Dark Horse Arts and Sciences

“The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.”    Albert Camus.

That night, I went to bed at around 1 am after finishing my quantum mechanics homework. Sometimes I think how absurd quantum mechanics can be! How did they come up with that idea of a particle being in two different forms at the same time? How could Scrhrodinger’s cat be dead and alive at the same time? Well, I had absolutely no idea at all. Thinking about all this stuff when my eyes shut off to complete blankness, I didn’t realize. Doesn’t it always happen? Like we just don’t have any clue when we make a transition from that thoughtfulness to a complete shut down of consciousness!

So, it’s around 3 am in the night. The darkest period of a long winter night. I wake up all sweating and my bed sheet all wet those drops of sweat from my naked body. It is always the same. I usually get up around 3 am after having a terrifying yet real and vivid dream. But there’s something not right at the moment; my instinct suggests me. But what is it? Something seems out of place. Oh, I see it now, though I can’t comprehend what I’m seeing before my eyes at the moment. I am not in my room. At least it doesn’t seem so. I’m only seeing a rotating ceiling fan upon me but nothing other than that. The room or whatever it is, is completely dark. I try to reach out for my table lamp beside my bed, but there isn’t any. I’m not in that dream; I’m quite sure about that. So, what is this place after all?

Now the light is on. How did it happen; I have no idea though. There isn’t any switch for it here. What I’m seeing before my eyes is a rectangle kind of place with walls made of glasses and some other material. I may have seen that material somewhere, but can’t reconcile where. But I still see that ceiling fan over my head, rotating at full speed. But surprisingly, the wind isn’t reaching me. It’s like some barrier is ceasing that air to come to me. Now I hear some beeping sound; sound that usually emanates from a cell-phone. But where is my cell-phone? It was right here, just beside me before I went to sleep. I searched through the bed sheet, but didn’t find it.

Finally, Kobo, my friend in the other room, goes to hit the sac after finishing his philosophy seminar prep. He’s been working on this seminar for a week now. However, he has been into this guy named Albert Camus, some late absurdist, for the last couple of weeks. He would try to throw some around me whenever we were having dinner together or something. He’d be like, “ Hey, yo! Do you thing this universe is meaningless? That nothing really matters? That there is no meaning to life? It’s just shallow and empty like the interstellar space?” This kind of philosophical discussions would probably last as long as two to three hours. But I had always enjoyed it though. I always enjoy these pessimistic and nihilist school of thought that Albert Camus had been into back then. Well, if it hadn’t been for Kobo, I wouldn’t have known shit about philosophy.

So, where were we? Ya, we were talking about Kobo. Kobo went to bed at three; the time when I just woke up from this strange terrifying vision. In the dream, I’m stuck in this kind of box thing and the box has in it some kind of radioactive material that is just there; in a corner. Then someone opens this box and the radioactive material starts emanating radiation. That radiation penetrates through my nostrils and went straight to my lungs. And after some time, I’m dead. I feel so claustrophobic that I began sweating; this time in reality. I guess this dream was a direct consequence of my exact last thought before sleeping; the Scrhrodinger’s cat experiment. In the dream, I felt like I was the cat, and I was pushed into that box for some senseless and stupid experiment by some lunatic physicist.

Dreams really intrigue me. I mean how they are formed and how they feel so real sometimes. Sometimes I also think people who die in their sleep actually get so frightened by their dreams that they get heart attacks and hence, pass away.

So, what am I going to probably do now? I’m stuck in this blank empty space with no idea where to go. I start yelling, ‘ Kobo, Kobo” , but in vain.

The light gets turned on again. This time, I feel a thud kind of thing. Like some earthquake has struck the earth. Who is switching on and off the light? Is it some kind of joke by Kobo? Then I started running but got hit by a wall. I started running the opposite side but the same. From this hit-and run, I came to realize that this was a very small compact room. But what the hell the ceiling fan is doing over my head? It looks like my own. But what’s it doing here anyway?

Meanwhile, Kobo wakes up for a piss at around 4 am. He then goes to the fridge to fetch some water, but there isn’t any. He brings a glass to have water from the tap, but bad luck. Now he turns towards my room and when he finds my room not being locked, he enters it and looks for water. And he finds out the bisleri bottle and gulps down all the water that is in it. The moment he starts leaving my room, he notices that I am not in the bed. My clothes are on the chair, but I am not there. Then he sees the phone on my bed vibrating. Who’s ringing at this hour of the night? As he comes to pick it up, the caller hangs up. “Bastard!” yells Kobo. He then guesses perhaps I may have been on the terrace to get some fresh air. But as he leaves the room he shuts the rotating fan down.

So, I’m totally stuck. But I hear a noise now. It seems as if someone is drinking water from a bottle as if that person has been thirsty for ages. Then the earthquake again. That earthquake is back, and also the lightening. But it again stops after a few seconds. Now I am submerged deep in my thoughts, surprised at the senselessness and absurdity of my current situation. As I’m gazing up, I see one last thing; the ceiling fan isn’t rotating anymore.

Author: Som Abhisek.