Being Us

[Inspired by The Lord of the Rings]

It's pitch black. Dark as dark can get. But I can still see the mice running and the spiders dawdling mid-air. Not a difficult choice for supper. I catch a spider. I shake my head. God, what am I doing? Despite all my efforts to stop it, I put the slimy thing in my mouth and chew the hell out of it. "GOD! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

"Master," I've heard that voice. "Master!"

"Oh Smeagol!" I sigh. "It was just a dream. It was just a dream."

"Master seems troubled."

"No," I say half lost in what has become a frequent thing lately. "It's nothing. And where is Gollum?"

He points his finger towards the door. Gollum is there indeed, looking at some mouth watering breakfast prospects. He turns and looks at me. "Don't even think of it." I say and he scowls at me. I've learnt to ignore that.

The earliest memories of me that I can recall have Smeagol and Gollum in them. As you may have guessed till now, they are my split personalities. That is, I see them as different people, talk to them, feel them and all that, but all a third person would see is me talking to myself in different voices. I don't remember how exactly these two came in my life, or to use a better phrase, inside me. My parents told me one morning I woke up and they heard these strange voices but I knew they lied. Because these things always have a reason, a subtle fact beneath them. Anyways I learnt to make peace with them, which was after the shocking realization and the initial getting-over-it period; that was the worst phase of my life. Smeagol is kind hearted and loyal, while Gollum is a fiend. Anything that breathes can end up in his stomach, his favorite being human flesh. But he fears me and won't touch a fly without my permission.

Currently I am at this boarding school.It's a considerably small building which sometimes intrigues me, but overall it's a nice place. Most people here don't know my condition.Only a few teachers do. I've learnt to control myself in public.

I've been having this dirt bag of a nightmare since quite sometime now. With this lousy memory hovering in my head, I make my way towards the breakfast table. I make sure that no one is around, as we're about to discuss, something really important to me. It's this girl Rhea. I am madly in love with her. The thing is I've got to tell her and I'm not able to figure out how to do it.

"So," I ask Smeagol. "How do you think I should do it?"

"We likes it simple. Master should go and tell her master loves her."

You should've seen his expression while he said it. I bet you'd have killed him. I am too used to it to do that.

"No. Let's not do what everyone does. What do you have to say Gollum?"

"Let us go and bring them round little eyeses. We likes to squeeze them and drink the fluids and then eat the deli-"

"ENOUGH! Anything which doesn't include touching her?"

He shakes his head. Disgraceful little creature.

"I'd have to go slow, whichever way I do it."

"If we may speak master?"

"Sure. Go on."

"Master shouldn't go too slow. We knows master values patience. But master shouldn't go too slow."

"You're right." He was. Because if I do it at my pace and plot a graph of progress with time, then according to it the generation of her great grandchildren get to know that there once existed a man who loved their great grandmother way more than anyone ever did, not only their great grandfather. But that doesn't mean I have to hurry through it. I only don't have to be all me about it. I have to time it exactly between too soon and just late.

"I've just the right plan."

"Master is taking her out?"

"Don't be a fool. We aren't allowed out of this building."

"Then?"

"Cryptography. I'll ask her if she wants to learn with me how to break codes and get those disguised messages from texts. We'll spend a good amount of time together. And then I'll give her this really tough-to-break code. The message will be my official proposal. I'll include some clues to breaking the code in the message itself. That way she'll at least be happy about decrypting the message by herself, even if the message itself disturbs her. What do you say Smeagol?"

"Sounds like a plan to us."

"Gollum?"

"Eyeballs-"

"That's affirmative then."

Learning cryptography was much more fun than I thought it would be. We sat all day long either in the library or the computer lab reading about techniques and stuff. The time flew so fast. I am going to do it today. I have the message ready to be unlocked. I’ve asked her to come to the library after the recess, as it is always deserted after the recess. It is empty most of the time anyway. So it’s never going to be a problem. God I’m nervous as hell.

“Alright,” I say, “Smeagol, don’t say a word while I am at it, or better don’t make any noise. Ok? Where the hell is Gollum?”

He sure isn’t there.

“Smeagol!” I raise my voice. “Where the-”

“Here master.” He just enters the door as he says it.

“Where have you been?”

“We went to the dirty places to bring master this.”

It’s a kitchen knife.

“I have no use for it. And neither do you. Give it to me. I’ll return it to where it belongs.”

He scowls at me again. He does that quite often. Not that that it matters. Anyway, I’ve got to keep my head straight now.

“Listen both of you,” I say in a commanding tone. “None of you makes the faintest of whispers until we are through with this. Understood?”

“Yes Master.” They say in unison. Strange. They never do that.

“Good.” They start arguing in whispers. God, I have no time for this.

“Drop it ladies.” I say on the top of my voice. “ It’s almost time. Remember, make a sound and you’re dead.”

They nod.

And there she comes. I check my pocket for the parchment. It’s there.

“You look great!” I exclaim. And then I curse myself. I really suck at conversation starters.

“Thank you.” She smiles. God I love it when she does that.

“We sees treachery in those tiny little eyeses.” Oh Lord!

“Gollum! SHUT UP!”

“We smells betrayal.”

“Gollum! NO!”

She is panicking. She’s really scared. “Hey! What’s happe-“

“She deserves to be nothing more than our feast.”

“GOLLUM! STOP IT!”

Even as I say it, he plunges forward with a screwdriver (he deceived me with the knife!) in his creepy little hand and in a giant stride he stabs right in her belly with everything he’s got. “Gollum! You filthy little freak!” I take out the kitchen knife and before I can know what I am going to do I stick it right in his back. Within moments he falls and vanishes and I feel a terrible pain in my back. In one hand I am holding this screwdriver drenched in her blood and there’s a knife handle sprouting out of my back with its blade completely secure in my body. Amidst all this, I miss out on all the swearing she is throwing at me. Blood pours out from her abdomen slowly while she is at it.

“You psychopath! Look what you’ve done! You delusional pig! I didn’t sign up for this.”

“Wait a minute,” It hurts like hell in my back. Still this conversation is going to be important. There is something weird about her. I mean other than being-stabbed-by-me-and-laying-all-bloody weird. There is something else. “Sign up you said?”

“You don’t get it, do you? Look around you. It’s a freaking set. This ain’t no school. You ain’t no li’l boy. Don’t you get it you goddam creep?”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“Oh really? Did it never occur to you that this filthy little place is too freaking small for a goddam school?” It did.”Ever seen this little population in a school? What do you think you are seventeen or something? This is a goddam mental facility, an asylum. Everyone is paid to act like students and teachers just so you can lead a normal life.”

“What? Paid? But by whom? And why?”

“This rich lady, Salene, who's apparently in love with you or something. God, so insane she is. How can anyone love a crack-head like you!"

“But how can it….wait a minute..can you explain what’s going on here like in detail?” I am lost, shocked and desperate as hell to know the what, how and when of it. She is giving up. You could tell she is. I have to keep her with me. For God’s sake the place I thought to be my school is a mental facility. Everything about it makes a perfect sense.

“What am I, a newsreader now? Oh this pain….! She said you wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Listen. Most probably none of us will survive this. As your last good deed you can at least tell me the whole thing from the beginning."

“Good deed my ass! Go to hell you psychopath!”

“Please! It’s a dying man’s wish. You’re not a sadist are you? And you know it wasn’t I who attacked you. You know I would never do that. You knew my condition from the beginning didn’t you?”

“Okay….Alright….Let me see where to begin. It’s all according to what your lady Salene told me before she put me to THIS. Three years back on her seventeenth birthday, her friends had planned this outing to a farmhouse or something. Except it wasn’t really a farm house. She’d invited you to join them and though reluctantly, you’d agreed. It was one hell of a place. One of her friends had heard about it being off the highway and all. It was believed to be a myth and all that crap. That crazy friend knew this but he didn’t tell you. All he said was it was an exciting place. At that time no one knew it was a goddam prison. Not even that guy. Worse, it was one of those places where they kept those really vicious prisoners and tortured them in old days. Now it’s a restricted area or something. 'Cause it has this crazy story that the way out of there is a goddam maze so that the prisoners, even if they broke out, wouldn’t be able to escape. But naïve as you lot were, you didn’t have any idea. It had this crazy little concept of only one-“

“One entrance, which once closed could be unlocked only from outside, as a safety measure.” It’s slowly coming back to me. I didn’t like the place at all. It was scary dark inside. And it smelled of dead creatures. I bet no one liked it but I was the first to admit it verbally. And they were all being hot young blood about it. So I kind of had a fight with her. I wanted to leave. I asked her if she would go with me. She refused to leave her friends. I left. I was just a few minutes out when I remembered I’d left my backpack inside. It contained this gift I got for her. It was a trilogy of books she was really crazy about. I can hardly remember the name. Oh what was it? Yeah…The Lord Of The Rings. God, what happened next?! I strain hard but it’s not coming.

“So, you remember it all.”

“This part. And just bits. Carry on.”

“Then there was a big fight between the two of you. You left. But you forgot your backpack. She said it was really dark in there so they set out in search of wood for fire and stuff. That must have been the time you went back in.”

“Yeah, but I don’t remember what happened next. I really don’t.”

“OH! Anyway. So, as they were looking for wood, they came across this sign post with this engraving on it. It said something about being prohibited to public trespass and the way out being a maze and stuff. Your girlfriend got really scared. She started blaming her friends…..Oh! I’m dying!...and she realized you were right about something you said earlier and started worrying about you. They went back to the place, locked the door, never realized you were inside that time and started looking for you, following the path you went earlier. Soon they got lost in the maze and made a mistake of interpreting a bridge which wasn’t actually there. Their car met with a terrible accident. Everyone died except her. Of fear and guilt she never told anyone about the place or you. She thought you were safe somewhere as your body wasn’t found and that she said was enough for her to live with. Speculating she’d go crazy under post traumatic stress no one ever asked her anything about it.”

“Oh God! And what happened to me?”

“That’s the worst part. Some TV people, after getting government clearance hired some archaeologists and experts to make a documentary of the place. That’s when they found you.”

“How long had I been there?”

“You really don’t wanna know that.”

“HOW LONG?” I yell like I never did before.

“Alright. Almost a year and a half. They said you were more than lucky to be alive. They found you just moments away from death. You were in coma. It was months before you gained consciousness. That is, you opened your eyes. You didn’t remember anything. They were almost glad you didn’t. But after some memory gaining sessions, don’t know what the heck they call them, you showed progress. Like you started recalling names of your family members and all. They also found pieces of what might’ve been a book or books someday. I don’t remember its name.” I do. “They said pages were deliberately chosen and torn out specific to a particular character. They said after reading the books, you read those pages again and again. They speculated that based on this reading and stuff you’d developed a psychological something having dissociative personalities. They said you fed mostly on the spiders and rats…………EWWW…and occasionally……er..bats. The ventilation was such that it only allowed air and not light inside. You'd adapted to the light coming in from those cracks in the walls. It took you a whole lot of time to adjust to normal surroundings. You kept forgetting things. Your lady really took care of the finances. She had already planned this school thing for when you gained complete consciousness. She paid me a huge sum for doing all this. Initially I refused, you being a psycho and all but then she told me this story and offered such a sum that I couldn’t refuse. She practically told me all your likes and dislikes and personal stuff. She taught me how to make you happy. She cares so much about you. She always blames herself for all that happened to you. She made a hard choice of not showing up here so that you didn’t have to go through it all again. She always watched you through the glass when you were asleep. OH GOD…..I’m dying!”

I am out of words. I don’t exactly remember everything, but I believe her. She really has no reason to lie. And her story does explain that nightmare. She’s lost a lot of blood now. So have I. The only question is who’ll be the unlucky one to see the other die before they do. I move my eyes away from her. There he is. Smeagol. He’s staring at me. I am doing my best but my vision is blurring. My eyelids start approaching each other. Even as I fight the darkness closing in, deep down I know that that’s where I am going. That’s where I’ve always belonged. I take one last glance at Smeagol, hoping against everything that he’ll come to his master’s rescue. And the filthy thing just stares at me. It kills me. It really does when he stares at me like that. Well, to hell with everything.

Darkness. And more of it.

I slowly open my eyes. It will be a while before I get a clear vision. It must be hell. Except everything’s so white. It sure can’t be heaven. White bed covers, people dressed in white… It’s the goddam hospital. Oh for God’s sake why am I still alive? I tilt my head just enough to have a view of my neighbor. There she is. Alive but unconscious. God, I am hungry. I look around. Apples on my bedside shelf. They know better to provide a knife alongside. Anyways why the hell should I eat? How can I live with this nuclear plant of a brain with explosions going on about every millisecond in my tiny little head. I can’t. And for what? I’ll probably be charged with an attempted murder but on the grounds of insanity they’ll chain me and send to a not-so-schooly facility. My only company will be a parasite of a creep. No way….Just as I am thinking it through…Holy lord! How can someone be so beautiful! I am talking about the face showing concerns for me from out of the glass window or partition or whatever it is. It’s Salene. It’s her! It really is. I remember. In bits though.

It’s a tough choice. The one I’ve just made. Oh, to hell with it!

“Smeagol dear?”

“Master?”

“See that kitchen knife over the next shelf? Fetch it for me, will ya?”