A Darker Disguise - Episode II

[In case you haven't checked out Episode I, click here - https://www.pranavgiridharan.com/post/a-darker-disquise-episode-i]

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I walk on a line that cuts between method and madness,

I stray away to calm my soul, only to find myself in blackness,

I try to scream for help, but my head is underwater,

All I want right now is a cure for this utter horror.

I'll escape you. I'll find you. And I'll destroy you. There's no other way this can go. There's no way else, Steven. I'm coming.

I woke up jolted.

"Babe, is everything alright?", asked Lita.

I glanced at her and looked around the room. I had come back from the hospital this morning. This was the next day. This was our bedroom. And my t-shirt was drenched in my sweat.

"Steve?"

"Yes honey. I'm good! It was just a bad dream. Or so I think."

"Was it just a bad dream or was it a nightmare, Steve?", she probed further.

"No Lita, it wasn't. I promise. Now off you go back to sleep. Let me just use the john and come back to you, honey."

Lita gave me an exhausted look and went back to bed, shaking her head. I guess she can't be blamed after all these years of looking after me. She's not a mother of two, but three kids- Alex, Alisha and me.

Alex is my eldest and goes to college. He is majoring in Arts & Entertainment Management, Theatre and Literature. He wants to become a writer & a film director.

I have read his stories, and I'm not going to lie, the kid does have a blessing on the pen.

Alisha is my younger daughter and is going to high school. So, Lita really has the tougher job here, having to alternate between taking care of her husband's mental health and her teenage daughter being an "emo-glum" as she likes to call it.

I went to it washroom, washed my face and stood by the handbasin, trying to process my dream. Who was that? What did he mean when he said he'll destroy me? What IS happening to me?

All of a sudden, I heard a cacophony of screeches. It felt like the sounds came both far from the outside and within my body as well. When I looked up at the mirror above, I was greeted with words, written with what I think must have been blood.

YOU KNOW ME, STEVE. YOU'VE KNOWN ME ALL ALONG, MATE.

An uneasy silence crept over me. As I went to inspect the words closer, my eyes faded to blackness. All of a sudden, I was in a wide forest with a torch in my hand. In front of me, maybe about quarter a mile away, was an abandoned warehouse with a windmill to its side. The night was as dark as it could get and the wind was howling grim lullabies into my ears. In a trice, the torch in my hand lit with red energy, as the warehouse illuminated with the same energy at a distance. I followed toward the energy and entered the warehouse. It looked larger on the inside than it did on the outside.

Once I entered into the warehouse, the forest that lied on the outside turned into pitch black. It was almost as if I was being pulled into someone else's imagination and they were putting me in these bizzare situations. The pillars that held the warehouse up high had inscriptions on them. They were symbols of some sort which had been illuminating the energy. But on a closer look, they weren't mere symbols but represented some sort of a language. I was able to deduce that because certain symbols were constantly repeating. In front of me, further along the warehouse, was a statue made of a peculiar kind of marble. It looked and felt like marble, but seemed to be reflecting more than the average marble. As I tried to inspect the statue with the torch in my hand, I saw my own reflections on the sides of the statue. As I was examining it, my reflections started to open their mouths, while I wasn't actually moving my mouth at all. Almost instantaneously, my reflections multiplied and they were opening their mouths as if to show that they were in agony. They started hitting the marble statue, from the inside. I realized that those were not my reflections. They were actually versions of me, trapped inside this statue, trying to free themselves. I quickly put the torch on the floor and tried to push the statue down. It fell and broke down to pieces and out of it, came a black gooey substance, similar to what I saw two nights ago, from the eyes of the skeleton. As I realized this, the gooey liquid engulfed me and and trapped me in a huge sphere. And as a tried to scream, the liquid entered my mouth, into my body, down my esophagus, filling me heavy with its presence. As it filled me, I watched in horror that I was becoming the eye of the skull from which this liquid dripped. I knew this to be the case because, I saw my shoes in front of first, then my face coming down to pick the skull up, and finally picking it up. It felt like time had warped through space, allowing me to witness this horror. As the skull shrank, so did my body crush inside its hollow eyes.

That was when I woke up. Wait a minute. How did I get to the bed? The last thing I remember was checking the mirror above the handbasin in the washroom. I ran to check it and was unsurprisingly greeted with a clean mirror. I brushed my teeth, washed my face and came out. I checked the time and it was around 6:30 am. I came into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee. That was when Lita came from the terrace, finishing her morning yoga session.

"Slept good, my luv?", she asked.

"Couldn't have been better honey."

I guess my sense of sarcasm had not been reduced and she sensed it too.

"Did you notice anything written on the mirror this morning when you used the washroom, Lita?"

"Like what, babe?", she asked, predisposed with removing her tee and washing her sweat with the towel on my shoulders.

"I don't know exactly. But did you notice anything?", I asked her knowing exactly what she was going to say.

"No Steve, there wasn't anything written on the mirror. You woke up from your "bad dream", went to use the washroom and came straight back to bed."

Ah, there it was. More of the insanity was surrounding me. I knew I had seen the words and felt it to be all too real. But what happened after that felt a little surreal. The warehouse. The lights. The scriptures. The marble statue. The skull's eye. Whatever they were, they can wait. I needed to do something first.

"Oh okay honey. Alright I'm going to go on a light jog and I'll be back within 45 minutes."

"Do you think that's a good idea Steve?", she asked.

"Why not??"

"I mean, considering that you met with an accident just two days back, I think it would be better if you took some rest."

"Oh babe, I WOULD feel better only if I jog and get my engine running.", I squabbled back. With that, I kissed my wife of 20 years, got my running shoes, took my headset, and went out of the house for a quick run.

This was one of the most favorite things that I loved to do- to jog mindlessly with my music in my ears. This served as a way to sever myself from reality and become one with nature, especially since my house was in a place surrounded with damp marshy trees. I preferred to have our house on the outskirts of the city, so that we can drive into and away from civilization and be left alone, unless and until human interaction was required. Lita wasn't a fan of my reasoning, but loved the fact that our kids could get to grow learning to appreciate nature.

As Kanye West's "POWER" started playing, I did a quick sprint on the side of the roads leading into the city. The dawn of the sun was accompanied with birds chirping and getting busy with whatever they do in the morning. The wind blew over me and I felt as if I was becoming an engine of a rocket, ready to be launched into the skies for an intergalactic journey. As Kanye rapped,

"No one man should have all that power

The clock's ticking, I just count the hours", I was inclined to agree with him. You're right, Ye. No one man should have that much power.

By the time I came back, my kids were wide awake and getting ready for school.

"Good morning, younglings of the Richards household! I, your father, have arrived from his journey into the wild to settle for a beautiful life with his beautiful wife that is your mother." God I loved being a dad. You get to annoy your children as much as you could. "Ugh dad! Stop that shit!", cried Alisha, in disgust. "Language, Ms.Alisha!", yelled Lita from the kitchen. Alex came running down the staircase as he heard me enter the house. "Oh my Master, this is Alex Richards, at your service. I'm here to sing your praises all over the world, but before that, would you be so kind as to read my script that I gave you ONE WEEK back to proofread? You know, the script that I have to submit in two days' time, my master?" "Oh yes! I almost forgot that, kid. I'll finish it tonight and let you know Alex." "Thank you dad. Please do that. Also, I'm not a kid anymore, old man. I can't say the same for this pancake hogging machine I need to call my sister. Totally not you Alisha." , he said, snatching the pancake from Alisha's plate. "Haha Alex. Very funny. At least, I don't smoke weed, thinking that my parents don't know about it, all in the name of art." Isn't it great to call these my kids? Equal parts funny and nasty. "THAT'S NOT TRUE, MOM!", cried Alex. "Oh sure honey, it's not. If your father is not having his nightmares, then you certainly are not smoking pot." My wife, ladies & gentlemen. I looked over at Lita and she mouthed 'we need to talk'. I knew where this was going and didn't have the strength to face that. At least not yet. I went and kissed her, and then Alisha. I messed up my son's neatly combed hair and ran to take a shower. As I came out of the shower in my towel and opened the cupboard to pick my clothes, I saw a little mud around drawer within. I opened and took the skull totem out. It had a smidgeon of mud on it, exactly like the mud from near the warehouse. Was it all real then? Was I there actually? What was happening? As I fidgeted with the totem and looked over the window to close the curtains, I saw the shadow of a man watching me from the trees. He wore a purple suit. That was the one I wore two days back, on the night of the accident. I thought I was imagining him until I saw his face. There was no face, no identifiable structure. But I could make out his expression, still. He was smiling at me. But not of the warm kind, but of the wicked kind. I kept the totem on my bed, put on my shorts and ran down the stairs out of my house to check. But, not to my surprise, there wasn't anyone. There was not even the slightest of the signs that someone had stood there. As I searched the area a little, I stumbled upon something. There it was lying in all its glory- the skull. Again. It looked exactly like the one I had. I ran up again to check on it, but there was not even a smallest sign of its presence. I think I was holding the same skull. Somehow it had managed to get across to the forest from my house. But I was holding it in my hands just moments ago. How did this happen? More importantly, why was this happening? ...