I had to hitch a ride home one night. This is a near-vivid, almost unexpurgated description of my experience.

"Please be at my place at 8o'clock sharp on the following date:

Date : 10/07/'06

Venue : Number 7, Wellington Palace."

The day 10th July,2006 was a usual, run-of-the-mill one except that it was exceedingly and most innocuously adventurous. I was requested to visit my friend , Arun on his birthday, by his parents via a card which had the aforementioned details. Arun's house was a mile or two away from mine, but the only road leading to it was the one that followed a labyrinthine dirt track, through a dense forest. I was a great friend of Arun and I bore the reputation of helping him out of "sticky corners". On the other hand, Arun was a highly talented boy who possessed dexterous qualities. So, I felt over the moon to hear that I would go to visit him on his birthday.

The journey through the forest was a silent, short and uneventful one, in our spacious Maruti Alto. The headlights of our car, scanning the invisible limits for the actual road, made the suburbs look even darker. The dirt patch, led into vast stretches of meadows, hills and then, finally into a locality. My father began searching for the house and after another fifty metres of search, a big, old-fashioned manor loomed into view from round the corner. I stepped on to the portico. There wasn't a doorbell, but instead a hand-rung in the shape of a serpent hanging in a U-bend from the cadaverous-depths of a gargoyle's mouth.

I suddenly felt the creeps about this house. Everything was so medieval! I felt strangely the magnificence and grandeur belittling me to the size of a starved water-shrew! Before I could do a thing, the door opened and Arun appeared before me. I was ushered in and greeted with a warm welcome. Arun introduced me to his parents, and showed me around the Entrance Hall. The walls seemed to talk, the lamps seemed to swap flashy grins while the carpets hugged the polished, mahogany floor of the Entrance Hall. He also showed me some softwares he had managed to procure, conducted several games including a quiz contest for his friends, etcetera.

At 9 o'clock, we were served a sumptuous dinner in which Arun's mother glutted us with all the delicacies! I wished Arun the best for the year ahead of him along with the greetings and set for home as the car was unavailable. The dirt road felt even more eerie with dust blowing everywhere. Every moment, I felt someone was tracking me. I felt a hundred eyesobserving me under the dark moonlit canopy of tree-leaves. Now and then, I stole a glance at the path I had already tread. Just when I felt that it was useless to walk any more, I heard the screeching of car-brakes behind me. Turning back, I faced a young man, probably a little older than a teenager in his late teens ..... He voluntarily asked me if I wanted him to take me home. I asked him who he was and he replied in an unnaturally cold, whispering voice, that my father had sent him to bring me back home. He looked quite harmless and friendly for a stranger, but, his opulent apparel enlightened the fact that he was well-off. He stopped at our house after an unusually short span of time and I asked him to come into our house. The man spoke to my father for a few minutes and then departed. As the car drove out of the portico, as the key turned in the car's ignition-panel, as the silent night air was rent with the guttural sound of the car being rejuvenated, I couldn't help but feel that he had winked at me.