Hysteria | Complete.

Chapter 4

Something heavy was weighing me down, a mass resting on top of my chest. My limbs felt numb, devoid of any other sensation apart from thousands of insects crawling all over my body. It was too dark, too quiet. I tried peering my eyes open to inspect my condition but the more force I applied to part my lids, the heavier they became. Suddenly, the mass pressing into my ribcage slid down, creeping towards my abdomen. I could feel my sweater had ridden up by the way my muscles clenched the moment they come into contact with the furry sensation.

‘Furry?’

The realization seemed to have woken up my sleepy mind, causing me to sit up with a sudden jolt. A small yelp accompanied my abrupt movement making me shift my widened eyes down only to find a pair of yellow eyes looking up at me through the gap between my thighs.

It was a small black kitten, which had been lying on top my torso and had fallen down on my legs due to my unannounced action.

Rubbing the back of head with the side of my palm, I picked the kitten up with my left hand, looking around at the same time as I pushed my legs to stand up. As far as my sight allowed, I could only see a humungous sugarcane field surrounding me.

“How, in hell did I end up here?”

“Meow,”

The soft purring brought my attention back towards the small creature huddled in my palm, looking up at me with its cute little amber eyes.

‘Wait, amber eyes?’

“Hysteria?”

A slow Cheshire cat like grin spread across the kitten’s lips, taking over more than half of its small face, making me turn pale with the realization. I had heard that djinns can take forms of both humans and animals but I had never witnessed it with my own eyes. Seeing it happen before my eyes seemed to have rattled my brain,

‘Is he a djinn?

Just as I was about to look at the kitten closely, it jumped up towards my face, licking my lips with its slimy tongue before sprinting away without a look back,

It took me a moment or two to recover from the shock.

Hysteria was guarding my unconscious body in animal form yet he was the one who had brought me here in the first place, and now that rascal had run away, leaving me alone in this unfamiliar place,

“Come back here, you bastard! Take me out of here!”

I shouted loudly in the direction the kitten had disappeared off to, hoping for some kind of cheeky reply to resonate through the dark, but only soft whooshing of air answered me back,

“Fuck you!”

Nothing.

“Is this your way of dumping me in a harder level? This is my life not a game!”

I continued speaking gibberish, aiming to cajole a remark out of him but still no sound was heard.

Puffing my cheeks with frustration, I took my phone out of the back pocket of jeans, turning its flashlight on to cast some light on the murky fields encircling me. Nothing much was visible except for the green leaves resting on top of tall stalks sticking in every other direction. Cool night breeze passing through the crop would stir the deadly silence every other minute by rustling the tips of the elongated leaves, urging me to tighten my clutch on my phone impulsively as I continued looking side to side in order to avoid a repeat telecast of the night earlier.

‘I need to get out of this maze and I need something sharp to protect myself as well,’

Just thinking about something popping out of these field had lead me to break into a cold sweat.