It was a Sunday night and there seemed to be strange silence outside. I stayed awake for a long time and couldn’t get proper sleep in spite of giving a hard try. I was trying to reading a book when I looked up and I saw someone passing along the window. I mustered enough courage to go and see who it was. As I looked out of the window, I saw a person with a large frame jostle around the corner. My heart started pounding heavily against my chest and I felt a sudden rush of adrenaline rush through me. Funny as it may sound; I was excited and scared to death at the same time.
Simply put, I think my "Fight - or - Flight" response may have been activated because sure felt like running back into my house, shutting the door tightly and forcing myself off to sleep for the sheer reason that the mysterious figure did look very intimidating. But curiosity got the better of me as I was overtaken by a powerful urge to make sure that the thing/person I perceived to be dangerous and harmful may well be something else. At least I was hoping so. As I mustered more courage, I rushed into my house to fetch a torch and a stick. I guess I did that for self defense since I was not particularly good at Martial Arts or any other perceivable form of self defense. As I locked my door and set off in search of that mysterious figure, I took one last look at my wristwatch, which I wore at all times of the day and the night, just to make sure I’m not too late for my late night adventure. It was well past midnight and I was reminded of the encouraging quote by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Heights by great men reached and kept were not obtained by sudden flight
But, while their companions slept, they were toiling upward in the night”.
The last phrase particularly set me off in an irky sort of a way and here I was defying all rules of sanity setting off in some direction in search of a mysterious figure just to find out whether my fears and concerns were valid. I set off in the dark, battling the strong urge to rush back home and sleep, it occurred to me how chilly it was. I clutched my shawl tightly and continued marching in the direction of the disappearance of the ‘mysterious figure’. As I turned the corner I saw footmarks over the railing of my house fence and subsequent steps that disappeared into the grass that had grown due to the heavy rainfall that happened frequently owing to the topography of the region that I lived in.
As I ventured further into the dark, I was struck by a sudden gush of cold air, which almost made me breathless and I was thrown off my feet into the dark. I heard distant cries in the distance bellowing unrecognizable faint sounds. I gathered my energies to offer help to the distressed trapped in the clutches of the wicked ‘demon’ that had crossed my house a while ago. With great difficulty I managed to move my limbs which felt numb due to the heavy cold outside, just to realize that my knee had been badly bruised and blood was oozing out of the wound that I had sustained in the gamble. In the background of the foggy night lightly illuminated by the moon shining overhead, I saw the same shady figure digging with a weapon that looked like a shovel and throwing wet mud in the air as a lady lay presumably unconscious on the ground nearby. I assumed so as I felt that she made no effort to make a move or escape from the clutches of this monster she was with though one could tell from a distance that she was alive and breathing. She just lay there motionless and limp. Never had I in my wildest dreams imagined that I would be facing such a situation in my life and I was naturally not prepared for it. But I decided to put up with the fear and anxiety and try to help the victim in every way possible to survive. I don’t think the butcher/assassin saw me lay there in excruciating pain or rather seemed to be unruffled by my presence. I was more inclined to believe the first option since it provided me some solace just knowing the fact that at least I was safe and unseen. I clutched hard on a stone that lay nearby and decided to make a move since the assassin seemed to be pretty busy digging the mud and get done with the task at hand.
I decided that I ought to move fast as the monster was giving finishing touches to the equally monstrous hole he had dug in the ground to possibly bury the lady. If something had to be done, it was now! I made up my mind, said my final prayers to god to just be there with me and with the stone clutched tightly in my hand, I ran the final few steps towards the assassin, who now had his back towards me. For one tantalizing moment, I sure hoped that this was all a dream and that I would wake up shortly panting and gasping for breath. But it wasn’t. With one final blow on the back of his head, I did away with the murderous assassin. Or so I thought. Slowly blood seeped through the cranial opening of the assassin that I had unintentionally created. I could not move and felt the numbness in my body as I stood there gasping for breath and still undecided whether I had done the right thing in hacking one person to death for the sake of another. Humanity sometimes comes in the way on sanity. Just like it did the other day.
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