It was an ordinary Wednesday in October. Sun was dazzling with an unusually-bright sparkle. At 2:14 pm, Ramana exited his college gate and started walking towards his home. On the way, he noticed the orange-colored house. He passed by this house every day but didn’t notice any signs of life before. For the past one-and-a-half year since he started going to college, the house appeared to be secluded, unoccupied, and tucked in a shadowy corner of the street. Today, however, its windows were illuminated from the inside. Outside, a stack of heavy, dark-red blankets was piled near the porch.
He walked on and took a turn towards the park. Arriving at the entrance, he noticed a large, rusted gardening tool, most likely a pair of sharp-bladed shears. The shears were dropping upside down from a cluster of purple-blue flowers in the flowerbed, its sharp blades sticking out from the fronds of grass like fangs of a devious monster, awaiting to swallow up kids that were playing around. To protect the kids from getting hurt, Ramana approached the flowerbed, removed the shears from the grass, placed it at the foot of the entrance gate, and walked on.
Within a few minutes of exiting the park, he arrived home. His parents were out. He tossed his backpack on the sofa and walked to the kitchen to have a glass of water. Although there were still two-and-a-half tubs of ice-cream in the freezer, he was not in the mood today, due to a sore throat. But then, his nose caught a familiar whiff swirling somewhere around him. He turned around to scan the kitchen. His eyes stopped on the right side of the white granite shelf, on a bowl. Steam was spiralling out from a bowl. He lifted the lid and exclaimed “Hakka noodles!”
“Rakhi must have made them for me before leaving the house,” he wondered. Rakhi, his sister, had gone out for a book promotion event. She knew that it was his birthday tomorrow and he loved these sizzling green hakka noodles. He sipped water, grabbed the bowl, and slumped down on the sofa with the TV remote. Immersed in a mystery movie, he guzzled down the entire bowl. Suddenly, his eyes caught an unwrapped packet of dark chocolate spilling from a shelf behind the television set. He walked to the shelf, pulled out the chocolate, and tossed a piece in his mouth.
By the time he switched off the tv and returned to the kitchen, he found himself taken over by a strange, unusual lethargy. Sloppily, he plodded to his bed and dozed off. When he woke up, the doorbell was ringing vigorously. He rushed and unlocked the door. His parents and Rakhi burst inside. “Get ready, quick! We need to go!” His sister exclaimed. “Where?” He asked. “Just get ready. You’ll know,” they told him. His face still hanging in the post-nap laziness, he trudged to his room and half-heartedly pulled out a black shirt to wear.
His uncle, the brother of his mother, tugged onto his sleeve and asked him to get seated on a dias. The dias was wrapped in a cloth of black silk. His mother stepped from another room, carrying a ritual tray slinging with incense cones, flower petals, and powders of assorted colors. Ramana smiled. They had organized a surprise birthday party for him. The fact filled his heart with a pouring gratitude. “Ramana,” his mother spoke, “Your great-grandfather passed along this Vault of Eternal Gems to you at the time of his death. Now that you are 18 years old, it’s time that you become aware of your powers and procure this vault.” Ramana nodded, his face blushing with pride.
His uncle stepped forward and said, “Show me your hands Ramana.” Ramana twisted his palms. A shriek escaped his mouth and flitted through the room like the trill of a wounded bird. “What? What is this?” His palms appeared as if they had been charred with a dark brown smoke. “The radioactive compound we mixed in the chocolate has worked,” his uncle exclaimed. Ramana looked up at him in puzzlement.
“Let me explain son,” his uncle said, “The dark chocolate you ate was rubbed with a radioactive compound, which will act like the Shadow Catalyst for you to unlock the precious vault. The noodles you ate weren’t hakka either. Instead, they were dipped in a green potion made from a rare jungle moss. This potion thins the blood and heightens the “aural energy” of the drinker so they can access the dark unconscious energy buried in their subconscious mind. Since you have eaten both the items, your body is now activating these higher energies for you.”
“Ramana,” his father announced, his voice suddenly devoid of affection. “You, only you carry the key to the precious vault that lies in the backyard of our home’s old quarry. All it requires is your blood.” His mouth wide open, Ramana tried to stand up. His uncle pushed him deeper into the dais.
Ramana looked hither and tither. His parents, his sister, his uncle, and all the strangers seemed to be participating in this occultish sacrifice. “Hurry, father. We only have a short window of time before the vault and Ramana’s powers are locked for another decade.” His father stepped forward and raised the shears high into the air. “Ramana, your sacrifice will always be remembered by all of us. By contributing your blood, you are fulfilling the great mission of your life.”
A horrifying, frozen resistance took over Ramana. He felt like his body was about to explode. At first, there were fireballs churning through his belly and then his throat felt like getting choked by a poisonous serpent. Before he could let out his final scream, his father brought the shears down, pounding them first into Ramana’s shoulders, then his chest, and lastly, his belly. In less than two minutes, Ramana collapsed in a heap, his betrayed eyes reeking with wrath and his powerless moans left unheard, abandoned.
In the pinkening sky, the Sun was already sinking. Ramana’s family members had already burned Ramana’s body on a pier. They needed to rush to his house, dig out the quarry, and pour Ramana’s blood on it to unlock the vault. But before they could step out, the entrance gate flanked close from the outside. The chain automatically tangled itself into the metallic hook, banging the door shut. A few moments and a sickening groan filled the room. Lamps started shaking, lights flickering in neon flashes, from blue to purple to green to red. Cracks materialized in the walls and shedding fountains of rubbly dust, the ceiling began crumbling.
“You will never get what doesn’t belong to you!” A ghoulish voice proclaimed and as the words echoed through the orange house, they stole the breaths of those still alive. Then, darkness blanketed the sky and the orange house was engulfed in a hush, treacherous quiet. Meanwhile, ashes from Ramana’s embers rose with the winds and disappeared into the night sky.
This is not just an interesting story, but also a fantastic example of a concept that writers and storytellers refer to as the “Chekhov’s Gun.”
Coined by Anton Chekhov, the famous Russian playwright and short story writer, this concept, in its essence, states that “everything that exists, has a specific purpose in your story. Nothing exists without purpose.” In his letters, Chekhov famously stated that, “If you say in the first chapter that there is a pistol hanging on the wall, in the second or the third chapter, it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.” The idea is to remove everything that has no relevance in the story.
In this story, the objects and elements Ramana witnesses during his journey back home from college are mapping a trail in the readers’ minds, so when they reach further into the story, every object will reveal its purpose – The orange house, the pair of garden shears, the green noodles, the dark chocolate, the dark red blankets, and everything else.
The concept works on the principles of “narrative economy” and eliminating “superfluous or misleading details in the story that might create an expectation for the audience that is never met in the end, leaving the reader unsatisfied, disappointed, or distracted.
The concept can also be observed in the climax of The Hunger Games. The character of Katniss Everdeen is portrayed to possess a skilful understanding of the poisonous nightlock berries in the forest. In earlier scenes, her father passed on this knowledge to her because it was required for her survival in the District, her hometown.
In the end, this seemingly disconnected piece of information pops into highlight, as both Katniss and Peeta pretend to eat these poison berries to defy the Capitol by making them believe that they were committing suicide. The Capitol stopped them and declared them as victors of The Hunger Games.
