Shanti was quietly sitting near the window. She was deeply wounded, with misery invading her life and being submerged in her mother’s thoughts. Her father entered the hallway with a woman.

“May I know who this lady is, papa?”

“She would be my new girlfriend and possibly your step mother.”

“It has just been a week that maa passed away. How dare you, you jerk!”

“Mind your language Shanti.”

“I won’t. Get this woman out of this house right now.”

The woman left the house.

Shanti stood up with wrath.

“Maa is gone now, papa! Now we’re the only people left for each other.”

“Your mother got what she deserved. She always sabotaged me. That bitch! It’s good that she died. And talking about you, you’re nothing but a failed daughter to me.”

“How can you even say that, you heartless jackass?” Said Shanti, raging with anger.

Her father now was on the verge of being violent to Shanti. He moved ahead, held her by her hair and kept on slapping her. He then pushed her on the wall unit. She hit her head on the edge of the drawer and it started bleeding. Her father kept on kicking her and she couldn’t defend herself. She reached for the drawer on right, opened it and pulled out a cutter knife. With nothing left in her hand, she made her way and stabbed her father. With one stab he was down, with the next he was lifeless. She kept on stabbing him.

She woke up next morning, wore her uniform, looked at her father’s lifeless body and went to school. She didn’t even regret iota of what she did to her father.

It was break time. Shanti got up and went to the well near the ground floor. The well was dry, abandoned for over 20 years. Shanti stood up on its edge. The last thought which ran through her mind was her mother’s final words which were “Shanti, I will always be with you! World will hurt you like hell, but you don’t hurt anyone!” It was like she was screaming and no one could hear her scream.

Tears flooding her eyes with everything feeling gloomy around her, every flower withered and every plant dead!

“Maa, I’m coming!” Said Shanti and she jumped.

One less soul on the earth! Was she free now?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Five years later

It was late in the afternoon. The girls were practicing ballet in the hall where all of a sudden, they heard the windows slashing hard. It was not the wind; it was very strange and scary. The girls panicked and approached the door, the door slammed shut in front of the girls.

“I also want to learn ballet too!”

“Who is it? Come in front of us. This is a horrible prank.”

“What’s my mistake? I also want to be happy!”

The girls kept on knocking and kicking on the door. Finally, they managed to escape their way out.

The matter was reported the next day. Shanti’s soul was not at peace, rather it had become a ghost and was haunting the school.

Following that incident, many such occurrences were reported across the school.

***

The peon was on his last round in the school. He checked whether all the doors are locked. It was eerie darkness with only a flash light showing what’s in front of him. The strangeness of the time filled the surroundings with bizarre ... s. Strange sounds filled the corridor uttering the presence of someone in the school. The crows started cawing. The peon, with all his guts looked up to the tree. It was Shanti who was sitting on the branch and petting a cawing crow. It was a dreadful sight of Shanti bleeding from her forehead, her eyes gouged with blood flowing from it, saying “What’s my mistake? I also want to be happy!”

With dread, the peon ran away from the tree only to find Shanti standing right in front of him. He ran to the opposite direction not realising that Shanti was actually guiding him towards his death. Suddenly somebody pulled him with great force and he could feel himself falling down into a hollow in the ground. He shouted hard. While falling he came face to face with Shanti. With a loud thud, the peon fell to his death.

Shanti’s fury wanted more sad souls!

The incident shook the entire school. But no one was aware of Shanti’s ghost. They all thought that it was just an accident and ignored the possibility of presence of Shanti’s ghostly existence which was going to haunt the entire school.

To avoid any further accidents of people falling into the well, it was filled and sealed with a sand pit created on top of it. Within a week, the students of the school forgot about the incident and all the girls started playing in the sand pit. Looking at their happy, smiling faces Shanti felt even more enraged. All the things she couldn’t experience, all the happiness she couldn’t embrace in her past life! The people’s glee didn’t beguile Shanti, she sufficed for more despair, more deaths, more suffering!

It was afternoon time. Students were back to their classes for lunch time. But only two children remained in the sand pit playing their guts out. Watching this, Shanti’s spirit was provoked with evil. A hand came out of the pit, grabbed one of the children by his leg. The child was struggling to run, shouting and crying for his life, but the hand pulled him inside the pit. The other child ran away. Terrified, he went to his classroom. He was horrified at what he had seen and couldn’t utter a single word out of his mouth. A sight of him looked awfully scared.

“What’s the matter buddy?”

“It was hand! It was a hand! He’s gone.”

“What was what?”

The boy fainted and the teachers were called to look after him. After sometime he gained consciousness.

“What happened son? Are you alright?”

The only words he could utter were “What’s my mistake? I also want to be happy!”

No one understood what he wanted to say. They all thought that he had gone crazy.

All these incidents continued over the year until Shanti realised that this year the annual day collided with her death anniversary. Everybody was in the mood of pomp and joy but nobody thought about her-her tragic death, her unbearable pain she went through. Shanti’s soul was sadder than being inflamed for doing evil. She still deemed for a revenge because that’s all she could do to satisfy her anger, but who was she angry at? The happy souls!

The entire school was assembled, all excited faces unaware about what was going to come their way. The host welcomed them all and announced the first program of the day – The prayer dance. The dancers assembled on their respective positions behind the curtains. The curtains opened and the backstage volunteer pressed the button on the tape recorder to play the prayer song. But instead of the song there was a loud scream accompanied by Shanti’s voice “You bloody heartless people, you people are celebrating on the day I faced a terrible death. I’m Shanti, the girl who fell in the well five years ago, but why would you people remember me? Today, you all will suffer the pain and the agony that I suffered. Why can’t I be happy like you? What’s my mistake? I also want to be happy!”

Suddenly the wind started flowing in all directions. The curtain flew and caught fire because of the lantern nearby. Within a fraction of a second the entire auditorium was on fire. When everybody turned to rush towards the exit it closed with a loud thud. They were trapper-trapped to death. Everyone inside perished in the fire.

The screams of the burning children still haunt the people in the next building.