The Sleepless Nightmare
It’s midnight, the room is dimly lit from the light coming from the hallway and the moonlight coming through the windows. The fan set on the speed making a harmonious sleep-to sound. While the mosquito repellant burns.
I wake up to an uneasy feeling that can only be described by loneliness. I live alone in the two-room apartment. It has been over 15 days now since the outbreak of this new virus. The government had announced a complete lockdown. I haven’t really seen anyone or met anyone.
As I sit up to pour myself a glass of water, the memories of the last people who visited my apartment flash in the back of my head.
The last time I wasn’t alone was a day before the lockdown. I had used foodpanda to order food from a nearby fast food joint. It was around 1:30 at night that the delivery man had arrived.
He was an old man in his 50s, I was surprised because I had never seen a delivery man this old. I received the parcel and paid him. He was awfully suspicious with pearl white eyeballs and dark lenses. But he requested for a glass of water. I ask him to wait a moment until I fetched him water.
I came back with a glass of water only to find the corridor empty with the cicadas singing their night song.
The start of the sleepless nightmare…
A tingle of scare went down my spine seeing the empty corridor. I quickly locked the gate and went back inside. I stepped into the kitchen and threw the water in the sink. Puzzled what had happened. As I unwrapped the food and started eating the tasteless tikka paratha, I could not forget the pearl white eyes. It was as if darkness was staring back at me.
Unable to finish the dinner, I put away the parathas and got into bed, and resumed watching this random sitcom on Netflix to cheer myself up. That was when the glass in the kitchen fell and broke. I rushed towards the kitchen and saw the small glass shards all over the floor.
I quickly picked up the broom and started cleaning the glass pieces. Even more puzzled this time seeing what had happened. Thinking of those pearl white eyes. I felt a sting on my finger which pulled me out of the hypnotized state,
I found my fingers bleeding from a glass cut.
I quickly cleaned the blood and applied a band-aid. And suddenly I heard screams coming from my bedroom. I rushed towards the bedroom and saw no one there. More shriveled I got under the quilt and looked at the tv, the old man was in the tv standing in a dark corridor staring back at me with his pearl white eyes.
In an instant, I disassociated from reality and the only thing that I wanted to do was get out of the apartment and run away somewhere. But I was paralyzed from the shock, unable to move myself. Fixated on the old man in the tv.
I forced my eyes shut for a few seconds and opened them. The old man was gone from the tv. A sigh of relief calmed me for a moment until I rolled my eyes and found the men standing in the dark corner. In the dark corner, I could only see his white eyes.
I grabbed the sheets as my heart starts to beat faster. The old man started approaching towards me.
I mustered the courage, and reached the table lamp on my right, and flipped the switch on, and saw the old man in the foodpanda jacket. He voiced the words, “beta, paani?” I had lost my voice for a second before it hit me that all of this was real, that he was real, standing at the end of my bed in flesh and blood. And it hit me that I have closed the gate with him inside. I raised my voice in a surprising manner “kya?”. I rushed and turned on all the lights in the room. And a reflex forced the words out of me. “ANDAR KAISE AYE TUM! “, he responded sarcastically, “darwaze se”.
In a split second, I yelled “BAHIR NIKLO”. He followed it as my command and found his way outside. I opened the gate for him and asked him to stay outside.
I poured a glass of water and gave it to him. He set down on the corridor floor and started drinking water. I gave him time to drink the water until I rushed through in my head what had just happened
I asked him, “aap andar kab aye?” he took his time to answer and casually shared, “jab aap andar aye”. I figured that when he had seen me enter he had entered as well and went straight inside into my bedroom and stood in a corner.
While I scared myself with an empty corridor, and mistakenly placed the empty glass on the edge of the kitchen counter and later cut myself while cleaning the same glass when it had fallen.
I also figured that when I heard all the yelling. It was when Netflix had autoplayed a trailer and then displayed a still cover of the same show. The main character of the show resembled the foodpanda man. Whose eyes added to the scaredness.
The man finished his water, and thanked me and apologized for several times for entering like this. He left, I shut the door behind him and calmed myself and went back in the bedroom with all lights on, I continued watching the sitcom thinking in the back of my head, how many misunderstandings and awkward encounters must have happened without finding the absolute reality of the events.
