A day in my life I will never forget  

By Anshika Gandhi 

It had been a long and grueling day with boring sessions and extra classes. I just wanted to hit the sack. But then, my distant cousins came home. Though I liked them, I did not have the energy to entertain them. So, I excused myself and took a quick shower. Next, I decided to have a light dinner, went to bed and tried to sleep. Although I was very tired, I couldn’t sleep. So, I started reading a book. I don’t know when I dozed off. Suddenly, I was woken up by a ghostly shriek.

I tried to be brave but couldn’t ignore the fact that the sound had come from the attic above my room. I was still trying to decipher what I would do if I come face-to-face with the apparition – a shadow advancing towards me. I just did not know where to go. I wanted to run, to fight, to cry, to shout… all at once. But I couldn’t do anything. This helplessness made me feel choked and I lost consciousness.

When I woke up in the morning and looked at my face in the mirror, I did not recognise the face looking back at me. ‘This is not me…’ I cried aloud. The face staring at me was calm and cool, with a scar above its left eye. I tried moving my fingers on the surface of the mirror. It felt different. I touched my face. It appeared strange and was like touching someone else’s face. I felt scared and anxious.

What had happened to my face? What had happened in the night? I tried to recall the last evening’s events and could hardly remember anything. I opened the door of my room where another shock awaited me. I noticed some people in my house who seemed to be like my parents, grandparents, and distant cousins. But everybody had the same face – the face that I had.

At that moment, when I saw everyone with the same face as me, I wanted to cry because I couldn’t remember anything that happened last night. I tried hard to remember what I had been doing the previous night.

Yes, I remembered! After I heard the loud shriek from the attic around midnight, I gathered my strength and went to the attic to see where that sound came from. Instead of finding a ghost, I found a book on the ground. That book looked pretty mysterious, brown in colour and with dust all over it.

I became very curious to know what was in it. So, I carried that book with me from the attic and came into my room. I scrubbed the book and saw its name, “The Alien Visited My Home.” It looked like an old book that had been kept in the attic for a long time.

There were some magical words in the book which I had chanted loudly . Then I quickly looked for the book, opened it, and tried hard to find those magical words. I also found the words which undid the effect of the words I had spoken the previous night. I muttered the words, and with a loud whoosh sound, I was shaken up and fell unconscious on the floor. When I opened my eyes, I was lying on my bed. I quickly got up and ran towards the mirror. It was my original face.

It seems I did shout and got the whole family there. Thankfully, I did not have to explain. Everyone was laughing. They had decided to have some fun at my expense last night by pulling such a big prank on me. The sound of the book falling, the book itself, all were part of a prank planned by my cousins. After hearing everything about it, I was really upset. How could they do this to me? What if something happened to me? But after giving all this a thought, I forgave my cousins and vowed to be braver in the future, never to fall for these pranks ever again.