Fear

I’d love to stay, but I really have to go...I’m sorry,” I told my friends. It was 11 o’ clock; the party had ended about an hour ago, and I needed to get back home. I would have spent the night at my friend’s house, but my father had been against it. And so there I was, bidding them a half-hearted goodbye, and heading home.

It was dark outside; everything around seemed drowned in the obscurity of the night. The silhouettes of a few houses my eyes, as strained as they were, could barely discern, seemed passive and snoring; all possessing the look of a burning lamp which had only just been extinguished. The only visible light came from my friend’s house, and I was walking away from it; alone.

I did not really know why, but a weird sort of feeling began to creep up on me. The open arms of darkness had absorbed me completely. The air around me was so cold and empty that I felt bare; naked. It was a queer sort of feeling, and I felt rather unprotected.

As light from the nearby houses began to fade, the queasy uneasiness only grew. I felt as if I had reached the middle of nowhere. I began feeling confused, muddled; I wasn’t even sure if I was walking in the right direction. I felt as if I was being forcefully misled into an unknown world; almost as if the path I walked on were an illusion created for me, or maybe for someone else who would be on it at that hour.

A sudden, cold gust of wind sent a chill down my spine. The unexpectedness of it nearly startled me to death. I felt my whole body shiver. I do not, even today, know why; but at that instant I, sort of forcefully, remembered God’s name. I kept chanting his name to myself until the cold that had spread through out my skin began to feel less powerful.

I did not want to think about anything, but could not help myself. The last thing I wanted to do was let my mind get the better of me. Recalling God made me think of ‘the devil’. Images—still photographs and movies—of all sorts; of ghosts and ‘creatures of the dark’ that dwell in evil labyrinths began to conjure themselves up in my mind. I could see an evil alertness suppressed in the calmness of the silence. The environment I found myself a part of; soaked in

absolute darkness, was somehow elucidating and exhausting; the queerness of the atmosphere was getting more unbearable by the moment. Every direction seemed tempting; almost alluring, but the road seemed to be waiting for me with unpleasant intent; probably waiting to torment me, or to scare me to death, or to horribly use me in a sadistic game of blood-shed and lust—red, spouting, and steaming, thick, raw blood.  

I cursed the clouds that had enveloped the night sky so inconsiderately. The silvery brightness of the moon and stars might have made for a friendlier atmosphere, had they not been covered by the indolent clouds. I wondered why this particular night had to be so cloudy; it seemed to me as if the night and the clouds were conspiring against me. “They must have been waiting for this chance all the while,” I said to myself. It had to be cloudy because it was part of the grand plan. The clouds were there to create hellish effects; they existed only to block the heavens. No!!! I had to stop imagining such horrible things… I had to distract my brain; perhaps the party…

My thoughts drifted towards objects I saw in front of me. Every dimension, every object—natural and manmade, seemed to have the potential to come alive any moment. I could almost feel the hidden, invincible, Dark Strength of every object I laid my eyes on. I was only a human; a mere living person with no supernatural powers; I was helpless; I was a nothing in front of them. These almost unreal objects were lying in wait; they would pounce at the first opportunity to put a stop to my smooth flowing life. I was practically doomed! The eeriness of the night was suffocating me; creeping up on me from every possible angle, causing my heart to thump and beat about twice as fast as normal.

I had never ever imagined that a short, ten-minute walk could feel like eternity. The atmosphere around me was unbearable. Suspicion and a jumbled chaos of fearful emotions had reached their climax within me. I felt thirsty; as helpless as fish pulled out of water, and thrown upon a sandy surface. With clenched fists and tight, uneven held breaths, I dared to drag myself slowly and cautiously, with as little movement as was humanly possible, against the stiff and icy resistance which my fear had created within me. I half-closed my eyes to see only what was absolutely necessary. I wanted to omit, to blur out any unnecessary object that might creep up on the periphery of my vision.

Just then, in the distant darkness, I noticed light. It was coming from the window in my living room. At that particular moment, I could think of nothing but running. “Run!” I said to myself. “Run as fast as you can.”

My heart felt extremely heavy.  The objects on the ground seemed to realise that their victim was running towards safety; they seemed now to be desperately reaching out to get hold of me. They no longer had the time to play games with me. They had to make that last shot right then. They had to grab me as best that they could. I could feel them tugging at my feet.

My feet were numb; they had run faster than ever before when I finally reached home; ‘home; sweet home’. I pounced, and rang the bell, and then turned back to take in my final glimpse of the darkness. The sudden passiveness of the objects reminded me of an alligator which had returned to the water’s murky depths after an unsuccessful attempt at getting hold of its prey, determined to try harder the next time.

- Nripesh Shrestha