Insomniac

12:00 PM

Husssshhhhh….

Do you hear this? This horrible ticking?

Tick… tick… tick…

I turned around my study chair. On the wall behind me, there was a clock. A large and antique.

Tick… tick… tick

The pendulum swayed like a death axe. The air around me felt heavier. Sweat poured on my forehead and an immeasurable chill went down my spine.

The ticking was getting profound. It was irritating. I felt like burying my nails inside my skin. My thumping heart was sinking in this ticking. It was getting louder. More distinct. More perilous.

In a moment, I heard a screeching voice, it went tearing my ears. I could feel its shrillness near my toes. It was like a moan of a dying cat.

I peeped below my study table.

It was a baby. His head was like a melon on a relatively large torso. He had a broad and flattened nose, and two small holes for nostrils. His eyes were monstrous and fatal. He was covered all in a blanket except his head, which was only a millimetre away from my toes.

I looked around there was no one in the library.

Should I hit him?

There was no choice. The creature was annoying.

"Bang… bang…. bang…." I hit the baby's face thrice with my foot.

But that was a deadly mistake. The baby overturned and came towards me. He opened his mouth and there were dagger-like teeth. Murderous and menacing.

He crawled and clutched my leg and bit my thigh. Blood splashed through my pants. I punched the baby hard and resisted him. But he was inseparable. His eyes were burning. His demon-like bloody face bruised my muscles. The pain of getting chewed was unbearable.

I felt earthworms crawling in my heart. Like I have lost a litre of blood.

And I fainted.

2:15 PM

I was conscious again. My pants were draped in blood. I touched my thighs to realize the wounds were painful. It was no dream. My thighs were chewed at places along with my pants. The baby had incised his teeth to the depth of bone in the middle of the thigh.

My hands, my face everything was stained with blood.

The moment I looked back I saw the clock again. Its ticking was different this time. There was no ticking at all, I thought for once. It was dead silence. But my mind resumed the sound.

"Tick…. Tick…. Tick…."

The sound was within me. For once I thought, my heart is the ticking clock. It is beating to tick, faster and faster, harder and harder.

I need to escape from this place. The place was fearsome.

I limped towards the door, holding my leg. I felt weak and diseased. Blood was oozing out from wounds.

The door was locked. My hands turned cold, and my heart sank. I had no courage to break the door.

But I had to break it, there was no escape. It was a glass door. I saw a fire extinguisher by the door side. I clutched its handle and lifted it. I hit it with a force on the door. A crack appeared in the glass. I again hit it harder. Cracks appeared like cobwebs. I inhaled deep to make a greater impact. But, when I hit the glass for the third time with all my might blood spilt through a small triangular crevice. My hands went numb and my feet rooted to the ground. The fire extinguisher fell from my hands. On the opposite side of the glass door stood a woman, shrieking to the skeleton, her hair short and lips like a duck. I gulped my saliva. Her eyes were traumatizing. They protruded like they were on the verge to pop out. They were swollen and devastated like they have seen the world's greatest horror.

The woman picked up a sharp shattered glass piece and cut through the centre of her breast down to her belly. Blood dripped through her white clothes. She forced her fingers through the blood-oozing wound. She was trying to open her cut wider. It was painful to see this. In a moment she managed to move her skin a centimetre apart. I could see her blood dripping entrails, her stomach crying blood, liver like rotten flesh.

But, the horror was in her eyes. Her eyes were transfixed like they could bear any pain.

The woman continued to tear her apart. She was already dead, only her hands were powerful enough.

You must be thinking why I didn't help her? I must have hit the fire extinguisher and stopped her. Saved her from doing anything.

But I didn't.

You require an urge, a desire to help someone. But an urge greater to not help, to be a spectator and see the crime happening. And do you know why this urge filled me?

Because I was enjoying this pain. I was feeling every bit of agony, that woman was suffering through. I loved that pain.

I continued to watch her. Feel her pain in her large protruding eyes till I fainted.

NEXT DAY

"Hmm… so you say that these all things happened to you? That baby eating you, that woman terrorizing you and you staring at her helpless." Asked a psychiatrist, her hair short but scattered and spectacles larger than her face.

"…..Yes ma'am" I replied. I was admitted to the hospital in the morning by a librarian in a near-to-death condition. Everyone was shocked. There were rumours that I had tried to commit suicide. But this was the first time someone heeded my story. I wanted an answer to what had happened last night.

"My dear son, you are in a pathetic condition. Let me explain." The psychiatrist looked tensed. I drank water placed in front of me.

"Let us start from the beginning. You were sleep deprived and didn't take a nap for the past two days. It means you were suffering from insomnia, and you might not know that.

"And then you again came to this library. A place where you have piled up all your stress and burdens. So, first, you started hallucinating a clock ticking louder. And the more you focused, the more profound it got. Son, it was all in your head. Didn’t you feel it inside you the other time?”

I tried to speak but I couldn't. I nodded.

"And that baby. Do you know from where it came? It was from your medical textbook. See here…"

The psychiatrist showed a book related to genetics. In which a baby was drawn with a round face, broad nose and holes for nostrils. Below it was written 'cri-du-chat syndrome in which the baby cries like a cat.

"The baby was your hallucination." She concluded.

"And the wounds on my legs?" I pointed my finger towards my thigh.

"It must be difficult for you but…. when we checked the CCTV footage you were seen biting your own thigh. You were tearing your own flesh. But don't be afraid."

I placed both my hands on my mouth. This can't be possible.

The psychiatrist waited for some time. So that the reality could sink in.

"And then came that woman's story. I think you must have imagined a patient of exophthalmos, eyeball protruding in the subjects. And you know why you developed such sympathy for that woman? Because it was your reflection.

"And you say you saw the greatest fear, the greatest horror in her eyes. My dear son they were your eyes. That's why you felt satisfaction in her pain, that's why you didn't want to help her.

"And if you don't believe me… see this."

She played a video on her phone.

'I was standing in front of a glass door taking a broken glass piece. Cutting my body from chest to belly. Forcing the cut to open.'

I closed my eyes I couldn't see it anymore. I cried helplessly placing both my hands over my eyes.