going to sleep. Ian has a cold. His vocal cords ache. He can’t hum. His phone? Dead. He hears something. Deep, laboured breathing. From under the bed. He looks to the side and screams.

Two eyeballs stare back at him. A muscular arm rolls around. But it is the cracked skull lying half-hidden in the shadows that terrifies him most.

Ian wakes up with a start. Sweat drips down his temples. His heart thuds loudly. Was it just a nightmare?

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Write-A-Thon Season 5 Story – Team 3 (Adults)

When the lights came back on, everyone in the room was exactly where they had been, except for one person. There were clear signs of intimidation on their faces. They exchanged petrified glances and their eyes widened, revealing that they had a premonition of this imminent event.

Ratul, Mihir, Sanjay and Mohan were alumni of a reputed university in Kalyani Township, West Bengal. Besides being college union leaders, they were also notorious raggers. In their aghast state, they recalled the heinous deed they had committed that day: how they had ragged Parimal, a first-year student, and disgraced him to such an extent that he had committed suicide. His lifeless body had been found hanging from the ceiling. Since then, an eerie sense of dread had followed them everywhere. And now, Mihir was mysteriously missing from the college union room.

What could have happened to him? Whose turn would be next?

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Write-A-Thon Season 5 Story – Team 4 (Adults)

When the lights came back on, everyone in the room was exactly where they had been, except one person.

Rahul was leaning against the window grill, peering out. His hands grasped the bars, his knuckles white. His crutches were resting against the wall. One of them slowly slid down and clattered to the floor.

Even amid the shock, Rahul’s mother rushed to his side and retrieved it for him. The grey-haired lady joined him at the window, absentmindedly handing him the crutch. She squinted into the bright sunlight and asked Rahul, “Do you know him?”

“No,” said Rahul.

The rest of the room came alive now. Seema, his sister, was the next to speak.

“But how, then…” she said.

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The Digital Revolution – A Double-Edged Sword

When we say that our world today is undergoing a digital revolution, it is probably the biggest revolution the human race has ever witnessed. Once seen primarily as tools for communication and knowledge, digital devices and the platforms associated with them are now driving a trend where people connect more through social media than with those around them.

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Price

The cell, rather than a room, reeks of the stench springing up from the surroundings beyond its confinement through the single meagre square vent serving as an open window with triple iron bars within. The pervading odour is aggravated in the aftermath of a downpour, reinforced by the relentless trickles from any of the crevices that gradually tend to burgeon into a small flood along its western perimeter, stirring the dried dirt clinging to the floor into turbid paste, as if reviving the wounds to their rampant smell that have already dried up. But all of it has no troublesome effect on me anymore, as I am just a short-term visitor here, awaiting the footsteps of my death.

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