fairy tale | The Kaleidoscopic Kanvas

Year: 2038 Time: 6 a.m. Something wasn’t right! Why did it feel so cold and not blazing hot like the mornings of the past decade? It shouldn’t be raining for there are no more trees in my locality. The land had stayed barren for the past 6 years and not a speck of green vegetation could be seen, as far as the eyesight travelled. I feared to open my eyes from my sleep. My heart thumped with the thought of being captured in sleep by the cold-blooded soldiers of the government and taken to their fortress, which had appropriately been constructed to withstand the harshest weather conditions and keep the elite safe and comfortable. People like me, the lower class, were often kidnapped by the soldiers to work as labourers in the fortress. While on one hand, it meant staying indoors and be protected from the desert conditions outside, but, on the other hand, it meant loss of our freedom, submitting to daily hours of bonded labour. We, the human beings, had wreaked havoc on earth in the past decade with terrible deeds. We stripped the lands of green cover, hacking trees at a devastating manner; we killed wild animals for food when the domesticated ones felt short to satiate our growing hunger; pollution of different types stained everything – the soil, air, water, and thus, initiated a chain of catastrophic events that soon turned this beautiful planet into a barren waste land. Little did the common people across the globe knew that the elite and the rich of all countries were secretly working with the superpowers – USA, Russia, UK, Germany, France, Japan, Australia, India and Japan – to build a gigantic fortress, somewhere in mid-Sahara in Africa, to shelter themselves in the perilous times of the future. This conspiracy was well-shielded from their own intelligence! The fortress was the size of one-fourth of island nation Sri Lanka; such enormous it was! It was made impregnable to the harshest of weather conditions and had all the comforts and facilities required by the people who would be housed in it. I opened my eyes, and screamed in horror! I was no longer a 31 year-old man. I grabbed a partially broken mirror kept nearby and looked in to it. I was the 5 year-old me. But, my thoughts didn’t change. I realized my body turned, not my mind. I was terrified! When my senses returned slowly, I looked at the broken portion of the mirror again. Did I not break this mirror in 2012? I looked around. It was the year 2012! The year when the world was actually coming to an end. The predictions of the Mayans had come true indeed! I was alone in the house. No voice could be heard from any room. I was feeling hungry, so I reached into my pockets hoping to find a toffee. I loved stuffing toffees in to my pockets when I was a child. My hand caught hold of a hard, moist thing inside my right pocket. When I pulled it out, I noticed a pale-brown kidney shaped bean that was the size of half my palm. And in the other pocket, there was a crumpled piece of paper. I went to a nearby table, kept the bean on it and sat on a chair. I unfolded the paper. It read: Dear Jack, The world is about to end. But, you are earth’s last hope. You are the torch-bearer of an ancient prophecy. You belong to a lineage of heroes who had saved mankind and the planet from devastation time and again.The kidney-bean you possess is the last remaining seed of the giant beanstalk, about which I had narrated to you when you were a little child. Plant it at any location you desire, feed it with seven drops of water and watch as the giant beanstalk comes alive and saves this planet from doom. Its spores will cover the barren lands, sprout new vegetation and bring back the green cover. Soon, nature will bounce back to life. But, remember, you have time only till noon, after which you shall forever be trapped in the limbo existing between this realm and the realm you came from. Bless you child. The tale of Jack and the beanstalk shall be a legend forever. Your Grandpa Jack I looked towards the clock. It showed 11:50 am. I dashed outside! This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.