You have been trying to sleep for
quite sometime now. Your eyes, they have turned bloodshot letting you know how
they crave rest. Your mind is tired and still slumber shies away, maintaining
an unholy distance. Adding to the intrinsic turmoil your neighbour’s cat is
determined to get right one of Bach’s freakishly high notes, devoting and
spending endless hours of your sleep. Yes not hard work nor patience but the
feline instinct makes it smart enough to make it spend your precious pennies.
How loathsome. A thing or two you should learn from the fur ball.
After a long wait you decide to
get out of bed. ‘Finally’, ‘At last’ are a few adverbs that whoosh past the
labyrinths of your crooked mind. But realization now comes as a shock, right
when you utter the final syllables you realize that no matter how many times
you perform that redeeming action of getting up you will always find yourself
succumbing to the desires of your master laziness, for you are asleep and your
actions count for nothing. It feels good to hide yourself beneath layers of
warm blankets.
The time has come for you to try
again. Just like the spider that has been re-making its web in children’s books
for a long time. How long was it? 200 years I think but you are free to assume anything,
for not a line of truth, have you encountered so far. Getting up sure seems
challenging don’t you think? And your desire to get lost in time is not
helping. Get up, now.
You are not alone. You are in the
presence of a ghost. Some one three hundred years older than you is staring you
right in the face and you lie there like a corpse, respect less. She looks a
lot like many women from creepy old pictures that you used to find at your
grand parents villa. You remember one person now. The eyes your memory digs out
and put in front of your eyes are hazel in colour, but the one that you now
stare back at is just a light shade of grey. Your memory is in contradiction
for you quite well remember those peculiar set of eye balls. These look
lifeless, like the ones at Madame Tussauds, not just lifeless but also they
seem to you as resonating lie. You are troubled for her rosy cheeks are missing
too. Where have they gone? Where have they gone? Do you know? No you don’t. So
if you do let me know too. You don’t know.
That photograph, it deceived you.
A liar.
All that time has left behind as
a shameless residue is an array of light and dark black.
You are unable to take it all in
and so you raise your arm bringing it into your field of vision. You start an
unending fit of comparison, the blood and colour filled flesh versus the pale
miserable fragment of memory and imagination.
The comparison continues.
Life and death.
The real and the un-real.
The ghost smiles.
You stare back with dilated
pupils.
Her lips stir in motion. You can
see that. Her facial muscles they too are now in action. You fail to see that.
Twitching and expanding and contracting they paint a silent picture, a picture
of contrast. No sounds uttered still nothing bothers you because you feel an
urge to pay close attention.
Yes, you pay attention, but not
to her speech. You are still occupied with the HD image of yourself and the
soulless image of you friend.
She is gone, never to return.
You are still in bed. It is dark
and hence you are aware that a lamp is burning behind your head. The warm covers
have lost its warmth. Something is dripping from your feet. The culprit that
has caused the loss of warmth has finally been found. Why is water dripping
from your feet? You are eager to find out. You wiggle your way out of the damp
covers. Is it blood? You feel panicky but that sensation settles soon. It is
neither blood nor water, it is paint. The lamp has been of good use.
Now if you were to compare like
you did earlier you would be confused. Your legs are dripping away the
difference. A pool of difference
forms beneath your humble abode, your bed.
Without colour your legs are
lifeless. The feet that took you places far and wide are now a liability for
you. How sad.
You might want to chop them off!
No you shouldn’t.
They might never wake up, then
what?
Let them rest.
Rebecca now enters the room. What
is a Rebecca? For some odd reason you felt like saying it and so you have. You
realize this too and so you begin customizing her.
She now has a rather tanned look.
It is because you remember her to be pale.
You are now tempted.
She moves closer and you notice
an all too vague yet familiar look of innocence even in her most ridiculous
look.
She stares at the pool of colour beneath
you bed.
This time you hear a voice. You
are quick to recognize the voice as hers. Why? She does not speak! She does not
even to try to paint a silent picture, then why? You want to hear her, that’s
why.
What is she saying?
Promises.
Are you sure?
Regrets.
Yes you are sure.
Words resonate and ricochet.
You are caught right in eye with
a Darling. It has gone right through
you like a bullet. You feel no pain. But it pains to know that you are not
worthy of pain.
You are now awake.
You are now awake. You awaken
once more and once again you wake. Then again and again and again till you fall
asleep.
*****
