The Sleepwalker

The likes of you, you think I am a spiv. How grossly mistaken you are.

But, then again, your race has never been able to look past yourselves. You create a make believe world of illusions, that dangles like a huge cobweb around you, and you are content to live in the confines of those sticky strands, trapped like unsuspecting houseflies.

I am no con artist. I do not swindle. I do not defraud. I do not cheat. It is a part of your nature, not mine.

I just do my job, honestly, with the greatest respect and honour for my boss, and keeping in mind the sole restriction He has set upon me: “Whatever happens, you cannot be seen!”

I can sense the unsaid question in your mind. I will answer that for you. It is for your own good that you cannot see me. If you did, you would be scared. And, that, my mortal friend, is the understatement of the millennium.

I can cause havoc with my hurricane like blows. I can make tranquil tides turn into torrential tirades of destruction. I can cause the skies to explode, piercing your existence with shards of pain so intense, you would beg for mercy. I can create apocalypse for you, with the blink of an eyelid.

My mere presence is enough to send you running for safety.

What would happen if I showed you my sinister face?

I wear a robe of smoke, blacker than the charred remains of wood tossed into fire. My eyes glow red in the spirit of slaughter. The crook of my upturned smile is the stuff of your worst nightmares. My mouth heaves with an unquenched thirst for blood, muscle and gore. My cheeks bear a grayish gash, from those who have tried to fight me, in vain. My scar will heal. But, they would never make it back to life.

Hahhhaa. The foolish naivety they bring you up with. They teach you that you can triumph over me. They teach you that I can be subdued, conquered. I, the face of the devil himself. What match are you against my all consuming powers?  

Not scared, are you? Defiance has been a trait I have always admired.

Perhaps you do not know yet that I am here for revenge. For all the times you have escaped me. Fooled me. Taunted me, lured me! Taking enormous advantage out of my sleepwalking. But, you do not realize that I am at my best and worst when I sleepwalk. And I am also one of the lucky few who know that they do walk in their sleep.

I am here, searching through your streets, friend! Searching for a door that is open in my anticipation. And also for a closed one, where they are asleep, oblivious to the sound of my menacing footsteps. Searching, all the time. Waiting, for the perfect moment to strike.

 

Whatever happens, they will not see me. All they will catch hold of will be false evidences, implanted craftily to mask my presence and reveal it, at the same time.

You thought that Chernobyl burned because of nuclear explosions? That the World Trade Centre crashed because of air terror strikes? Do you, like everybody else, take the Holocaust in Nazi Germany to be a genesis of Hitler’s eccentricity? Do you believe that the Great Chinese famine was a consequence of a miscalculation by nature?

Wars. Floods. Tsunamis. Volcanic eruptions. Earthquakes. Genocides. Bombings.  All of them, me. You will see them all the time. But you will never see me!

Part of my job description! Part of my plan.

But the best of my plans have always been ones that took your people away in their sleep.

The first house on the left. The first floor. Bedroom. A five year old girl sleeps, with her teddy in her hands. The medicine she had was expired. I made sure she won’t wake up. Ever.

436 kilometers South, a lady, snoring away, stabbed in the back with a knife. I saw to it that the thief got to her and did not spare her.

A spurned lover. How I relished inflicting more pain upon him, as he slit his wrist and slept, in a pool of scarlet. Heaven! Or rather, hell. My favorite place ever.

I was there, at all these places, wrestling with them. I was there. In those pills, in the thief’s intentions, in the edges of the blade that drew blood. There, all at once. But, no one will know. Because by the time they come, my job will be done. Murder everywhere, and the murderer, me, free as a bird, off in search of a new victim.

There will always be an excuse, a cover up, a reason, logic. I leave so much of myself behind, but they always manage to lose me. They do not know that I am beyond explanations. Inevitable.

I am just a sleepwalker on duty, drowned in an abyss of sleep. Because you won’t let me wake up. This permanent sleep that you have cursed me with is another reason why I kill. So that you can’t wake up, too! 

I am just a sleepwalker, called Death! I am a sleepwalker you will never see. And, I am coming for you, as you sleep!