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The Cookie

By Gargi Pant; Illustration by Shinod AP

The dining table was loaded with goodies - cake, pastries, pies, halwa, laddoo and yes, her favourite cookies. Nina wanted to eat them all. The 10-year-old stuffed a couple of cookies in her mouth but the cookies tasted a little different. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't gulp them down.

The dream broke at that point.

Nina woke up with a start and found herself chewing on a bed sheet. She was in her dormitory bed and it was pitch dark. A grumbling stomach reminded her of how terribly hungry she was. All because of Mr. Katiyaar, the poker-faced warden of the residential school which had been her home for the last one year.

He had found Nina talking during dinner time and had punished her by asking her to go hungry to bed. Nothing escaped the eagle-eyed warden.

And now this dream which had made her hungrier. Nina paced up and down her dormitory in desperation. She looked enviously at roommates, peacefully asleep with their stomachs full.

Suddenly Nina remembered a box of cookies sent by her mother, that was lying in her locker. She had been hiding it from her friends for an emergency. Clearly, this was an emergency.

The locker room was at the extreme end of the long corridor, and venturing out in the dark and creepy hallway was nothing short of climbing Mount Everest. Nina took her first trembling step towards the doorway and almost ran back. She remembered a boy from her class bragging about his encounter with a ghost while he was on his way to the toilet at night.

But her stomach egged her on. The same hallway in the morning never looked so eerie, thought Nina. Pale with fright, the girl scout walked on and tried not to think about the ghosts and witches that could lurking around in a corner somewhere.

At last she reached the locker room. Slowly turning the doorknob, Nina stepped into the dark room, let out a sigh of relief and walked towards her locker. So familiar was she with her locker that she could locate it with her eyes shut.

Then a sound almost made her jump with fright. "It's nothing but my imagination," she assured herself. Again something rustled and moved in the room. Someone was there in the room, and Nina trembled with fear. Probably it was that ghost who frequented the corridor. She decided to grab her box of cookies and run back to her room.

Sweating with fear, Nina gripped the locker door and yanked it open. And she got the fright of her life - someone was sitting inside her locker! Even in the dark she could make out a pair of eyes like hers. So the corridor ghost lives in my locker, Nina thought in horror.

She let out a piercing scream. And to her surprise the ghost started yelling back. Hey, ghosts are not supposed to scream but make frightening noises, she thought. Nina's mouth fell open in surprise and there was a silence in the room for a moment. The locker door swung back into its place.

Before she could think of anything, the door burst open and a swarm of students and teachers flooded the room. All the lights were switched on in a minute.