“Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad” exclaimed Tom happily. His wish of having a 100-piece puzzle was fulfilled. The puzzle box had a red velvet cover which gave it a grand look. It was quite heavy and unusually decorated. He took the game to his room and spread it on the carpet. The puzzle had different pictures joined together to make it one.
“And this one goes here. Done!” Tom exclaimed as he finished assembling the first picture. The picture showed up, as that of a crab. “Crab!!” he suddenly heard an ear-splitting cry from his mother. He rushed to the kitchen and saw his dad holding a shovel, trying to hit a crab that appeared from nowhere. Soon his father took the crab in the shovel and threw it. Tom was perplexed, his house was not near a beach, so how did the crab enter his house? He was pondering over what had just happened. He wondered if the puzzle had any link to reality…
As he entered his room, he glanced at the puzzle doubtfully, with which he still wanted to play. He sat down and forgot about the whole incident. He started putting the pieces of another picture. “What?” He exclaimed quizzically. He carefully examined the picture with his eyes wide open, it showed a child falling from the rails of a balcony. “No….” he cried and dashed towards the balcony of his home. To his astonishment, his baby sister had climbed the last rail and was about to fall when he ran and saved her. ‘What an adventure’ he thought.
Panting, he again ran to his room. He was unsure, scared and curious about the puzzle. Whatever was shown in the puzzle came true! So, he quickly gathered courage and completed another picture of the puzzle. It showed a man with a broken leg. He thought hard. “Well, nothing to worry “he declared. Then he rushed to the kitchen, as his mother had called him for lunch. His mother had made his favourite food, a cheese sandwich. As he was enjoying the sandwich, he forgot about the man with the broken leg. After sometime his father called him “Tom, Uncle Justin met with an accident and broke his leg”. He continued “You come along with your mother to visit him”. Tom and his father were at the hospital for the rest of the day.
After that incident, he was dazzled and overwhelmed. He felt his heart was beating in his throat. He decided not to play with the puzzle anymore. But he was curious to see what the last picture was about, and it would not even be true, as he would not fix the last piece of the picture.
Finally, Tom, with a heavy heart, came back to the puzzle the next day and he started assembling the pieces. He found out that one piece was missing. After he finished assembling it, he held his breath and looked at the picture. To his fear and astonishment, it showed a house on fire. After he looked at it keenly, he gasped, as the house was similar to his. For the first time, he was relieved and thankful, that he could not find a toy piece. But his dog Bruno thought, Tom was upset about the missing piece. Bruno searched everywhere until it found the piece under the sofa. It came running to Tom with the piece in his mouth.
“No Bruno, Noooo!!!!!…” Tom yelled at the top of his voice. Startled, Bruno slipped, and the piece flew out of his grasp, and it got tossed up, high above the puzzle board, flipped right above the missing puzzle piece and……
By: Aabha Ghuli
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