This is meant for you

Jayant, a young graduate fresh out of college, was no stranger to challenges. For months, he scoured job sites, visited recruitment fairs, and sent countless resumes but to no avail.

Rejections came in heaps, each one piercing a larger hole at his optimism. The uncertainty was suffocating, but he kept telling himself that something good would come along eventually.

It had to.

One Sunday morning, Jayant's mother handed him a list of provisions to be bought. He stepped and as he was scanning the list of things the had to buy, there was a flyer pinned to the lamppost outside his apartment building that was fluttering feriociously. Jayant barely glanced at it, but four words caught his eye as he walked past: This is meant for you. It was in bold, scribbled letters that almost seemed to pulsate against the white background.

He turned back, curious, but the flyer was already gone, carried away by a gust of wind. He shrugged it off and continued on his way to complete his errand.

A few days later, Jayant sat in a crowded tea stall having a cup of tea, scrolling through job listings on his phone. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a crumpled piece of paper on the floor beneath his table. He reached down to toss it in the trash, but when he smoothed it out, those same words stared back at him in smudged, coffee-stained ink: This is meant for you.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He glanced around, but the tea stall was just as busy as ever—no one seemed to notice him, and no one looked particularly suspicious. He tried to dismiss it as some odd coincidence, but the thought of those words stayed with him long after he left.

As days turned into weeks, the phrase began to appear more frequently. A whisper in the wind carried the same eerie message, just barely audible. A billboard on a deserted road had the words spray-painted in a hurried scrawl. An email with the subject line This is meant for you popped up in his inbox, and vanished before he could open it. It was as if some unseen force had decided to toy with him, dropping cryptic clues that refused to leave him alone.

The encounters gnawed at Jayant’s mind, mingling with the stress of his job hunt. He started having vivid dreams—no, nightmares—where he found himself standing in front of a pitch-black door, beyond which he sensed a presence waiting. Yet, every time he reached for the handle, he would jolt awake, drenched in sweat.

Few weeks later, Jayant received a call for an interview. He reached the venue and gave the interview. He felt he had done a decent job and he nourished a glimmer of hope that things must be turning a new leaf

As he trudged back home, the sun beat down mercilessly, he decided to stop by at a shopping centre and grab a bite while enjoying the air-conditioned air there. And amidst the usual bustle of retail stores and food outlets, he spotted it—a door on the second floor, painted a shade of crimson that made it stand out against the whitewashed walls.

The words were there again, painted in black letters across the door's surface: This is meant for you. The message was unmistakable, staring at him like a challenge.

Jayant’s mouth went dry as he stood frozen. He should have been terrified, but instead, he felt an odd pull, like he had reached the end of a maze that he never even realized he was navigating. His rational mind screamed at him to turn away, to go home, to forget about this unsettling game. But his feet moved on their own, carrying him closer to that door.

When he reached it, he hesitated, his hand hovering over the handle. There were no signs indicating what lay beyond—no business name, no "employees only" notice. Just a plain door with the unnerving message that had over the past few months, burnt itself into his mind. He glanced over his shoulder; the shopping center continued its noisy life, oblivious to him and this strange door.

He took a deep breath, turned the handle, and stepped inside.

The door clicked shut behind him, and with it, the noise from the shopping center outside vanished as if someone had flicked off a switch. Jayant found himself standing in a dimly lit office. Dust motes floated through narrow beams of light coming from a half-shuttered window. The space seemed oddly old-fashioned, with antique furniture that didn’t match the modern building outside. A heavy desk dominated the center of the room, covered in yellowed papers and a rotary phone that looked like it hadn't rung in decades.

Jayant felt the temperature drop sharply, the air thickening as if it were holding its breath. He took a step forward, trying to make sense of where he was. And then he noticed something else—there were no doors leading out, no visible exits. Just the one behind him, which now seemed to blend seamlessly into the wall. His pulse quickened, a growing sense of unease spreading through his chest.

Then, the phone on the desk rang—a sharp, jarring sound that sliced through the silence. Jayant jumped, his breath catching in his throat. His hands trembled as he reached for the receiver, almost as if he had no choice. When he pressed it to his ear, the line buzzed with static before a distorted voice broke through, whispering directly into his ear: This is meant for you.

The voice crackled into silence, leaving only the hum of dead air. Jayant's mind raced, panic clawing at the edges of his sanity. He set the receiver down with trembling hands, and that was when he noticed the photographs pinned to the wall behind the desk.

They were all of him.

Snapshots of him standing in front of the lamppost, reading the napkin, staring at the door—each one capturing the exact moment he had encountered those cursed words. But what made his flesh crawl were the newer photos—images of him standing inside this very room, looking at the photographs. It was as if the pictures were being taken in real-time, capturing his every move.

Jayant stumbled back, gasping for air. His heart hammered against his ribs as the walls seemed to close in, the shadows in the corners stretching unnaturally, shifting like they had a life of their own. He turned back to the door he had come through, now desperate to leave. But the handle wouldn’t budge, and his pounding on the solid wood produced no sound. It was as if the air itself had swallowed his cries.

Suddenly, the shadows in the room shifted once more, forming a figure—something vaguely human, but wrong. Its outline flickered, unstable, as if struggling to hold a shape. It lurched forward, and as it did, the static from the phone filled the air again, morphing into a distorted chorus of whispers: This is meant for you.

Jayant backed against the wall, his mind spiraling into a chaotic frenzy. He shut his eyes tight, trying to convince himself that it was all a nightmare, that he would wake up in his own bed, drenched in sweat but safe. But when he opened his eyes again, he found himself still trapped in that room, the shadows reaching out like clawed fingers.

But when he opened his eyes, his shivered and let out a loud scream.

The room had changed. The photographs on the wall now showed a series of scenes, shifting rapidly like a slideshow. In each photo, there was a figure standing beside him—someone he hadn’t seen before. A shadowy silhouette loomed just behind him, growing clearer with each passing image, its features sharpening into something almost human yet terribly wrong. Its face was obscured, but the smile—twisted and too wide—was unmistakable.

He glanced around frantically, but the room stretched on infinitely, warping and shifting as if reality itself had become unstable. He looked back to the photographs, but they had changed again. This time, they displayed scenes that hadn’t yet happened—images of him screaming, clawing at the walls, his face contorted in agony. And always, that figure lurked nearby, growing closer in each frame.

Jayant’s heart pounded as he turned back to where the door should have been, but the wall was blank, the exit erased as if it had never existed. His legs trembled beneath him, nearly buckling under the weight of terror. He felt a cold breath on the back of his neck and spun around, but no one was there. Only the shadows, stretching and twisting toward him, whispering in a language that was just beyond comprehension.

He stumbled forward, trying to make sense of his surroundings, but then, in the corner of his eye, he saw something that made his breath catch. A new photograph had appeared on the desk—one that hadn’t been there before. It showed him, frozen in mid-scream, but in the background was a reflection of the office building’s entrance, and through the glass, he could see the shopping center, bustling with life, people going about their day, oblivious to his predicament.

Except...one of the figures in the reflection wasn’t moving. It was staring directly at him, through the photograph, through the glass, right into his eyes.

Jayant staggered back, the room closing in around him, the shadows tightening like a noose. But just before the darkness consumed him completely, the air rippled, and a voice—clearer than the rest—whispered from the depths of the void: You thought you chose this, but you were chosen long before.

And then, everything went black.

When Jayant opened his eyes again, he found himself standing outside the office building, bathed in the afternoon sun. The shopping center bustled around him as if nothing had happened. He glanced down at his hands—no shadowy residue, no sign of the cold that had gripped him in the room. It was as if he had never entered.

And then he saw it....on the crimson door, a mirror in which a faint reflection stared back at him. His own face, but with that twisted, too-wide smile carved across his features, the smile of the figure that had haunted him inside.

Jayant blinked, and the smile disappeared, leaving only his pale, bewildered reflection. He stumbled backward, his mind struggling to process what had just happened. He looked back at the door—no words, no signs. Just a plain, crimson door that now seemed completely ordinary.

He turned and hurried away, wanting to cocoon himself in the safe confines of his home. He quickly exited the shopping centre and found an auto-rickshaw to take him home.

The ride back home was filled with a cocktail of emotions....fear, bewilderment, anger and helplessness amongst others.

In fifteen minutes, the auto-rickshaw reached its destination.

He ran home and rang the bell continuously, his hands shivering all the while.

His mother, who was speaking on her phone, opened the door, smiled at him, continued talking on the phone and headed towards the kitchen while saying "I will switch off the stove and be with you in a minute beta".

Jayant shut the door behind him and grabbed the glass pitcher on the dining table. He clumsily gulped down the water and put it back on the table. Most of it had spilled onto his shirt but he did not care.

As he turned to sink into the sofa and make sense of what happened to him, his hands brushed against the pitcher.

The pitcher fell to the ground and shattered. And so did the water that was left in it.

And the spilled droplets read: "This is meant for you."

__________________________________

I am Sri Ram.

I head the Marketing and Alliances function at FinAlyzer.

FinAlyzer is an emerging global leader in the Enterprise Performance Management space and we are working towards one purpose....empowering CFOs drive sustainable growth and financial resilience through Automation of their Financial Operations around Financial Close, Consolidation, MIS and Budgeting and Reporting (Statutory and Management).

In addition to working towards this purpose, I read, I write, I watch movies.

I do all of this happily.

But I am at my happiest when I walk my dog and going by the way she looks at me when we are out strolling, I am sure so is she.

________________________________________