This was fun until...

I am Ben da Costa. I am 15, and I live with my mother and my younger brother in the St. Inez neighborhood of Goa. My dad left us when I was 2, so I have no memories of him.

It all began last month when my brother caught the flu and had to skip his classes for a while. The little punk’s a weakling if there ever was one. Me? I’m tough; strong as a bull, never so much as had a stuffy nose all my life. Anyway, he asked me to return a book to the school library. I had avoided that gloomy dungeon so far, but my mom threatened she would cut off the internet if I didn’t.

I wanted to punch her.

I entered the library, making some of the nerds look up in surprise. I walked to the librarian’s corner, dropped the book on the counter, and said, “My brother borrowed this last week.”

“The librarian will be back in a moment,” he replied without looking up from his paper. He had thick nerd glasses on.

I stood there, not knowing what to do.

“Nice, so you’re going to stand here and breathe down my neck,” he said, his eyes still glued to the crossword he was trying to solve.

At this point, I would've loved to batter his face to a gooey pulp. But I walked away. The library was unfamiliar territory, so I didn’t want to venture too deep and get lost on my way out. But I also didn’t want to sit anywhere too close to the bookworms. Eventually, I went to the farthest end which still offered a view of the exit.

I was bored and itching to check my texts but there had been way too many confiscations lately and I didn’t want to spend another week without my phone.

A noise from behind the shelf as if something had fallen off a shelf. I went around the bookcase to the other side and found a thin, black book lying on the floor. I picked it up. On the first page, it said: ‘100 Easy Spells to Torture your Enemies’. There was something written at the bottom - looked like Sanskrit or maybe Tamil. We weren’t taught either.

A 100 ways to torture your enemies? I nearly laughed. As if I needed a book for that. I thumbed through it - it was barely 50 pages in all. I stuffed it in the inner pocket of my jacket and kept walking.

A few minutes later, I saw the librarian back at his desk. The rude dude was no longer there. I returned my brother’s book and headed home.

After dinner, I went straight to my room. I had forgotten all about the book - but there it was, sitting in the middle of my bed. Did I keep it there? Had someone been in my room?

I picked it up and opened it. The book carried two spells on each page. There was one to give a guy a heart attack and another to stop someone from breathing altogether. One claimed to induce scary-ass hallucinations. And so on. All you had to do was clear your mind, speak your enemy’s name, and read the spell out loud. At the end of each page, there was one spell - it was the same for all - to reverse the magic and set things back to normal.

This seemed stupid. I threw the book back inside my bag and slept. 

***

EYES BULGING, FOREHEAD COATED WITH SWEAT, lips turning a nasty shade of blue.

Clutching hopelessly at his throat, the boy looked so pathetic even I felt shaken for a moment.

I knew he wouldn’t last long if I didn’t act. So I did. Air resumed its life-giving flow in and out poor Nick Braganza’s tortured windpipe. Colour returned to his skin, and he crumpled to the floor in exhaustion, still panting hard.

Nick lay sprawled down there until someone helped him up, asking, “You alright, buddy?” He nodded weakly. Others who had been watching him twist and turn were also moving closer to him, trying to understand what had just happened.

I gathered my stuff and began to leave.

In the last 30 days, I had done this to 12 different people. Anyone who’d ever rubbed me off the wrong way paid.

On Tuesday, Chris Mendoza, captain of the athletic team, suddenly veered off track in the middle of his 100-meter sprint and crashed into another runner. Rubbing his eyes like a mad man, he started yelling, “I can’t see; I can’t see anything!” Then, just as suddenly, he could.

On Thursday, Martin Samuel, the fat fellow who breathed too loud and sweated like a pig, fainted in horror as - and I made sure nobody was around when this happened - his teeth fell out and scattered all over the floor. When he woke up his pearly whites were back where they belonged, but I doubt his mind will ever be the same again.

Then it was the library dude’s turn. I spotted him in the cafeteria, eating his soggy hamburger and talking to someone I didn’t know. I recited the spell. Boom. The guy started imagining creepy crawlies all over his body, under his skin, in his nose and mouth. He threw up violently, pushed hard at the table, and fell on the ground, scratching all over and screaming his lungs out. For a good minute and a half, he writhed on the floor as a man possessed.

And so it went on. Tony Ranganathan. Reuben Ganesh. Principal Mahalingam. Josh Almeida. Kris Gonsalves. Nick Braganza. Poor Nick Braganza.

It was all fun for a while until it wasn’t. I was running out of people I really wanted to hurt, so I had to start picking people at random.

Then Nina Miranda joined my school. Hated her right away - for someone raised in a sad little children’s home, she acted damn special - raised hands at every question, joined all the clubs, dressed like a fashion queen. I had found my new target. 

My first female target.

***

It was almost closing time. She started to gather her books when there was a sound from behind a bookshelf.

A book on the floor. She picked it up. All blank pages, except for a picture at the end. It was hazy but it looked like a boy trapped behind a glass wall, screaming in horror, as if for help? He looked eerily similar to someone she had seen earlier. Couldn’t remember who.

She leafed through the book again and noticed the little text at the bottom of the first page. It was in Hindi:

“Mahilaon se saavdhaan. Mantra ulta padega.”

What rubbish, Nina thought. "Beware of women? The curse could backfire?" What does that even mean?

Carelessly shoving the book in an empty slot, Nina walked out. 

She never noticed letters slowly reappearing on the pages.