Ditto, my best friend

“Ditto, my best friend” is one of the outstanding stories of the first biannual International Short Story Contest 2018 written by Saksham Kaushik, GD Goenka World School, Sohna, India.

Ditto, my best friend

“Please! Please!” I pleaded with my parents to go for their party and leave me home alone. Making long faces I argued my case “What can go wrong when you are gone? What can happen? It is not as if I will get the house burnt down or get kidnapped by a clown or an ice-cream vendor!”

Reluctantly they agreed. I rushed them through getting ready until they stepped out of the main door into the elevator.

“Bye!” my voice rang out in the lobby as the lift doors closed upon them. I punched my fist in the air with joy behind the closed main doors.

I was now home alone! I was free! I couldn’t believe it.

But little did I know about the extraordinary thing that was going to happen to me.

My home, an apartment in urban Gurgaon was messy and crowded with stuff that I cannot play with.

A living room with three sofas with a huge television is always tempting to keep watching science fictions. Before my hands could reach out to the television remote or to the electronic tablet laying around, my father’s voice boomed in my mind. “Yeah, play on your tablet or watch television and destroy your mind a little bit more.” I almost jerked back.

Like any other old person my father discourages electronics. He himself does not have any time to play around with me. His office cruelly keeps him working till 10:30 pm. He cannot make me laugh while I am bored. On the other hand, my mother does not care for me playing on gadgets. Although she is sweet but she can give me big sour scolding when I do something wrong. And she never agrees to keep a pet. My brother, like me, likes gadgets but he too cannot play with me for he is in college chilling away. So I had everything in my life but nothing to play with.

School work was priority, I thought to myself, and I will enjoy better once it was done. Picking up my pen and books I sat down on the dining table itself to start my homework. No one to shout “Go to your room to do the homework”. No one to say “Pick your books and pens and take them to your room. Clear the dining table!”

I completed homework, then I felt hungry, as if I had moved mountains. I opened up a packet of calories containing harmful spices for my throat called Doritos. I walked from the kitchen to the sofas slowly, cautious enough not to drop the chips which were filled to the top of the bowl. I kept the chips on a small table near the sofa and hopped onto the sofa face down. I started sinking into it till it got a little hard to breathe in the soft, fat leather. Then I flipped back and turned on the television to watch some mindless sci-fi movies.

The clock struck seven. I had been watching the television for almost an hour. Suddenly the room started to glow a disgusting green as if someone had thrown up all over the place. The source of the light was coming from the little balcony off the living room. I froze. The balcony door creaked and I felt a thud on the floor. I strained my eyes to look at the bright light’s origin, a small orb with a rectangle and a moving object emerged. The shadow tip-toed to where I had been sitting and revealed itself.

What emerged was more disappointing than what I had imagined it would be. Instead of a slender man type of a figure with blood all over its body along with human skulls and appendices from its tentacles and mouth. What came over was nothing so gory.

It was just a human type figure with two, no, three legs and two arms. Its face had two cute, huge, blue eyes. Green in colour, it held out a hand with seven fingers on it towards me and made a weird noise. From what I could make out it said “B-E...M-Y...F-R-I-E-N-D?”

I temptingly shook its hand to have a friend in my lonely life. Spontaneously I said “Yup!”

With my five fingers holding its hand, the two spare fingers tickled me. I looked up. Again another noise came from it. I laughed when I made it out to be “Y-U-P! ….Y-U-P!”

Just then the bell rang loudly. I crept up to the door and looked through the eyehole and saw my tired parents waiting. I panicked. I had to hide my friend. I pushed it towards my room and hid it under the bed. Almost reaching the door, I remembered the orb spaceship still lying in the balcony. Racing back to the balcony, I pushed the door open and hid the small orb behind old cardboard boxes.

My parents got impatient and rang the bell again. Striding towards the door I straightened my clothes and hair, took a deep breath and opened the door to them with a sheepish smile.

With my thoughts on my new friend, I was restless getting through their inquiry questions about what I did while they were gone. Finishing dinner quickly I went to my room.

I could not find my friend under the bed. I started wondering if it was all a dream. I looked for it everywhere in the room. I called out “Hello” in a whisper. Then I saw it appear out of nowhere zipping across the room again and again, very fast on its three legs, putting my room in order.

Since then I hide it in my room for shelter away from cruel humans. In return it plays with me and plays for me. With its seven fingers in each hand it has made me the fastest player in every game in electronic gadgets. It also gives me advice, help when needed and tells me stories of its planet and how it was exiled from it forever.

I call it Ditto, like the Pokémon which can change into anything. Ditto can be anything for me. Ditto now is everything to me.