Phobia

Standing alone in the long stretch of the dark hallway of the mansion with hundreds of rooms probably, I was feeling as if I was in my worst nightmare. I pinched myself, hard, and I realized it was not a dream but a reality. I was kidnapped!!!

I had injured my head and broke a couple of ribs in a car accident, I recalled that clearly, but with no watches to tell time and no windows open, in this mansion where I was abducted and brought I couldn't tell how long it had been since the accident. When I woke up, my head was hurting and chest was burning with pain, I was lying on the floor of a dirty room, dark room, the only ray of hope I could find was that of the light of a flickering candle down the long stretch of a comparatively dark hallway.

When I was young, there was a break-in in our house and the thief had caught hold of 5-year-old me as a shield with a knife on my throat asking my parents to stay away and allow him to escape. I remember still how his cold and iron fist had grabbed my bird-like shoulder with full strength and pulled me out of my bed into utter pitch darkness. I had developed nyctophobia since then and that day, in that hallway was like a test designed to overcome all my fears.

There was no sound at all. Silence. And only that candlelight and I was feeling drawn towards it like a moth to a flame. I did not know what was at the end of this and whether it was my captors, sitting there somewhere, what if I was walking right into my death, but with every passing moment I was realizing that it is critical for me to overcome this fear or else I would have killed my self before anybody else. I recalled my mother's words, " YOU are STRONG, YOU CAN do it!!", she would always encourage me, even when as a kid I would have to pee in the middle of the night and I would be scared, she would wait outside the bathroom and tell me this.

So, I sprinted, I sprinted the across the hallway and I reached the flame of the candle and suddenly there was light and sound and people, the mansion had faded and I was in the hospital, my chest hurt a lot and so did my head and my mom started weeping so hard as I looked at her and I heard the doctor saying my dad, " This is a miracle! We thought we had lost her".

Turns out that I had had a near-death experience and was dead for about 5 mins.