I tried to open my eyes but veil of darkness shrouding my
eyes won’t lift up. I realized my mind is working in its regular thinking
rhythm, my limbs were bit stiff but still I could feel them. Still, Somehow I couldn't open my eyes, it’s like omnipresent darkness just pressing the leads
of my eyes tightly shut with so much ferocity so as not a single little photon
of light could creeps past it. I knew I was relieving from adverse effect of
nightmare, but general experience says that in nightmare you awoke suddenly,
with a shock. In my case that was just not happening at all, defining logic, in
fact reversing the logic on its head.
I tried again. And again. And again…..And at that precise
moment I realized there was something not right. My eyes felt like red giant
bursting with force but to only diminish its existence either through
irrevocably collapsing to black hole or bursting out of eye-sockets like supernova,
in both cases, leaving only the darkness behind, trapping me in it forever.
I thought I could use some effort with my fingers to pry
open the eye-leads. As I tried to feel my eye-lead with my finger, I just came
to shocking realization that it was not there at all. I tried my second eye. Same
result. God, my eyes were already open. I felt my leads with my fingers easily
perched atop my eyes like owl steadily waiting for its prey in utter darkness. Hadn't I blinked all this time? I poked my fingers deep down my eye-ball,
swelling it with pain and tear to guarantee the presence of darkness. Moreover,
to feel alive. What’s happening? Why couldn't I trace anything in my room? Is it my room at all or I was somewhere
else, somewhere god-forbidden black hole of eternal darkness?
No, it was my room. I could feel it. Anyhow I decided to get
up and drew curtains away from the windows to allow some faint light to come
in, but to no avail. There was no light source out there somewhere. What
happened to the moon? And the stars? Might be it was that no-moon night, major
inspiration for all those ghost stories to come into existence. I tried to go
for my water bottle, scrambling my way to find it which usually resides besides
my bed. But it was proving difficult to get along easily with no faint outline
to perceive anything. Were my eyes still not used to darkness? But real
threatening question was that that the only reason I was unable to see
anything?
All these questions arousing in my brain like a full-moon
tide; I found my water bottle, rolled away somehow only to be stopped by my
computer desk, sitting there in the corner of the room since years with
composure of “King Vikram” bearing the load of “Betal” perched atop its
shoulder: my high-end powerfully configured gaming desktop. Water smelt rancid
somehow or did it really smell? Better not to drink this and bring the fresh
one, I tried for the door of my room which luckily I knew in which direction
lies as the exercise of finding water bottle had pretty much given me the idea
of layout and spread of the room. After all I had spent large amount of my life
in the same room. My room, built along with other floors of the house and
allocated to me by my parents during my collage days, became alter of study and
then became alter of everything for me. I was so attached to it, spending so
many years in it creating ideas, building career, partying with friends, parting with special ones, musing
alone, escaping from outer world, day-dreaming about
future and what not. The room ceased to be the non-living entity and became my
living breathing friend, accomplice in all my deeds and in all my sins.
I was aware of another side-quest of getting to
light-switches lays in path of main quest of reaching the main door. With a
little effort I was able to find the switchboard. My fingers played on all
switches like an accomplished piano player, but the only sound I could garnered
was “tic-toc” out of it, with darkness remaining as it was. Might be the power
outage? I don’t understand why power-outage occurred always on this kind of
incidental-heavy nights. Only option left for me now was to go for door and
check out. I fumbled initially then contemplated and calculated where the
door-knob might be with reference to my height. To my surprise, there was
nothing there but a stub to indicate the signs of door-knob existed before it
was pried out of its position. Should I call out to somebody in the midst of
this frightful night? No, what would others think of me if it would turn out to
be case of misinterpretation on my side. People already conceived me as
secluded lost soul living in my own imaginary world by locking myself in the
room all the time. They would be sure by this incident that I lost my mind
completely now. They were never going to understand that their own incompetency
to cope up with my emotional level had pushed me away from general social
attachments. Their hypocrite way of socializing had set me apart and took
shelter to only available safe zone to me: my room.
Suddenly there was a loud rap on the door, shaking whole door-frame. I was stepped away from the door with utmost fear. I was scared to
approach the door as if it was surged with electric current. Silence following
the loud rap was so thick that I could hear my heart pumping liters of blood
through my veins just to keep me alive and to face my deepest fears. I heard
dogs barking somewhere upon seeing something which was not meant to be seen by
human, baby crying in anticipation of food, late night TV show running with
background laughter sound effects. Who the hell was running TV in power-outage?
Before I could conceive something, there was second loud thud, than there was
third, fourth…..It was kind of beating of big drum with large bamboo sticks.
Suddenly there was flash of brightness like lightning in the storm, but I heard
no sound of it or might be its sound drowned into cacophony of drumming on
door. There was second flash and from corner of my eye I saw something crawling
on wall opposite to my gaming desk. It was kind of a bug of fist size. Then I
realized they were everywhere in the room, crawling on all walls, forming the
shape of large face sticking on walls. With raping on door continued I had
vague feeling of room was getting alive and laughing at me for some unknown reason.
It came suddenly to my mind, a faint remembrance, happened
yesterday, might be before that somewhere in the past, but I knew for sure that
was the only reason describing these weird incidents.A remembrance where my
friends had called me to go with them on outing just for the sake of fun and I choose
my room over them. A remembrance where invitation from my sister to simply come
to her house following festival ritual was refused so as to spend more time in
Gaming and reading and being there in the room. A remembrance where my parents
were pursuing me just to set up a meeting with future prospect partner but my
low self-esteem along with my bad social attachment history had compelled me to
reject the offer without second thought. There were so many remembrances like
these, pointing to me that I always had chosen my room over everything else. I
never left my room for others and now the room had decided not to allow me to
leave.
Like realization was somehow known to it, the Room, it was
bathed with white clinical light, stabbing my eyes with shear white pain. As my
eyes adjusted to sudden brightness, I saw my own reflection laughing at me from
full-size mirror on the wall besides the door. Drumming had stopped. The room
looked like more of a surgical room or operation room from where one could only
come out least with limb or blood sacrifice and worst as dead. I felt something
retching under my face-skin. As I tried to satisfy the retch, my skin suddenly
peeled out. Unknowingly, I held one end of it with my fingers and slowly
started scraping out the skin from my face. It was as easy as peeling of a boiled
potato. I didn't feel pain, just the tingle of needles pinching my tissue
underneath. Surprisingly, there was no blood. Might be somehow I could remove
only epidermis and not puncturing blood vessels below. After some time, There I
was standing with my white face devoid of any skin in front of mirror, having
my dead face in one of my hand containing holes where the eyes and nostrils and
mouth had been. I poked the white tissue of my face. It felt like sushi.
Suddenly, a blood vein embossed out of my temple imitating lightening out of
the sky; both in look and speed. And then more veins embossing, creating bloody
web all over my stark white face. I could feel and see blood flowing through
web of pulsating veins. I screamed with all the strength which only had adverse
effect of straining and puncturing all the veins at the same moment, showering
my face and mirror in Niagara of blood and…………………….
I found myself sweating profusely in the bed. It looked like
it was rare kind of lucid dreaming what I experienced. Sunshine was wrestling
with window curtains to brighten my room. First time ever I thought about
drawing the curtains right away and let the light fill my hollow, empty room.
My CPU was blinking in LEDs, requiring my attention on downloaded material
which I kept running whole night. I heard my parents asking me weather I want
to attend social gathering held by relative, with pure selfish reason of
getting me introduced to “future prospects”. To their surprise, and also to
mine my mind triggered my mouth with a reply “Just wait, I’ll be ready and
come”. As I left my room to freshen up, I noticed beams of sunlight
spreading on the walls of my room giving the feel that room was smiling with
joy and happiness.
