Can Dreams be inkling of Future: Short Story

‘No, no, this cannot happen’, shouted Mili and then dropped her rare pillow on the ground and the fall of a water bottle from the side table made her awake.

“Mili, get ready fast and come for breakfast”, said her mother in a tone that was enough to charge Mili to start her day with a sprang. 

Mili started to gather her books, assignments, project material and stuffed it in her bag that seemed to be gathering many substances from decades though it was only a few months old. 

Mili took one final look in the mirror for setting her frizzy hair that starts uprooting after a single stroke of comb or a smooth breeze. 

"Why can’t they settle soon, this hair stuff makes me go crazy, I wonder how girls manage to wear good hairstyles, it would take another few years for me to master it", mumbled Mili to herself.

“How is your project work going Mili”, Mili’s father laid the table for breakfast and looked for his glasses to glance through the headlines in the newspaper. 

“It is going well, today is the submission date”, Milli answered while stuffing her lunch box inside her bag where space was already crunched. Somehow, she managed to make way for it and closed the zip with a sigh. 

Eating her favorite breakfast, Poha (rice flakes) which she was munching at a higher speed than usual, quickly looked at her watch to realize she had only 4 mins left to catch her school bus.

Mili quickly gulped the rest of her breakfast in a bite and waved bye to her parents, her mouth was full to even utter a word.  

“Tie your shoelaces, don’t leave it hanging”, were the last words Mili heard while shutting the door thinking her mother didn't leave her habit to correct her even when she is in her teens.

Walking past the main gate of her society she saw a weird man with a long coat with his hair covering his forehead and coughing while uttering a few words. Mili crossed the path and rushed towards the bus.

Reaching school, she was dejected as her assignment was incomplete besides Aarti was awarded the best project in the class. “No, no, it can’t happen”, Mili shouted.

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Mili’s s rare pillow slid below the bed and the water bottle rested on the side table had fallen by her right-hand jerk. Mili got up with eyes wide open, ‘it was a nightmare'. 

She was relieved and picked the water bottle and sipped water to make herself comfortable and decided to know what her dreams meant by reading the book ‘Dreams Decoded’ by Ujjwal Mishra as she was seeing a dream in a dream, now this loop has to be solved. She committed to read the entire book again to understand her dreams better.

“Mili, get ready fast and come for breakfast”, said her mother, and Mili was surprised to hear exact words in the same tone, then she thought this is the sentence her mother says each day.

Mili hurried with all the packing of her school bag, carefully placed all the papers in her Renowned Bloggers of the era folder, she knew this project would fetch her great grades in her class XI-A section if she was able to find all the details of travel blogger R. Kumar and about his mysterious last journey. 

Nobody knows how he disappeared from the Ananthagiri Hills, Telangana. He was vlogging and all his followers were awaiting the updates from him the next day but nothing came up and neither any message from R.Kumar after that.  

“Hurry up Mili, else you will be late”, mother's tone was higher this time. Mili quickly grabbed her school tie and coat and rushed towards the dining table, where her father asked ‘How is your project going?” Mili was surprised to see Poha as breakfast and her father asking the same question as in a dream. 

What is happening, why everything seems so different yet the same, she shut her inquisitive mind and replied to her father stating that ‘Project is going fine’ and filled a spoonful of Poha to relish.

Soon after finishing her breakfast and waving goodbye to her parents, she was closing the door when her mother shouted “don’t forget to tie shoelaces”. Mili was again feeling fidgety as the sequence of her dream was repeating dialogue by dialogue. Later she calmed herself saying these are normal and day-to-day lines of her parents and prayed she wouldn't face any weird-looking man near the main gate. 

To her horror, a man with a long coat, fluorescent sneakers, and unbrushed hair was standing there, she tried to cross the path but had to be on the same side as cars entered the society at the same time. Avoiding away from the weird man she started to fumble and dropped her folder, quickly she collected and heard the man saying, “you forgot these papers”. 

 Mili grabbed the papers even without looking at him neither she uttered Thank you as she was so scared for her dream to come true.

Reaching school, she straight away went to her desk, started arranging the folder once again as she didn’t want any goof-up in her file, and was stunned to see two extra sheets that had information about R.Kumar, his journey, and visit details of Ananthagiri Hills. 

Mili’s eyes widened to double the size when she saw a picture of the R.Kumar, he looked the same as the weird man at the main gate. Is he alive? How it can be, he was last seen at the Ananthagiri Hills and research papers say he was dead after the fall from one of the hills. 

Can he come back to just hand me the papers? But how can it be, was he R.Kumar or I am imagining too much? But I did not find this information in my research then how these papers were in the folder? Mili was confused and again talking to self.

These questions were boggling Mili’s mind, she settled when the English subject teacher entered and wrote a chapter name ‘Time Traveller’.  

"Yes, I am sure he was a time traveller besides, I don’t want to believe that souls travel the afterlife", Mili said little louder this time with forced smile.

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With this post we end the #BlogchatterHalfMarathon challenge, where we were supposed to write 10 posts in 15 days. You can read our previous posts about Book Reviews, Education, Poetry .

@MeenalSonal