A thin film of bluish light woke me up as I lay there for years. The silver hairs and dried skin on me were crystalline, and the reflection of my success was very clear. The demarcation of my joy was boundless..
I hastened to get rid of all the cables and cords creeping over me along with patches across my head. Despite the rage of excitement flowing all through my blood, I carefully twisted the handle of the door and allowed the bullets of light from a completely novel generation to traverse through me. I stepped out from my Carbon-Tungsten-Rhenium (CWRe-043) made time machine and felt a very rigid deck below. I was hoping for the place where I stood, my pro tempore, in the basement of Mr. T’s house.
As I strolled a few feet further, I came to realize it wasn’t where I was supposed to be. My monochromatic eyes could barely spot any objects or those hard by. The peculiar cogitation inside me had a bewildering triumph which was exceeding up to my satellite.
A strange capacious darkness was preceding towards me and my CWRe-043 as if a destructive tsunami was approaching to demolish the entire mankind. An awe was building rapidly in my rationalization. A supposition of an invisible surfboard beneath my unclad legs and flying above the dark billow trying to reach the sky castle was creeping into my brain swiftly.
Disappointed me, got knocked away or completely engulfed, I couldn’t fathom. The bluish light was out of sight and the floor was rough and sloppy. I perceived myself to be in a dark and dense corridor with nothing but my loneliness. My heart palpitated as if it was competing with light’s frequency. A worry was covering me wholly like fog covering hills, gradual and sad.
I was trembling, the excitement in my heart was replaced by dread. I intuited as I was running up the slope yet getting closer to the abyss below. The adrenalin kicked up urging me to pace faster but somehow my limbs refused to move.
The blazed walls were painted with portraits. I realized they were my past, the paintings. I heard the voices that have been trapped inside me since forever and never made a way out. I felt an invisible arrow go past my utterly agile beating heart, sturdy, icy and faint.
My anxiety rose up, the hands were rambling as if they’d fall at any moment. I felt vibrations throughout my body, causing me to take deep breaths. I tried to reach out for my pocket where my Gabapentin lies, yet I could not gain cutaneous senses.
There were voices rising out of the walls, they were mocking me. I was being attacked with words for the things I could’ve achieved but, alas, labelled as a biggest failure. Those were the things I had always feared, failure at top. My knees felt weak and jittery, soon they took the ground. I was there, helpless, on my knees, head held low.
Slowly, I felt my consciousness leave me. I was left there among the voices coming out of my head. An uncomfortable resonance was creeping on my eardrums as I levitated in a daze and paralyzed. In a jiffy, I felt a huge mountain fall onto my head, squashing out every piece of brain and every drop of blood out of it.
I came alive. It was undistinguishable whether the incident was real or just a mere dream. I was shaken when I saw I was there in the basement of Mr. T’s house. Resting my head on the table beside my CWRe-043, I was sound asleep. Perhaps everything was a deception.
The happiness on my cheeks slowly dissipated as I was looking at myself, there, alive, laying in front of me. Fretfully, I tried to wake myself up, but coldness permeated every inch of my body. My eyes were shut, and my face was all sweaty. “This was something I knew would happen”, I reassured myself. I felt as if my brain was tricking me into something. “Did I overdose the Gabapentin? Or was it the caffeine?”
The realization hit me like an arrow piercing straight across my cerebrum. The snarling sound coming from across the room agitated my heart even more. My brain was sending commands to my feet to run away as fast as I could, but they just froze. My hands were on my head, trying to wake myself up, to escape from the dreadful event fore-coming for me. The fear rose up so high that I couldn’t move any single muscle.
There it was, in the right corner of my eye. Staring at my soul with the coldest eye to ever exist. As my vision fell on it, I closed my eyes and pledged to rise from slumber without fail. I ran to a corner of a room and just stood there, looking at my cadaver-like shape from afar. Then, it moved further, towards me, towards my cadaver.
Its distorted skin was peeling off, as it was rambling progressively. The four-legged species was just beside my carcass laying on the table. It had its eyes fixed with mine, timid at the far corner. It then slowly touched my dead leg, stared deeply into my eyes with a wry smile.
Its strangely warm hands were touching my ankle and moving further upwards. I could feel its filthy claws grasp on to me as it was abusing my mortal remains. It touched every part of me, dripping saliva out of its mouth. The black teeth and reddened lips were clearly starving and had a desire to be stained with my blood.
Helplessly, I crouched in that corner, looking at myself being abused. It had its hands on my breast, and I couldn’t utter a cry from my throat. Then it wrapped its sullied phalanges around my neck, for a moment, I wished to be dead, there and then. It ran its hands all over my face, every nook, every piercings, like caressing a baby.
The immediate pull of my hair felt so brisk that I finally came to my senses. I looked around my room, and found nothing but my loneliness. A few strands of my hair on the floor couldn’t let me differentiate if it were my illusions or just another dream of mine.
My body was all drained as if every drop of blood from it was sucked out. I feared the deluded state of sleeping. It was after two hundred and eighty-six hours that I fell asleep, yet the nightmares were always at the helm to haunt me. I had an intense desire for a laid back event to unfold. Then, I decided to go for a shower.
Slowly, I paced further towards my bathroom, summoning every ounce of energy that was left. I let go of all the clothes that weirdly stuck to my body. There I stood in front of my seven-foot mirror, looking unusually close at myself, observing every wrinkle of my skin. The bruised neck and throat were still just painted and freshly painful.
The memory of the recent abuse was haunting me, causing me to think, “That thing will come again”. Very cautiously, I put my hands on my breasts and chafed it to re-live the pain unceasingly. I liked to punish myself. A hemorrhage-like injury formed around the upper part of my breasts and the lower throat and, my brain, would play the persecution I went through on loop. Again, and again.
I walked a stone’s throw away from the mirror and stood right under the tiny pores of the shower from where the water droplets would directly fall onto my wounded heart. As I twisted the tap at its hemi circled left, cold water fell on my shoulders, which gradually heated up and in no time felt like boiling oil that would exfoliate me anytime. The fondling of acidic hot water on my skin was very weirdly satisfying, and I closed my eyes.
My head was turned aloft to let the water fall directly on my breasts, to expunge the memory of being abused. Soon, there I saw people stare at my nude physique from outside the window which was just a few feet further from where I was standing. I completely froze and couldn’t stop staring back at them. I was motionless in that place, away from a bunch of ravenous vision. Their eyes were on me, everywhere, the tremendously hot water was sliding through.
The people outside resembled the casualties caught on fire and could never escape. Their faces were emphatically asserting out the cry for help, that I am never able to give. In a snap they slicked their hands in and grasped my soaking wet and flaming bones. Many hands were visible to me, on me, from toe to head, trying to pluck the epidermis off of me. In no time, the floor beneath me were reddened white tiles, stubborn and sticky.
From the corner of my left eye, I saw it, my nightmare, slowly marching towards me. The creature, on the facing side, was at my foot; almost engulfing me all in, down its throat. The 100°C water turned thick and red as if it was blood, or was I delusional? But the substance was making the creature more and more gigantic and petrifying. Blood oozed out of my body like someone is gripping and heaving the piston attached to my body.
In between the dreadfulness of the situation I was in, fighting for its life I saw a tiny little creature, a spider. It was standing in the corner-most area trying to save oneself from the burning water. The tiny spider had petite legs, eight of them. They were wiggling and struggling to climb up the wall but it was too slippery.
Seeing my tiny little friend struggle, I had this burning urge to help it out of the life-or-death situation it was clung to. Slowly, I twisted the knob of the lower tap so that water would reach its corner and wipe away my little friend towards my right foot. Soon, my friend was screaming in excitement as the flow of water was surfing it here and there, crushing its rudder. My eight-legged friend was playing with water and swimming and surfing along with it.
I remembered, Gregor Samsa, the gigantic human-insect who Franz Kafka created in his visionary mind, put his fantasizing thoughts into words, and voila created one of the most amusing and alluring novella. I saw Mr. Samsa with my tiny little eight-legged friend there. The words Kafka used to define his intrusive imaginative story were clear and like a motion picture playing in front of me.
In the meantime, my eight-legged friend must have got tired and was just resting on the surface of sparkling red water. Its tiny legs all crumbled up and shaped itself into a ball; just rested there, floating. The creature clinging on my left leg was looking at the struggle of my little friend and smirking, letting blood drip out of my leg.
Abruptly, the water went ice cold and I was there, solitary with my loneliness, again. “Maybe the geyser gave up.” I looked around and acknowledged standing on the pool of burning water with every piece of my flesh attached to self. A spider, un-lived itself and was floating beside my leg, it showed me my future.
I moved towards the towel in a haste and wrapped myself on it. Again, I stood in front of my mirror that was completely covered in the midst of my thoughts. I languidly wiped off the head. My face was all clammy and the bag under my eyes looked even heavier.
I came out in the basement, cautiously, trying not to slip on my own leg. I turned my head everywhere and took a quick scan of the room. Thud thud thud…… the sound of hammering was coming out of my CWRe-043. Gulping in the saliva stuck on my throat, I made my way to where the sound was coming from. As I was edging nearer to the sound, it was cranking up the sound and horror.
Slowly, I walked towards the back of my CWRe-043, and saw a figure standing there, banging their head. It had a human-like appearance and wore my sweats, trousers and my minion’s slippers. I felt sheer terror, my body covered in raised hairs. I remember wearing that outfit twelve days ago while working on my final touch ups to complete the preparations to launch my CWRe-043. I was struck by a sudden revelation, like a lightning strike, that I was supposed to probe my CWRe-043 twelve days later, which was that day. I felt as if I fell off of a ninety-story cliff seeing myself being so irresponsible and not having the sense of passing days.
The banging sound got even louder and brought me back to my senses. Steadily, I raised my arm up, cognizant of the extreme adrenaline flow, went towards them and tapped their shoulder. Suddenly, they stopped. Turning their head towards me, they stared dead into my eyes, my soul. It was me, staring at myself as if someone put a wall sized mirror in front of me.
As I looked at myself, a strange creepy smile grew on my face. I just stood there in front of me with a constant creepy smile pasted on my face. As both of us were there, looking at ourselves, I turned towards my CWRe-043 and smashed my head, again.
I was still wrapped in my towel standing there in front of my doppelganger and trying to think what has been going on. A whole list of events had happened that were illogical or just maybe I just lost my senses.
“It feels like déjà vu. Why do I feel like all these events had already happened and I am just reliving it again?” my brain was tricking me again. The voices in my head got so heavy that I couldn’t resist but take out the thoughts-cancelling-headphones which my ex-girlfriend gifted me on my birthday, three years back.
My doppelganger was still there, as if trying to break off my invention. I tried to move myself away from it but was not successful despite using all my strength.
I had no choice. I couldn’t let myself destroy the diligence that I have been working on for the past twenty years. In a saunter, I went towards the entrance of my CWRe-043 and let out a huge sigh. With the thoughts-cancelling-headphones still on, I was inside in no time. Cautiously, I pasted all the cables and cords over my head.
This was the first trial of my CWRe-043 and my body was shaking in both thrills and chills. I put aside the thoughts-cancelling-headphones and let all the queries fill me again. I could feel the blood pumping across my body, and with trembling hands I put at my heart, to calm myself down.
Gulping down the cough that had been lingering, I was ready. I carefully pushed the final lever up and soon the countdown began. Ten... Nine… Eight… Seven... Six... Five... Four... Three... Two... One…..
Darkness filled my eyes.
A thin film of bluish light woke me up as I laid there since an infinite number of eras. The silver hairs and dried skin were crystalline and the reflection of my success was very clear. The demarcation of my joyfulness was boundless and were bopping with excitement. I hastened to get rid of all the cables.
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