I could not even imagine I had to encounter the ghost the other day. Yes, the ghost attended many others earlier in the forms of a grey wolf, spotted python, and mewing dazzle-eyed black cat. Benjamin reported, he lost his half-emptied pasta packet in the evening while he went to the fresh room leaving none in or outside the room. But I did never come across the beast, nor I ever wished to encounter it. I used to laugh at, even make fun of the ‘cock and bull story’ narrated by my colleagues encountered and intimidated by the monster. Alas! Saturday (usually public holiday) literally became the busiest day for me in the year. I was the only poor fellow to have accomplished the double fold task by the day. Everybody had their time in the Lake Shore Hotel, enjoying the Almanac 2018. I had to attend the program later in the afternoon if I should have done the work at hand. I was rummaging and mending the slip-ups in the Professor of Prominence’s paper. Professor of Prominence is to fly to China next week. I must, therefore, go through the whole paper before he departs lest I should miss his able hand to get his paper checked by himself.
Some citations were not in match with the references. I used the speedy internet to fix some of them. Still, two more seemed misquoted. I guessed, at least one is from the volume “Challenging Poverty” by Professor of Prominence himself. The book is available in the Institute’s library. I made a phone call to the cataloger. But nobody picked the phone. To my dismay, I came back to my brain; nobody was in the office, except me in a room of the top floor working on Professor of Prominence’s paper and two watchmen guarding the gate away at least quarter a km from the central building.
My eyes were transfixed on the last page of Professor of Prominence’s paper. I was almost scatterbrained. My buttock was set fixed as if tightly glued against the comfortable chair. My body became numb. I wished I could take a nap. The letters in the screen of the computer were seen muddled as if the foamy waves surfed by a giant ship running across a tidal sea. I felt compelled to get a printed copy so as to go through the pages afresh with new strength.
Commanding the pages to print, I made a run to the third floor to collect the printed copies. The pages were printed on both sides as if a trunk was sliced into some plunks with a saw. Putting the scattered papers together, I returned with the nicely organized set to my room on the fifth floor. Now I was not really prepared to encounter what was about to befall me! A set of printed copies, which were nicely assembled, were stretched lying on my desk exactly the same as I was holding, which I got printed from the third floor a bit earlier. I remembered the giant many had already seen. A chilling current ran through my body. I saw nothing but the dense dark winking through the burrows of the leaky leaves of the woods stretched around the building!!!
