fiction.

His vision was blurred when he opened his eyes once more, it took him 5 long seconds to focus on the swinging pendulum he was holding up with his right hand.his left hand was resting gently on the table. the room was dark, dimly lit by a lonely yellow 40W bulb hanging from the ceiling that casted a long shadow behind his silhouette. he was trying to focus on not focusing on anything, however,at the back of his mind, inside a vault which many of his wearies reside, he is trying hard to supress the surfacing feeling,the surfacing of his conscious and over-worried mind. as the swinging brass knob leads his eyes swinging to the hypnotic rhyme, his stiff shoulders gradually let go,his head drops and a faint message slowly fades up to the pitch black that his closed eye sees, he told himself : " i will continue to dwell and drop deeper and deeper into the next level of my subconsciousness;into the greater self in me. and i will be able to answer the questions that the lesser self in me had asked." and in the shape of a hunched silhouette leaning back onto a couch, he dropped deeper ,and deeper and deeper.

It was his solitary moment. he didnt know whether other people had the need for such a thing, a moment to be alone, to be away from everything and everyone else. but he was sure he needed that loneliness to savour, all by himself,the peace was his short term getaway- renewed atleast every other forth night. and it was, to him, as important as drugs are, to addicts.

However, today was a little different, not because he had just bought himself a brand new red colored ALFA ROMEO 156, not because he had hit top sales this month, again, No it's not that.in fact, he had always been aware of his ability to perform his job beautifully, he was the gem and leader of the whole salesforce , the ruby in everyone's eyes. Today had become different not because of these routine,it was something that he hadnt encountered before, it was different because he couldnt remember anything at all, anything at all after lunch.
and it's unusual for his efficient mind just to have the whole chunk of the half day's memory to be taken away ,as if it had evaporated off into thin air. ..the only image that seemed to register is a set of digital display numbers that resembles a tell of time : 3:15. thats it.

So he went home and sat inside the dark room. he shut his eyes very tight. so very tight that he starts to see stars and streaks that float around the pitch black darkness inside his shut eyelids.for a moment he thought they looked like imaginary plankton cels floating in the sea. floating so gracefully until he gently releases his firm tightening grip of his eye muscles.. and it took 5 long seconds before his eye caught up with the swinging pendulum he had intended to use, to hypnotize himself . like an elevator ascending up a building that reaches into the heavens, he drops gradually deeper and deeper into a seemingly undefined depth.as usual, he envisions himself being naked holding only a piece of paper--some sort of a tag on which he wrote down the questions, that he was out to seek for its answers. and wat started as a slight sink ,soon became a drastic plunge, and the surrounding light speckles start to blur into light streaks. not knowing when, he had lost the vision of his naked self. now it was pure nothingness.he wasnt sure whether it was still plunging or not, for nothing was certain at such a level.

It felt like an eternal period of serenity. like scaling a familiar mountain, this is the point where he always liked most. a place when at times he hadnt any questions to ask, he'd stay here to enjoy the peace.But today this is not where he intended to stop at. he remembers that on the paper he's holding, is a question that had boggled his mind for the whole afternoon. he still remembers that the lesser him is an impatient person that gets easily annoyed when the answer is hidden from him.so he drifts his thoughts, the more he lets go, the deeper he continues to sink...

Then the darkness continues to flood most of the nothingness, until. UNTIL the moment when a burst of white color blasts out,rapidly filling the whole nothingness with white sparkling fluid like flooding light., and suddenly he realised that being in this mind-picture, he could notice nothing but the question that he was carrying- the piece of tag he was carrying all along this journey. although he has had a great number of times experiencing this level of meeting with his "greater-self", he cant help being mesmerized, every single time, by the splendour and fantasticity of this unutterable experience. he only remembered, at this very moment, the only thing: which is to ask the question.and he knew, after asking, he will then proceed to have a vision, some sort of a dream that carries the answer which he will then wake up from. at this moment, he felt relieved. it felt like christmas morning , sitting infront of the christmas tree with the presents in your hands waiting to open it.: he knew that the question his "lesser-self" had posed will be answered shortly, he will soon find out what happened during the mysterious afternoon that he hadnt any memory about.

As he took a deep breath.. he saw a quick transition from the whiteness to a projection of moving images in front of him. there were many shapes and colors. mostly deformed and blurred, or more appropriately , as if smudged.which,there was nothing at all that he could possibly relate to.until he came to a few green dots that slowly fade out to form a familiar sort of sign. as if by instinct, he took up the tag he brought along and looked at it. on top of it, was written: "what is 3:15 ""what happenedd this afternoon" ..and he quickly realised that the green dots that are taking form, were actually becoming clearer and clearer, and they resemble a digital display of 3:15pm .. he felt, at that moment, weird.Weird because there was a mixture of satisfaction and dissatisfaction--Satisfaction from getting to know that 3;15 is actually a display of time , dissatisfaction being curios of why it is the only thing he could ever remember at all.

It was his "greater-self" state he was in now, so he was patient. and waited for a moment. he paid attention to everything blurring pass his eyes, he anticipated because somehow he felt that in no time, the visions will be clearer. by then, he will be able to crack the afternoon's mystery.

"in no time" was a perfect description because he couldnt define how much time had actually passed. But all of a sudden. he paused. he paused in awe and shock. he saw what he had never expected to see. something that made him doubt the reliability of these visions. all of a sudden, he wanted to believe that these visions were NOT accurate. he wanted to believe that what he saw wasnt true.but he knew well enough that these visions were ALWAYS accurate. from what he saw he concluded, he knew that he will stay in this eternal serenity.

From the blurry moving images, he could gradually make out shapes. the major color in the picture is in red. as the image clears out, it showed the interior of a red coloured car. the clock was there. it showed 3.15 pm . it was a dashboard digital display clock. and it was up-side-down. as the image gets clearer and clearer, he can see that the windscreens were all shattered, and he could now differentiate there were two shades of red in the picture. the darker looked like blood. and he knew it's his. -- the moving image keep looping . it was a short sequence that kept looping and stopping at the green display: 3:15pm .That, he realised ,was his final image. the final snap of moment when everything had terminated for him. he knew he was to stay at his table. in the dark room. in his solitude. for eternity.



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it is said that in the event of a great disaster, the subconscious mind takes over the conscious mind. for him, probably he wouldnt even know that at 3:20, i saw his overturned car beside a heavily damaged tanker. and i grieved for him.

--the end.