Last Night

I wake up to a loud noise outside my window. Something just fell off the window shelf. I wake up with a kind of shock, a shock that jolted me out of profound sleep. I look around. Things are the same, but something is different. I cannot accurately pinpoint what is wrong. There is deep silence in my mind. Feels a little weird. Since I live in a Hostel, there are my friends who were knocking on the door and window to wake me up. I tell them I am too tired to move, and I sleep yet again.

Suddenly, when I regain senses, I am not in my bed anymore. I am working on something in the lab. I don’t know how or when this happened. I have deep silence in my mind that I find unnerving as if a voice, a friend for life, is not there. I am trying my best to figure out the situation, so I can behave as if everything is normal. I try to focus on the screen right in front of a few, but it’s tough. I can feel people talking around me, but I cannot make any sense of it. Beside me, people are discussing what to copy next, behind me, everyone is trying to make their “code” look different than the guy they are copying from. I zone out yet again.

I wake up yet again — this time with a glass in my hand. There is something in the glass. I don’t know what it is, but it seems like I am midway drinking it. I finish the drink, but then I realize there is this burning sensation in my throat. I cough a little, more in shock. It is smoke-filled in the room, and it all seems familiar, but I can’t exactly remember where I am. There are people whom I know, but I can’t recall how I ended up here. It’s my turn to smoke. I take a cigarette handed to me by the person sitting next to me, while I hear some guys shout, how my capacity has increased. I question myself if this is something to be proud of, while I take a long puff from the cigarette. I try to stop myself, but it’s like my body is on autopilot. I cannot resist this movement of my arms, or my breath to stop the smoke. Another person again fills the glass in my hand. I zone out.

I wake up in the middle of night or day or evening. I can’t figure out. Time is fast; things are changing. Everyone is asleep. Suddenly I realize that yet another day is over. I try to talk to the voice that I always spoke to in times of stress. It’s not there. And instead, there is this emptiness — this time I want to zone out. I want to forget this emptiness, this hollowness inside me. I want to embrace the darkness. I hear people calling out my name from darkness, shouting out to wake me up, to take another sip, another drag.

I try to shut them out. I try to sit; I cannot. I look around, finding no one. Just dead silence. I hope that darkness is gone, as I close my eyes. Trying my best to sleep, I hear people walking outside my room, looking for me. I shut my eyes tighter, in the hope to sleep through this. I feel as if they are now shaking my whole bed to wake me up. They tell me to take this one sip and forget everything. To sleep. As I take the pot in my hands for one last drag, there are tremors in my hands. I light the lighter, watch it for a second, wondering if I can stop. I hear a laugh surrounding as I take that last drag, and go to sleep. It takes some time, but finally, the shouts are gone, as I sleep with the demon within me for yet another night.