The silence was punctuated by a series of unearthly sounds.
Aaaa eeeee ooooo aaa eee oooo aaa eee oooo
I dropped the bowl of ice cream in fright and dashed out of my room to investigate.
It was nearly midnight and everyone should have been asleep. I stress on the word should since the pandemic (and Netflix) has messed up our sleep cycles. I stood in the corridor of our flat trying to ascertain where the odd sounds were coming from. The door to the teen’s room was ajar. What on earth was she up to?
My first thought was that she was holding a séance. That would explain the peculiar noises. When we were teenagers, we’d often play around with home-made Ouija boards (more about that later) so I wouldn’t have been surprised if she was doing something similar. I took a deep breath and peeped in cautiously.
The room was dark with fairy lights twinkling like stars near the window.
She was in front of her laptop, making weird sounds.
Aaaa eeeee ooooo aaa eee oooo aaa eee oooo
“What in god’s name are you up to?” I yelled at her. “Have you seen the bloody time?”
She grinned sheepishly and gestured for me to pipe down as she was on a call with a friend. Turns out the two girls were doing an online quiz and one of the clues involved figuring out what a mountain goat does. Hence the Alpine yodelling in the middle of the night!
The pandemic has messed with our brains, some of us more than the others. Now I’m not sure whether I'm shocked or relieved that she wasn’t invoking spirits from the other world. The house is cramped enough as is. Not sure we have space to accommodate more souls. Hopefully, now that things are coming back to normal, she can go outside and be a regular (masked) teenager again. I will tell her to refrain from bleating when she’s outside though. Not sure the goats of Gurugram will take kindly to cultural appropriation.
