365 DAYS 365 TALES

A Black Out - Part 1 of 3

Karan had no idea as to why someone was so cruel as to keep clobbering his head.

"Peas!" Karan begged wondering why it was so dark around him. His eyes...Karan realized that something was really wrong with his eyes and the realization was just making Karan more nauseous.

"OPEN UP!" Someone screamed.

Karan groaned struggling to say something and found that his throat was also not in any great working shape. All Karan wanted to do was explain to the person that he could not open his eyes because there was something wrong with it. But Karan was having difficulty articulating that tiny thing. And things were still dark around him.

Karan groaned turning over again as his headache went another notch up. And that was when the impossible truth occurred to Karan – it was not dark around him. Karan realized that his eyes were closed.

Not that the realization helped Karan with his headache. The clobbering and the shouting were still on and Karan was trying to open his eyes. His eyes seemed glued shut and Karan rolled over, as he found that the floor under him was hard and cold.

Slowly, Karan managed to open his eyes and found that things were slightly better. Karan squinted and wondered whether seeing things which were greyish, hazy and moving without any normal pattern could be considered as "better".

"Open up!" The scream was so loud that Karan nearly whimpered begging the person to stop talking. And that was when another stark realization occurred to Karan. The clobbering was not in his head as he had thought. No one was asking Karan to open his eyes. The sound was coming from further away.

Karan made another herculean effort and pushed himself up, and stumbled back twice.

"POLICE!" The voice screamed again. "Open up!"

And Karan was willing to swear that it was because of the voice alone. There was absolutely nothing more menacing than the shouts of the policemen knocking on the door. That Karan knew from experience. And that voice was terrifying enough to probably even wake up the dead. Karan was still among the living and pushed himself to a sitting position almost immediately.

Things were blurred and hazy and Karan could feel his headache almost pounding him. And Karan made three discoveries. Three terrifying discoveries – Karan had no idea where he was. The small dinghy, slightly lit room was definitely not a place he knew. The second discovery which Karan made was even more scary. Karan had no idea how he ended up in the room. Karan just could not remember. And the third discovery was that there was no one in his room. Not one single person...

"BREAK DOWN THE DOOR!" The voice which yelled "Police" sometime back yelled in pretty much the same tone.

Karan nearly yelped as he looked at the room and that was when Karan made the fourth discovery. The cop who was so horrendously screaming his hearts out was not outside his room. The cops were probably in the next room and they were so loud that Karan could hear it too.

Karan stumbled and got up and that itself took him two minutes as he could hear a loud jarring from the next room, as he heard the sound of something metal jarring badly with the door from outside his door.

Karan pushed himself up, stumbling and falling twice, as he made his way to the door and was trying to open it, pulling his heavy jacket tightly to cover himself. It really spoke volumes of the state of the mind of the crime reporter that he was trying to push the door open without even opening the latch of the door.

And just when Karan was beginning to realize that something was really wrong with the lock of the door Karan found that his feet just could not support his weight anymore as Karan collapsed on the floor with a loud thud as he was groaning.