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This is a test post coming directly from an offline client. Checking to see if this works!!!

As she picked out the remnants of a well fought game from her cleats- dry lumps of earth strewn with blades of grass that seemed more like hay, she couldn’t help but reveal a faint smile. After all, it was the boot that blasted the winning goal in the last game she played; she felt victorious. As she worked on her boots, the tender smile slowly faded, her throat gradually parched and there was that distinct moisture gleaming in her eyes as she stared into the opposite wall. As she gazed emptily at the locker in front of her, she dropped the boot from her hands, blissfully unaware of the thud it made, as memories of previous games and goals sped through her mind. Her hands, which were now free from the cleaning duties, involuntarily sheltered her face as tears trickled down her tanned cheeks amidst little sobs that she made no attempt to hide. One team-mate who had turned back as she had heard the shoe fall, placed a compassionate hand as the protagonist responded with a steely nod as she dismissed her tears with a brush of her arm. The team-mate had already made a dash out of the dressing room, unable to conceal tears of her own. With a new found purpose, the striker put on her cleats as she kissed her ring before taping it up, a superstition that had never failed to amuse her. “He will be there to cheer me on”, she could feel his warmth, his inspiration and his unflinching support. “This is going to be the best game of my life”, she jogged out to join the team for the warm-up.
Amy’s team fought hard to earn a draw after they had been down a goal almost right from the start. A fitting game it was, where they battled throughout, much like Amy was going to, with a never-say-die attitude. It was Amy’s pass that set up the equalizer and soon after the goal celebrations she had a quick glance at the stands, where she saw her parents, her friends and she saw him too, who had come in to cheer her on. Before the game began, Amy had ventured into the opponents’ dressing room and said, “Ladies, this is probably the last game I will ever play in my life. Make sure you make it the most difficult game and one that I will always remember”. The opponents knew, as did her coach, her team-mates and so did all who were there to watch her play. They all knew. As she walked off the field one last time, she looked back at the pitch, the goal posts and sobbed. “I had a wonderful time playing with all of you”, she whimpered to her team. And then, with a fake smile declared, “I’m not done girls, I will come and coach you one day. Mark my words”. By now her team mates had congregated towards Amy as she individually hugged everyone a final goodbye. The entire team let Amy lead the team back in, as she trudged off almost unwillingly, away forever from something that meant so much to her.

It had been just two weeks since Amy had been diagnosed with a cancerous growth in her left thigh. “You will never be able to play football again”. She wanted the doctor to be wronged by some miracle. Her chemotherapy sessions would start from tomorrow, a day after her final game. Amy would never play football again.

As Joseph stirred from his sleep that Thursday morning, he decided to laze around a little more; “Some extra sleep isn’t going to harm me”, he thought and rolled over to his right as if instinctively turning away from the morning light, even when there was none. He forced himself to sleep, much like he had done for the entire night, only to find himself more awake and more mindful than he had ever found himself to be. He just chose to be in bed, given his inability to sleep; crossing his legs and drawing in deeply from one of the cigarettes that he had saved for that day. A solitary thought ruffled through his mind and made him crease his brows; it was about that issue at noon. He dismissed it with another lungful of smoke, knowing that he was fully braced for it. He remembered how Adrian, his younger brother had told their parents of him having cigarettes with his softball buddies. He had not forgiven Adrian for that act. Of late, Joseph had been through a hard and rugged lifestyle so it wasn’t a surprise when he welcomed one of the most leisurely days that he could remember. He also had his favourite for lunch, a juicy rare done steak. He had now found how small things gave him joy - the steak was just as he had asked for and hoped. Joseph had always been picky about things; he wanted everything to be perfect and well planned.

Having put on his impeccably laundered suit, something that he had been able to get done with great difficulty, Joseph found himself thinking about his parents and it actually surprised him. He had left home in his late teens and had visited his parents just once since; though he remembered that his mother had called him once, to tell him that his father was ailing, but Joseph hardly cared. He had never been a person who kept any regrets; he would just move on and look forward to life. This was probably the first time that Joseph wondered what could have been had he not left home, if he had listened to his brother or cared more for his mother. Joseph’s rough looks belied his age, a reflection of the recent hardships he had to go through. “It will get over soon”, he said, somewhat optimistically and aloud, startling the people who walked beside him. He just he quickly stole his glance away from of them and kept walking on with the same purpose that he had begun with. He thought about how many people would be there to see him, and if he would speak to them.

When Joseph finally reached the rendezvous point he immediately walked over to the man dressed in white. As they exchanged a short murmur, Joseph heard one of the other three men turn to him and say, “If you are ready, we can commence after you are done with the mandatory paperwork”. Joseph quickly signed the four spots next to where there was an ‘x’ mark and straightened his tie. “You may take a seat”, said the impeccably dressed man who was now holding the papers that Joseph had signed. Joseph gave out a deep breath as he seated himself, a little surprised at the way everyone looked at him. The third man walked up to Joseph and stood next to his seat.

“Do you have anything to say?”

“Detective Vaughan, It’s the nineteenth one you want to know about, isn’t it? I had already sent you her hand. You can hope to find whatever remains of that witch in the basement of the old ranger’s cabin over on Jenkinn’s hill. I always knew you wouldn’t find her; you just aren’t that smart. I wish to say no more”.

As Adrian nodded, the man next to Joseph registered the intravenous dosage as Joseph Vaughan served his capital sentence for the brutal killing of nineteen women.

“What have I got myself into”? I mumbled, as I froze on the edge, 14000 feet above the mean sea level. I had only begun deciphering what the little dots on the ground meant, when amidst the roaring of the propellers and the incessant howling of the wind I heard a barely audible “3… 2… 1… GO” My feet seemed anesthetized for a flash as I felt Allan pushing me off the edge into nothingness. It was that one instance when I lost contact with the airplane… I felt myself unattached, suspended, weightless… and free. The entire exercise was worth it just for that one extraordinary moment of tranquillity, for it was nothing but the deep breath before the plunge.
My crude mathematics tells me that by the time I felt the jolt because Allan pulled the rip cord on our parachute, we were hurtling down in free fall at just a shade under 500 miles per hour*. My first sky dive lived up to every bit of excitement and hype that it had promised. It was a tandem jump, meaning that my instructor was strapped to my back and the parachute was strapped to his. Since it was my first jump, my role was relegated to doing just a couple of spins during the one entire minute of free fall we experienced. Allan did a couple of spirals with the parachute as he was continuously shouting instructions, just short of rupturing my eardrums, trying to get me to manoeuvre the parachute in the right direction.

From the moment Allan got assigned to me as my instructor, he was never shy of saying various things to scare the living hell out of me. “If something goes wrong, I will just let you fall and use the emergency chute for myself”, he said when we got introduced and just before the jump when everyone else was being harnessed to their respective instructors, Allan said to me “you go ahead and jump, I’ll catch you on the way down”. “Don’t be too late else you’ll meet me on the way up” I replied.

After the jump he patiently explained what areas I need to improve on and what I did right so as to make my next jump an even better experience. When we jumped out of the plane, we did a reverse somersault and once we starting free falling, I did a couple of right and left spins under his observation. Then he asked to wave before he opened his chute, a signal to others telling them to stay away from us and our parachute!

I have already signed up for another jump, where I will pull the parachute cord after deciding that it is time to do so. And IF I manage to deploy the chute correctly, I will do most of the manoeuvring to land at the desired point. And who knows, maybe in a year’s time from now you would be reading about my first solo airplane jump.

The prologue is innocuous as its intent is signalled by an elementary tingle at the base of the nose, which is trite enough to be overlooked by even the most seasoned paranoids. That odd feeling creeps up from the nose to the forehead, with such stealth that even a cat would take notes. Its power lies in deceiving the host that the events taking place are so commonplace that there is no need to raise alarm. That is its potency right there. After these scattered incidents, which you chose to ignore have subsided, you can comprehend. You just know and it is too late to do anything, you can see it coming… the lead heavy eyelids smouldering from the inside, an overcast head that you wish could take it off just for a day, a tasteless tongue that cannot tell a cookie from a pear, a nose that prevents you from getting into any horizontal position, muscle pains like a deluge of a thousand Lilliputian arrows and finally to round off your misery you have a temperature that could humiliate a nice summer day. You have the Flu. I mean I have the Flu. Just for a fleeting moment, I was happy that I would not be going to work. Sit at home, sip on hot tea, get cozy and watch a nice movie. I do not know why I thought it would be all rosy. It is not. Mr. Flu is one greedy energy sapper. I have to think twice before I walk up to the kitchen to grab a bite or make myself tea. My bed is my world, with the entire necessary supplies close by, and thanks to my laptop, I can put this post. There are unsubstantiated reports that Flu can be delirious; since Mr. Flu has nothing to overhaul in the delirium department as far as I am concerned, he is concentrating on other avenues to get even. Even my fingers have started to ache after typing just half a dozen sentences. Mr. Flu is like a prison, where the door is ajar, but chains, chains of energy or the lack of it bind me. I cannot escape him but I have to find solace in evading him briefly with the aid of multi-coloured pills. I could not have prevented him, for I did not have the necessary antibodies. He is with me, and he will remain my guest until he decides to haunt someone else. For now all I can do is wait, wait and wait.