top of page

The Declined Graph

Ron’s hand pressed against the rough texture of the "exterior" wall of the building. He got the feeling that perhaps he was the first person in at least five years to touch that part of his office. It was how you feel when, while you are trekking on a not-so-frequent mountain with a group, you wander away from the maintained path and step into the secluded part of the forest. You feel as if you’re the first person who might’ve stepped on that patch of land. it was something like that, but it din't feel pleasant. Infact, the rough concrete was extremely unpleasant. “I hope Mike’s happy, where ever he is.” He muttered under his breath, the words which were soon lost in the wind at that altitude. Winds coming through his window were pretty mighty at times, but he never opened his window to them, till now. Mike was his trekking partner of several expedition that they had undertaken since he was nineteen, Shelly was Mike's sister who had received many gifts from Ron, especially during Valentine’s Day. “And I hope Shelly’s happy with whoever she is,” Roan's second sentence took a second lesser than the first to be swallowed by the wind. Inside his office, his phone rang the twenty-fifth ring, but someone answered it this time. This surprised Ron. He peeked a glance inside and saw a few people looking at him.

Each of them was a phoney bastard.

Each of them was enjoying the show. Under their concerned faces, he saw through their masks. He saw them laughing at him. “No fooling me today, ha,” He said aloud. Ron was in the limelight, and the sun right above his head was beating down on his shoulders. He imagined himself up on a stage and large numbers of people were staring up at him. He imagined popcorn in hands of a few down below. But they looked so small, that he almost felt like god. A god that could fly: he wanted to try that out. This morning when he was sipping his orange juice, he had never imagined that he might be seeing this splendid scene. Like every morning, as a routine, his wife had left early for office, and his daughter, Rima, for the college. Niki, was Rima’s best friend. He saw Niki (or someone like her, he couldn't tell) in the crowd, and he saw the bucket of popcorn in her hand too. Standing beside her was a girl with a very, very familiar face. The girl whom he had brought up from her childhood. But it was too late for him to think of anything at that moment. He had thought over it for three hours before that moment in the afternoon. He had thought about his wife and their daughter, but his gaze had automatically shifting to a piece of paper, which had a graph on it. A declining graph titled Company Sales. The paper flashed again in front of his eyes, and that was when the ledge that he was standing on, on the seventh floor, started becoming shorter.

And shorter.


bottom of page