The Fear in me
Pen in my right hand, black tea in left; I sat lonely on the balcony of my flat gazing at the beauty of the tranquillity at that hour! It was five minutes past midnight.
The darkness outside was beautiful.
As the cold air passed by me, it swept me off my feet and I didn’t mind a bit.
My partner was out of town for a wedding and I was having a gala time with my loneliness. I wrote, I read, I ate, I cooked, I painted and I made crafts — all lonely!
I enjoyed watching some magnificent late-night horror movies like, “The Possession of Hannah Curse”, “It Follows”, and “Pet Sematary”. Had there been a category where you could specialize in watching a particular genre of films, mine would be “Horror”!
I was wondering how shocked the expressions of my people were when they were told I would be staying alone for 4 days.
Their raised eye-brows and exclamations are my inspirations for today’s article.
So, let me narrate it to you how this happened- The fear in me!
It was just one night with Mr. Terror! Just one night! I was 14 years old then!
Back then, I used to stay with my sister in a small rented room (just a room). We had the kitchen, dining, hall, bedroom all fused in that one small room. My home was 13–14 km away from the main city. Since Class 9 marked the entry of my board exams, therefore Dad thought it would be advantageous if I stayed in the city where my school was.
So this room of ours was a bedroom on the second floor of an independent three-storied building. In that hall, lived 2 helpers who assisted with the Landlord’s business, which was right in front of our room. The other big bedroom and the only kitchen of the floor were occupied by another tenant (Aunty and her daughter). So that made 6 of us staying on the second floor. The ground and the first floor were occupied by the family members of the Landlord.
It was one pleasing, quixotic, beautiful evening when I was coming back home from my tuition classes. Exhaustion drove me to sleep at around 8:30 PM. My elder sister was with Mom and Dad back at home. My common sense warned me it would rain but I was too tired to spare any thoughts on that.
It was late midnight when the brutal storm brought down the terrible showers. The loud sound of the windows rattling back and forth, the fearsome lightning and my hungry stomach woke me up! All I could see after opening my eyes was darkness since the lights jumped on the opportunity to show its insincerity at work. To add the icing on the cake, my mind couldn’t recall where the torchlight or the candle was.
Drowsily, I opened the door and dragged my feet to the Hall room to ask for some source of light, but there was no one! Just that the doors and the windows were having a banging competition.
I knocked at the room of the other tenant’s and then again there was no one! It was nothing new as Aunty often used to stay back at her friend’s place.
Leaving all the doors and the windows open, I took the stairs and climbed down the first floor and to my utter disbelief, the first-floor gate had the lock hanging. It was then I suddenly remembered that the landlord’s family had to go to their native place because of some family engagement and THAT WAS THE DAY!
My heart sank. Anxiety and horror had me. The storm had gone from Torture Level I to Level III and I felt lost.
If you are thinking about why I didn’t call my parents, those were the PCO booth calling days.
On my way back to my room from the ground floor, I had a surprise waiting for me in the Second Floor Gallery, which I was completely unaware of.
One that made all the difference!
As I took the last step of the stairs for the second floor, something just took off right in front of me, some kind of shadow!
“What the hell was that?” I froze.
It went around the entire Hall room.
I swore myself I would never watch Horror movies. I so wish I were dead.
The darkness didn’t let me comprehend what that thing was! I was grateful to the lightning that flashed and showed me the shadow was a bird!
“Just a bird!” I breathed a sense of relief. But there was something weird about that bird and I had no idea what.
All the negative thoughts that were somewhere dead in my brain woke up. Flooded with fear, caught in temporary paralysis, I waited quietly for another lightening!
And there it was expanding its large wings and showing up its ferocious face, the only mammal that is blessed with powered flight.
The Bat! All the horror movies that I had watched on screen came alive to me that day.
While one part of my brain said, it was just a bat; the other half echoed it could be a vampire or a blood-sucking creature (the one from the movie “Bats”). Wait for a second! There were vampire bats too in real!
I didn’t sit quietly with the slightest thought that my life could be in danger. I looked for the broom everywhere and used it as a weapon. The bat was just flying but I didn’t stop using the broom as the sword.
It was Karate at 02:00 AM!
After 15–20 odd minutes of self-defence, I threw the broom towards the bat and rushed to my room locking it from inside. I closed all the windows and tucked myself inside the bed cover! That was it!
My hunger pangs were dead and so was I. No food-no light-no mosquito net!
I just closed my eyes and prayed for the night to be done with.
The very next morning I realized, it was not the bat who sucked my blood, but the stupid mosquitoes.
That was it!
Fear didn’t feel like fear anymore
“Everything happens for a reason!” — Steve Jobs
To be continued…
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
