March 15, 2010

The sleep of eternity


A girl was walking in the rain. Her clothes clung in her body and she was dripping from head to toe. She cursed her luck for being there. She hadn’t planned to be there but fate plays strange tricks sometimes. She was meant to be in her cozy room sipping coffee in at that time but the sudden change in weather and some mechanical failure in her car took her to that place.

She had left her office and driven to her home when her car broke down in the middle of the road. She reached for her cell to call for a mechanic only to find the battery of her cell dead. Damn! She cursed her luck and kicked her car. She decided to walk to the nearest telephone booth to call for help and had walked a few distance when the fury of the heaven broke down on her drenching her. She ran for shelter to the nearest tree and sat underneath but she the downpour became heavier and it began to get dark. She was afraid because she had never walked that road though she had driven everyday to her work.

She started cursing and praying at the same time. She wished for a car to pass by so that she could ask for a lift but it looked like the folks were scared to come out in torrent rain. She was cold and tired but continued to walk towards her destination and it seemed ages before she saw the silhouette of the telephone booth. She heaved a sigh of relief and dashed towards it. As she ran, a car screech in front of her and she was blinded by a powerful beam of light. She screamed and covered her face in reflex.

Everything happened in a flash of light. She heard a murmur and felt someone lifting her up and taking her towards the waiting car. After that she lost her consciousness and the next thing she remembered was waking up in the hospital. She saw her neighbour sitting on a chair beside her bed and tried to recollect how she came to the place she hated the most. She had vowed never to visit that place a year ago when she lost the only person she cared about in that place.

She slowly looked around and saw another person in the room - A stranger. As she turned, the stranger smiled and came towards her. She gave a quizzical look so the stranger explained to her with guilt that she was in a motor accident and he was responsible for it.

She wanted to ask him how he found her neighbour but she couldn’t open her mouth. She raised her hand to feel her face only to feel her bandaged face. It was only then she realized that she could not move her legs. She must have been a pathetic sight. She wanted to know how long she had been there on the bed but she had no means of knowing that until the bandage on her face were pulled out. She looked at the calendar beside her bed but didn’t get a clue on what the day was. The stranger spoke slowly and explained that she had been in the hospital for the last three days. She began to panic as she realized that she had been absent from her work for three days and her superior had not been intimated. The stranger might have read her thought for he said that he had informed her office about her accident. She wanted to curse him but didn’t have the energy to do so. The fatigue won over her and she drifted to sleep.

She saw her mother singing her the lullaby that she used to sing while putting her to sleep as a child. She felt childish with her mother once again. She felt something was not right yet she had no control over what was happening. She might have been delirious and talking nonsense for the neighbour started calling her name over and over again. She heard a faint call from her neighbour and tried to respond to him but her mother’s song was so more powerful.
She felt the urge to be with her mother more than anything else in the whole world and smiled as she listened to her mother’s song.

She did not feel the doctors in the hospital trying frantically to revive her breathing and calling her name. The stranger at the corner of the room was feeling faint as he saw his victim breathing her last…

(PS: please note that this is a work of fiction)

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