The Deletion - Prologue

I opened the WhatsApp message.

It was a GIF from a close friend. And it had some hairy dude screaming about deletion on it.

I was bemused. Sort of.

He had a crazy streak.

I asked him if he was crazy.

His only reply was,'I am Sorry.'

He went offline after that and did not reply to me at all.

I put the phone to charge, brushed my teeth, and got down to sleep.

Tomorrow was an important day, after-all.


I woke up to find myself surrounded by nothing.

I was not wearing any clothes, nor could I make out the things around me.

I was in a white room?

Yes. I was in a white room. There was some neatly folded clothes next to me.

I wore them.

A voice spoke from what seemed like the back of the room.


'Oh Good. You're Awake. Make sure to wear the clothes...' he trailed off.

'And you're wearing them.Pretty advanced, for a first timer. Walk with me', he said.


I walked up to him.

He was a tall fellow. His black hair slicked back, stubble on his cheeks. He was smoking a cigar it seemed, his darkened lips sucking on it. He had deep set eyes that were surrounded by dark circles. He sure seemed to be losing sleep a lot. And he seemed to love black clothes, wearing a black jacket, jeans, shoes, a white tshirt and a scarf of some sort around his neck.


As I opened my mouth to speak, he said,'If you have questions, wait till we are inside. This place has ears all around.'

None of that made sense to me. All I could see was a white corridor, that was far too wide for some reason.

He opened what seemed to be a door and let me in. He then walked in behind me and closed the door.


'Allright Kid. Sit down. And then tell me, what all you want to ask.'

I sat down on the seat. It was comfortable.


'Where am I? Who are you? What am I doing here? Why am I here?', I asked.

'Hmm. Only four. Off to a good start Kid.'

He was making no sense to me.

'So, coming to your questions. You are in my office. Which is located at Level 1, Block-C, Heaven Street. I am Michael. I am your Guardian Angel. Sorta. Regarding to what you are doing here, that is what we are going to find out now. And Why you are here is what is puzzling everyone.'

'You are not making any sense to me.'


'Well, the thing is, you're not supposed to be dead now.'


'I'm Dead?', I ask, incredulous.

'Well...', he paused.

'Answer me!', I shouted.

'Shut up. I am your Guardian Angel. Not the other way around.' Michael said.

'Sorry.' I said, feeling stupid.

'It's not your fault. I would react the same if I just found out I was dead.'

I smiled. He continued,' See, the thing is, according to your files, you're supposed to live on for longer. You are not supposed to be dead now. It's just confusing us that you have just vanished off Earth too.'

'What?'

'Yes. Your body has disappeared too. This never happens unless you are a high level operative of ours or you have been given special status.'

'Then what happened to me?'

'That is what we have to find out. Tell me what you did, without missing anything.'

I explained to him everything, even the last deletion message I received.
He was pacing around the room this entire time.

When he heard about the deletion message, he paused.

He went to his computer and showed me a GIF. The same GIF I received yesterday.

'Is this the same one you received?' he asked.


'Yes.'

He smiled.

'Man. I'm saved.'

Then his smiled stopped.


'We don't know where your body is'
He seemed to be shocked.

He took up his phone.


'Tom. Put me to John from Block- B. John Horn'

I sat there, looking dumb.

'John. We have another deletion case on our  hands. No. It's not as simple as we had hoped. The body is missing. If it is damaged, you know what happens. We cannot have another Partial around here.'

'What's a partial?'I asked

He gestured with his hand for me to keep quiet.

He just listened for a while. And then he put down the receiver.

'Come along Kid. We're going to see the Chief.'


We walked out his office and I could start seeing things. I could see silhouettes of desks and start hearing sounds of phone ringing and people typing.

We took the elevator to the Top Level of the Building.

It connected out into a lobby where a lot of lifts were there. Each where marked with a number and an alphabet.

I soon understood that each of them was from each block and each block had at the least three elevators.

It was madness.


We went and waited out in the front office. There was an attractive lady there. I could make out from her silhouette.

She was slowly clearing up for me and if I squinted hard enough, she became visible for a few seconds at a time.


She received a ring on her phone and she waved us in.


When I stood up, he looked at me.

'Where are you going?'

'She waved us in!', I said, indignantly.

'You can see her?' he asked, incredulous.

'Kinda.'

He just looked down at his hands. I could hear him muttering "This is Bad" under his breath.

'Let's go', he said, getting up.