Selfie
Cafe D’Costa has been my favourite place in the town and I’ve been coming here since the day it was inaugurated. There are speculations about the place being haunted but I don’t see it that way. Ghosts are people too, just from a parallel world. In fact I’ve even encountered a few of them, all friendly beings. On weekends you’d find me at the cafe, sitting in a corner reading a book. Something worth telling happened yesterday. A woman was sitting on the table opposite to mine. She was there on a blind date but it turned out that the guy didn’t show up. Normally people don’t notice me but she did and asked me if she could sit at my table. We started talking and it turned out that she was from the same place where I grew up. She was new in town and didn’t know many people here. Some friend from her work had set her up for the date. After spending almost 2 hours at the cafe, she asked me to come up to her place. Very casual thing to do. But since I hadn’t had a thing like this in a long time, I agreed.
We went over to her place in her car. It was a nice little cosy apartment, perfect for someone who lives alone. Things happened pretty quickly then. We made love, some real good love. I’m not the type of a person who’d go into details but it was the best sex I’ve ever had. We smoked cigarettes after sex while listening to Cigarettes After Sex. She then asked me if we could have a seflie together. I’m not really comfortable in getting clicked. I get very paranoid because of my past experiences and so I refused. My past experiences have also taught me that when you’re hanging out with someone, it’s almost impossible to tell if they’re humans or ghosts. Anyways, even though I told her not to, she tried to click a selfie. As soon as she opened the camera, she fainted. I checked her pulse, she was dead. Some ghosts can’t be seen with naked eyes but can be seen in pictures. For the rest of the ghosts, it’s vice versa. I belong to the latter ones.
-Purvang Joshi
This story is a part of the series of a short stories that revolve around Cafe D’Costa. Here is story #1: Table for Two and here is story #2: The News.