CH 02: Cautious Break
Scene: A confined room, starved of light
Even though light was creaking through the narrow fracture high on the wall—fragmented, stretching across the surface in pale, uneven lines. Yet a shadow could not be formed.
Darkness poured over everything, mimicking the living place of dark dwellers. A faint smell of gasoline lingered, almost omnipresent near the corners.
Huff… panting sounds came from the crouching figure resting his back against the wall of the gloomy room—the very wall from which the sunlight slipped in. However, he remained unscathed by the light.
Shree couldn't muster the strength to look up. His head drowned between his unevenly bent legs, where his hands rested. His jaw was loose, wide open, saliva trailing from his mouth. Eerie, yet his brown almond eyes seemed alive, almost normal, except for the faint veins threading through the whites—though even then, a closer look revealed they were undeniably pretty.
He could be mistaken for a pitiful corpse, drained of blood.
Until his hands moved.
Slow and steady, his hands began to move, lifting themselves through the empty space with visible effort. One hand shifted across the floor, dragging slightly before rising, while the other followed, searching blindly along his side before making its way toward his pockets.
His vision remained blurry.
He pulled It out.
The sudden light was too harsh for his eyes, striking them like the midday sun seen with naked sight. It wasn't the brightness itself that overwhelmed him, but the absence of light around him that amplified it. In the drought of illumination, even the smallest glow felt blinding.
He was looking at his phone.
His eyes, drained of moisture, remained fixed on the screen—helpless, yet not entirely devoid of will. Somewhere within, a faint trace of hope lingered in his conscience. It couldn't be pinpointed, couldn't be defined, yet its presence was evident.
And so, he stared.
Unflinching.
The screen reflected faintly in his eyes as the details settled into focus.
Air India Express
19:00 to 21:00
Final Destination: Mormugao (Goa)
All of these developments could be traced back to the day of his arrival. A lot of.....No. A lot more than that happened since then.
The day he fell to his knees.
The day his heart began to throb, violently, unevenly, as though it were trying to get some fresh air. His vision had warped, his senses collapsing into themselves, while even his seasonal TMJ disorder seemed to freeze—stagnant, irrelevant in the face of something far worse.
His fingers curling into the fabric beneath him, gripping at nothing. His nose brushing against the ground as his body gave in, collapsing under a crushing force. His tongue moved erratically, unnaturally, slipping from control before going still—lolled out, as if momentarily paralyzed.
And yet,the most significant damage was not upon his body.
It was within his mind.
A sharp, unrelenting pain tore through his head, regular and deliberate. It felt as though his brain was pressing outward, straining against the confines of his skull, forcing space where none existed.
Before he could grasp the extent of his own suffering. His heart melted into molten magma, threatening to burst from every breath he drew.
And then came the visions.
Not imagination. Definitely not memories. Perhaps.....intrusive.
A place—distant, yet overwhelmingly present.
A Church? Gothic in structure, towering, still. Its silhouette carved against an unfamiliar sky, its presence imposing in a way that defied distance. He had never been there. He knew that.
Yet there had been a sense of familiarity—overridden then by the sheer overload of his senses, only realized later.
"…nædò… nædō… 3li…" the voices crept in, low at first and indistinct.
Whispers that didn't form words, yet carried intent. They rose gradually, layering over one another, distorting, twisting—something inhuman about them, something that did not belong to any natural sound. Not loud, not overwhelming—but wrong.
Deeply wrong. As if the devouring demons of the shadows whispered.
His breath shattered.
The ground beneath him blurred.
And within that blur
Another image surfaced.
Not clear. Not complete. But present enough to anchor itself among the chaos. Fragments of coastline, structures half-formed, glimpses that vanished before they could be understood.
And then?
Nothing. The ocean of visions flooded the shore, then withdrew, leaving it callous, dry and hollow.
They returned in fragments, often when he woke from those strange, disjointed dreams. Never fully formed, never consistent, yet always carrying the same weight. The same place. The same presence.
"Why the hell do I keep dreaming the same thing?" his mind asked, then raged. "I'm not part of that scenario!" But it soon fell silent, knowing no answer would come.
And every time he woke, his thoughts would race, colliding into one another without order or control. Questions without answers. Images without context.
Leaving behind a dull heaviness.
A lethargy that clung to him long after.
As if his mind had been somewhere it wasn't meant to be. And had returned… incomplete.
Faced with something beyond comprehension, the mind does what it always does.
It searches for meaning.
But what meaning can reach a mind already unmoored?
Meaning is abstract, not something seen or held. And to think harder, when the suffering itself is born from thought, is no remedy, only a deeper descent.
Any sane mind would turn toward the tangible, something visible to anchor itself. Yet even then, people cling to something far less certain, an abstraction, fragile and undefined, believing it can steady them even in the face of unraveling.
So what is this elusive thing they reach for, even at their breaking point?
Hope.
Hope is the medicine of the old, a story for children, and survival for the youth. The authenticity of 'Hope' may be perennial. Is it the apricity of the cold, the right of the whole, or the liberator from the cruel? These questions do not hold any value in reality. These are questions emerging from the depths of desires or thoughts. A way of thinking rooted in finding superficial meaning behind everything, rephrased as enlightenment.
Society calls it 'Virtue', but this is mere wordplay by those who proclaim themselves enlightened. They create metaphors, saying surface thinking drowns you in deep water, but they fear elaborating their thinking to check the depth.
They say reasoning belongs to them. They clench their fists over science and reasoning, claiming it as their way in hopes of hiding their feeble, superficial thinking.
Similar to it, is the concept of 'Hope'. It is superficial, yet it clenches its fist over determination and will, hinting at its existence. In reality it is nothing but a fatal seed implanted in the minds of civilians. The doctrines of the holy, the guides of the lost, are merely dreams meant to make you believe.
However, it is not truly evil. In a sense, it is sublime.
For those it resonates with, it helps them block the wariness of the world and look forward.
Perhaps, it is the way of the world. Turning from one reality to face a greater one is a risky bet; most people fail.
But there is no 'themselves' in "all people". So, they try.
Remarkably, it fits in well. After all...
" If not in the past, in the present. If not in the present, in the future".
So, people try each day, questioning destiny. They test themselves through hardship for just one chance—the chance where they rule the course of history and defeat the billions to become "The Only One!".