WRITTEN BY BHAGATH SUBRAMANIAN.
I thought I was in purgatory the first night it happened.
I can’t sleep most nights, but that first night was different. The dormitory was quiet. It shouldn’t be that way. Some forty other boys all asleep in their beds, and not a single sound of shuffling, snoring or coughing. Forty other warm bodies, catatonic and unconscious. They were allowed release from this day. Escape.
But I was still there. Unmoving, frozen. Only my eyes could move. They were the only parts of me that I could still command. Even then, my eyelids refused to close. My blanket became a cocoon. I did not know if I would emerge from it. Maybe the darkness would wither me down into some primeval sludge- unthinking and unknowing. Maybe then I could have peace. The boys and the warden would discover me in the morning. Nothing but pool of jelly.
But I was there. I was still dense. I still had form. I was trapped.
I couldn’t sleep.
Was this some sort of torment? Was I paying for a sin?
My eyes began to dart around. I needed something, anything. I needed comfort. Some light. Maybe a face. All I saw around me were dark corners and silhouettes. Other boys in their own cocoons, their chests rising and falling rhythmically in their sleep. Dark, slow pulsing ellipses. My eyes began to search the corners of the rooms. Nothing. Nothing but unrelenting shadow. I pleaded with my gaze to peer deeper into the darkness. Maybe something would peel itself from the blackened walls of the dorm. The further I peered into the darkness, the more the shadows seemed to sway. Endless black peppered by blacker blacks, tiny whorls of shadow spinning like dust balls.
I looked away to glance elsewhere-
Wait.
I looked back into the far corner. There. In the shadows.
Eyes. Looking back at me.
They were tender eyes. They seemed to catch a glint of some light from some formless source. They soft, beautiful eyes. Their gaze met mine. It was looking at me.
The eyes came forward, and with them a face. The drained face of a woman, with pale lips-
Her lips. Her lips were split open where they met the cheeks. Her mouth hung open, gaping, ripped open till where her jaws met at joints.
My eyes began to drop down to her chin, and then her neck. Whatever was left of her windpipe dangled below what was left of her throat. A head was all she was.
Floating. Swaying her black hair from side to side, slowly. Floating. Ethereal. In that moment I knew, I should be terrified. What I felt was numbness.
No. It was peace.
She began to drift towards me, her head still swaying from side to side. The room was so deathly quiet, I could hear her hair swish. Swaying, gently, like a metronome made of silk. An unearthly lullaby. She was close now. Her mouth began to widen. Her jaws seemed to unhinge themselves. My eyelids began to feel heavy. The bed was comfortable. And warm. It felt nice.
The last thing I saw before I fell asleep, was her swaying hair right above me.
I woke up the next day. I was well rested. I got off the bed and stretched as the other boys began to wake up. My toes curled. I hadn’t slept this well in a long time. I was at peace. I had a feeling that the day would be a good one. And it was.
Lessons were no trouble and meals didn’t taste bland. No fights or beatings. No anxious sweating or feeling lost. The day was adequate. The day was good.
Then the night rolled around. Once again, everyone else was as good as dead as far as I was concerned. I was frozen once more. But I felt no fear. I wasn’t alone.
SHE was there. Watching over me, from her damned corner. She made me feel at peace. Her mutilated smile and her dead eyes. Her severed neck, adorned with bits of raw red. She was my confidante, my keeper of secrets.
It was like that for many nights.
I would come back to the dorm and relinquish myself to this damned cocoon. I would make myself prisoner to the wretched night. But I never hesitated, because I knew she would be there. Watching, with her mouth hung wide open. With her colourless eyes trained on me. No, not on me. Maybe into me. Beyond me.
I confessed to her all my woes, my sorrows, my anxieties, my wants.
And she listened. Unmoving. Steadfast. Dead.
What I couldn’t find among the living, I had found in what the living had forgotten.
My days began to improve. No one crossed me. My days were more peaceful. Numb? No. Peaceful. I kept to myself during the day and spent my nights in rapture with the beheaded beauty.
She helped me sleep. After we had spent a few hours talking, she would open up her mouth wide. She’d show me the jagged teeth and raggedy flesh inside. She’d begin to sway, and her hair would play its soft lullaby. The sound was like a gentle hand stroking my hair, coaxing me into unconsciousness. She would begin to float towards me, her mouth widening. And then I’d fall asleep.
Many months later, I was pulled out of school. I don’t know why, to this day. My parents told me that I needed a break. That the teachers were concerned. But my test scores were high, I was well behaved.
I didn’t understand.
I can barely remember the summer of that year. We moved to the country, far from the noise. What I do remember is my parents deeming me better. I was healthier to them. There was a light in my face. I was sleeping well.
Come to think of it, I think I was happy. A little bit.
They put me back into school the next year. I was excited. They were happy to have me back. There were a lot of compliments. I had grown, I had gained weight, my hair was thick and dark, my face was cheery. And for the most part, I was cheery too.
Until the night came.
They gave me my old bunk and wished me goodnight.
Some forty other boys came and went to bed.
I stayed awake.
I was waiting for my friend.
I stayed as still as I could and didn’t take my eyes off of her dark corner of the room.
I shuffled in my bed. I tossed and turned. I got up to grab a glass of water and rushed back to bed.
My friend wasn’t there.
I cried myself to sleep that night.
And many nights after that.
Tomorrow will be my last day in this school. My family is leaving the country. It’s also the final day of the school year. All around, it was a great year.
I was finally healthy. Happy. I was part of the world again. But I was not whole. Something felt off. Like I was missing something. Maybe a final goodbye at the least.
I wrote my final exam and spent the rest of the day in the library. I didn’t really do any reading. Mostly looked at pictures of birds and lizards.
We all stayed up a bit late in the dorms, joking and saying our goodbyes.
We went to bed when the warden told us.
Some forty other boys and I went off to our beds. We all began to fall asleep one by one. My eyelids began to get heavy and shutter.
Wait.
My friend.
I looked into the corner again. I hadn’t for so long.
Nothing.
After a while, I got out of bed and walked towards the corner.
Nothing.
Maybe that’s all it ever was.
I went back to bed. I tossed. I turned. I turned away from the corner, to face the entrance to the dorm. To face the windows, showing the hallway with its faint night lights.
I closed my eyes.
Soon, I began to fall asleep to the soft sound of hair, swaying in the dark.
I slept well.
Cover photograph by Bhagath Subramanian.
© Bhagath Subramanian. All rights reserved.