Rigged Ring
‘My precious. Where are you hiding? Come to me.’
Pearls of sweat ran down George’s temple. He shivered in the chillness that gripped his spine. He wished to run but was bound to the bed by a force unknown. George sat upright on his bed.
But, the shrill wheezing voice won’t stop. It slithered around him in a whirl, smothering him. He pressed his ears hard with his palms.
Once calm, George switched on the table lamp.
A dim giggling sound startled him. He strained his ears to discern the source of the voice.
But he was jolted from his reverie, as a gush of unruly air slapped his face. He turned around to find the window wide open.
George walked up to it, to close it shut. There, at a distance stood the majestic treehouse with swirling stairs. It was his parents’ pet project a few years ago.
He closed the window panes and walked back to his bed. The giggling accelerated into loud laughs. George rushed to his father’s room and banged the door hard.
“Dad, what are you?” as he walked in he noticed the television set.
His father was reminiscing memories.
“Come, sit with me,” his father pat his shoulders.
The television rolled the days when the treehouse was built.
It was his parents’ fifteenth wedding anniversary. They had just finished the woodwork, and all three of them climbed into the treehouse. His father gave the digicam to George to shoot.
He then kneeled romantically, pulled out a ring from his pocket, and held it out
“Mary, would you marry me again.”
Mary was over the moon and accepted the ring. After a scrumptious dinner, they sat together as a happy family to watch Mary’s favourite movie.
It was one of the best memories George ever had. Because as the days passed, his mother became extremely disoriented. She lost the sense of time, people and self. Doctors suspected it to be a case of Schizophrenia. But, before anything was confirmed, she ended her life.
Today, while watching the video, George noticed a blurry frame staring at them from the treehouse window. He paused and zoomed the frame for a better look and instantly recognised the creature. Balding with scanty hair, face like a coconut, wrinkled skin like a thousand-year-old, eyes bulging from the sockets
George felt as if life was sucked out of his soul.
“This can’t be true. He is just a part of someone’s imagination.”
Now, he knew what drove his mother crazy. He rushed to the treehouse. Switched on the light and ransacked his mother’s belongings locked in a chest. He picked up the ring, and almost instantly the creature was at the door.
“Give it to me, my precious,” it glared.
George smirked. He kept the ring on the ‘Lord of the Rings’ tape and smashed them with a hammer till they broke into pieces.
“Noooo...What have you done?” it cried.
“Revenge is sweeter than I anticipated. Goodbye Gollum.”
Author’s note: Kindly check the following link for more details on Gollum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gollum
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