Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage. -Ray Bradbury
I had met her through one of my friends. The first time I saw her I felt like, "Okay, she will do."When Ravi insisted that I should marry her, I had a hard time thinking about my freedom I would lose after my marriage. But I had to marry her if I had to prove them that I wasn't one of nature's golden boys . I felt that the fun of my bachelor life had already come up to the brink, so I decided it was time I settled down. The only problem with her, as my matchmaker friend Ravi said was that she had been suffering from bouts of fainting and hysterics since about two years. The doctors at Dharan had diagnosed that she might have been suffering from some mild form of Conversion Disorder along with OCD; Ravi added that she washed her hands too often. Being a psycho-analyst myself, I felt I could treat her and free her from her benign troubles. As I whispered this fact to him, Ravi beamed at me and said with a sly wink,"Of course! you would do it buddy!"
We got married in the local church. I surely had a grand time accepting all those wishes and gifts from my friends and relatives. During the night as Bijeta and me were going through the gifts, she blushed as if she would bleed from her cheeks when suddenly one of the gifts turned out to be a packet of contraceptives. Those pranksters!!!! I threw the packet away as a gesture of showing my affection towards her feelings. I wanted to say to her that I hadn't married her for a sexual partner but a life-partner.
I woke up into a wondrous morning and the first thing I thought on that day was why I hadn't married earlier. Her syndrome of conversion never appeared and the obsessive washing of her hands might have just been a prank story from my friends to tease me; a psycho analyst with an obsessed wife!! Not until the sixth month of our marriage!!
That morning, I was on the sofa fumbling with my iPhone when I noticed that she looked a bit tense and had been frequenting the bathroom too often. I espied, every time she came out from the bathroom her hands were washed and as she would come out she would stare at me in a strange way. I felt odd and quickly realized from my expertise that she was suffering from her bout of OCD. Well, here was a chance to prove myself! I got up briskly the next time she got into the bathroom and peeped inside through a crevice I was aware of. She was just standing there as if she was trying to remember something. I came down to the sofa and acted as if I had not been anywhere.
"Are you feeling alright,honey?" My question, as she got out from the bathroom, startled her.
"I'm okay,dear," she said with a pleasant smile.
"You got some stomach problem?" The usual medical interrogation.
" Something like that," she answered casually."I guess I'm paying for yesterday's heavy partying."
Well, that was just my suspicion, I felt relieved................but just for the day.
Some disturbing dream woke me up late in the night. Smoked a Surya and turned over to fall into sleep again but found to my horror that she was not there!! The toilet lights were not on and when I looked at the table clock it was 2:30. I decided to wait for her but she didn't come. To my utter embarrassment in the morning, I realized that I had dozed off as I lay waiting there. She was there totally and I felt that was just one of my weird dreams until I looked down at the ashtray and found that I physically smoked a cigarette late in the night.
Though I tried to force the incident out of my mind, it kept on occurring. The next night also, she was missing. This time I got up and looked around, I found her sleeping on the sofa so I didn't disturb her. The most possible reason for her strange behavior at night must have been because of somnambulism. People walk in their sleep and don't recall anything when they are awake. Some of my patients even performed various house hold chores while in their state of trance. The idea seemed funny, but the next time she would start sleep walking, I would go along her and film her in the digital camera which I had purchased recently. I even thought of uploading the movie on U-tube, maybe we would become famous with this sleep walking video!!!
It was only on the nineteenth day from the conception of this idea that I was able to spy her getting up from her bed. As soon as she got out of the door in a trance like movement, I followed her with the camera suppressing my laughter. But my laughter didn't need any kind of suppression after she crossed the gate and the road and headed towards the woods; instead it turned into a frown, a grave frown automatically. One part of me opted for taking her upon my shoulder to the bedroom and let her have a peaceful sleep but the other decided otherwise. I wanted to know where exactly she was going and even doubted whether she was sleep walking at all.
With the Canon stretched on my hand, I followed her from a safe distance. Due to the darkness, filming was out of question, instead I had to peer in the dark lest I should fall or bump into something. She walked continuously devoid of any stumbling whereas I had to continuously grope for the nearest tree in the dimmed light of my cell phone. After having walked for about ten minutes, when I felt that everything I was doing was fruitless, I decided to rest, I thought wherever she was going she would certainly come back the same way.
I sat down on the ground and instantly jumped up with a start because I had sat on something soft similar to the lap of some person. When I focused the cell phone's glowing LCD towards where I had sat, a cry of fear escaped my mouth. There she was, sitting on the ground, her hair looked like some failed getup from a horror flick and her eyes were closed.In the dark, I had sat exactly on her lap. I shook her with all my might to take her out of this dream but she gave no response. I was terrified; listened to her heart and there was a faint murmur.
You know a psychiatrist always doesn't think in the Freudian way, and me too, I didn't think that it was some ordinary sleep walking but something paranormal. I called the ambulance but we were out of network coverage. I ran towards my house, which was in fact just about a kilometer away. I opened the door with a bang, rushed towards the living room and immediately ran out of it because there in the center of the room was she, standing and asleep. Quite baffled with this new phenomenon and believing that something paranormal was going on with my wife, I approached her cautiously and shook her. Oh yes, she was a bit warmer now, much more warmer than she had been in the woods. And her heart too, was beating louder.
I gently carried her in my arms and let her sleep in the bed. It was already 3 in the morning so I decided I would do the talking the next morning.
Next morning, she was cheerful as usual and didn't complain about any difficulties in her sleep. My mind was being nagged with this question: how had she reached home before me the other night? Can sleepwalkers run faster than one who is awake? I didn't let the question out of my heart as she seemed very much normal.But I had decided to tell Ravi everything about this and I was going to request him to stay around the house that night. We had to do something about this strange phenomenon.
Ravi, to my surprise, arrived with a friend and he said that the friend was a researcher on the paranormal. At first I was a bit cross with him but later conciliated as I felt that anyone who had some knowledge on a thing would be better than a dumb ass.Our plan was simple, as soon as she would walk out of the house, one of them would follow her which would be me and the other two would get inside the house , stay in two separate rooms and wait and watch her arrival. Our main aim was to find out how she would arrive from the woods, flying, running or like Ravi's friend told- in some astral travelling or some shit.
Awakened by Ravi, tugging at my pyjamas, I understood the signal and hurried downstairs with a torchlight. As I came out of the main door, she was just getting into the woods. I ran as fast as I could but couldn't get a glimpse of her. I searched for her frantically with the torchlight but to no avail. She had disappeared in the bushes. I returned back after some minutes, she hadn't returned so Ravi and I decided to go into the woods again and search her as I felt too creepy to go out there all alone. We searched and searched but found no one.
After about an hour, when we returned to the house and as we crept upstairs, we could hear a faint moan coming out of my bedroom. What we saw inside was quite infuriating, Ravi's friend was about to fall atop my stark naked wife. I pulled him by his collar and kicked him out of the house. Ravi, embarrassed, slipped away in the dark. But my wife was still asleep!
So, the idea of any help disappeared from mind. I never bothered to ask the man as to when and how exactly she had returned back. But this phenomenon continued and I requested Ravi and his friend to lock their lips. Since she didn't hurt anyone and always came back home, I stopped worrying about her.
Not until one morning when a police officer knocked at my door. I opened the door and had him seated.
"How you doing Mr. Rai?'' He asked with a cheerful face but I noticed that as soon as I had opened the door, he had tried to peep inside through my shoulders.
"Fine officer! Anything I can help you with?"
"I have some questions for your wife. Can I see her? This will take just some minutes." He spoke authoritatively.
"Of course officer but she is asleep. Would you mind coming back in the afternoon?" I felt a bit tensed up.
"By the way, what is it about officer?" I felt anxious.
"Oh it's nothing serious. We have some complaints from your neighbour, not about you but the folks who live near the woods. I just wanted to know whether she could confirm their suspicions."
"Oh yeah ! The folks down there are pretty nasty. Is the complaint about late night noises?"
"No, sir. The matter is a bit complex. Some stalker, it seems climbs up everyone's windows late in the night and peeps inside. Some voyeur I guess!" And the officer gave a hearty laugh, that was a really loud laugh indeed but I heard the door creaking me behind too. And before I could turn back to see who it was, the officer who was standing in front of me had me caught in a lock with his arms and two men more from behind were cuffing my legs. I was completely at a loss and shouted for help but it seems no one heard me.
In the police custody, they charged me with the murder of my wife. They said they had found her remains buried deep in the woods.She had been killed immediately after her wedding .I told them my story but no one believed me. I called Ravi to my help but he plainly denied that he had ever come to my house for the investigation of my wife's mysterious appearance from the woods. I was baffled and trapped. They said I was sick, sick with some form of psychopathology but they never understood that I had lived with her throughout this time, laughed with her, teased her, slept with her and I even told them that when I would go out of the custody she would surely be waiting for me in the house.
But nobody believes me....................................nobody believes my story............
I had met her through one of my friends. The first time I saw her I felt like, "Okay, she will do."When Ravi insisted that I should marry her, I had a hard time thinking about my freedom I would lose after my marriage. But I had to marry her if I had to prove them that I wasn't one of nature's golden boys . I felt that the fun of my bachelor life had already come up to the brink, so I decided it was time I settled down. The only problem with her, as my matchmaker friend Ravi said was that she had been suffering from bouts of fainting and hysterics since about two years. The doctors at Dharan had diagnosed that she might have been suffering from some mild form of Conversion Disorder along with OCD; Ravi added that she washed her hands too often. Being a psycho-analyst myself, I felt I could treat her and free her from her benign troubles. As I whispered this fact to him, Ravi beamed at me and said with a sly wink,"Of course! you would do it buddy!"
We got married in the local church. I surely had a grand time accepting all those wishes and gifts from my friends and relatives. During the night as Bijeta and me were going through the gifts, she blushed as if she would bleed from her cheeks when suddenly one of the gifts turned out to be a packet of contraceptives. Those pranksters!!!! I threw the packet away as a gesture of showing my affection towards her feelings. I wanted to say to her that I hadn't married her for a sexual partner but a life-partner.
I woke up into a wondrous morning and the first thing I thought on that day was why I hadn't married earlier. Her syndrome of conversion never appeared and the obsessive washing of her hands might have just been a prank story from my friends to tease me; a psycho analyst with an obsessed wife!! Not until the sixth month of our marriage!!
That morning, I was on the sofa fumbling with my iPhone when I noticed that she looked a bit tense and had been frequenting the bathroom too often. I espied, every time she came out from the bathroom her hands were washed and as she would come out she would stare at me in a strange way. I felt odd and quickly realized from my expertise that she was suffering from her bout of OCD. Well, here was a chance to prove myself! I got up briskly the next time she got into the bathroom and peeped inside through a crevice I was aware of. She was just standing there as if she was trying to remember something. I came down to the sofa and acted as if I had not been anywhere.
"Are you feeling alright,honey?" My question, as she got out from the bathroom, startled her.
"I'm okay,dear," she said with a pleasant smile.
"You got some stomach problem?" The usual medical interrogation.
" Something like that," she answered casually."I guess I'm paying for yesterday's heavy partying."
Well, that was just my suspicion, I felt relieved................but just for the day.
Some disturbing dream woke me up late in the night. Smoked a Surya and turned over to fall into sleep again but found to my horror that she was not there!! The toilet lights were not on and when I looked at the table clock it was 2:30. I decided to wait for her but she didn't come. To my utter embarrassment in the morning, I realized that I had dozed off as I lay waiting there. She was there totally and I felt that was just one of my weird dreams until I looked down at the ashtray and found that I physically smoked a cigarette late in the night.
Though I tried to force the incident out of my mind, it kept on occurring. The next night also, she was missing. This time I got up and looked around, I found her sleeping on the sofa so I didn't disturb her. The most possible reason for her strange behavior at night must have been because of somnambulism. People walk in their sleep and don't recall anything when they are awake. Some of my patients even performed various house hold chores while in their state of trance. The idea seemed funny, but the next time she would start sleep walking, I would go along her and film her in the digital camera which I had purchased recently. I even thought of uploading the movie on U-tube, maybe we would become famous with this sleep walking video!!!
It was only on the nineteenth day from the conception of this idea that I was able to spy her getting up from her bed. As soon as she got out of the door in a trance like movement, I followed her with the camera suppressing my laughter. But my laughter didn't need any kind of suppression after she crossed the gate and the road and headed towards the woods; instead it turned into a frown, a grave frown automatically. One part of me opted for taking her upon my shoulder to the bedroom and let her have a peaceful sleep but the other decided otherwise. I wanted to know where exactly she was going and even doubted whether she was sleep walking at all.
With the Canon stretched on my hand, I followed her from a safe distance. Due to the darkness, filming was out of question, instead I had to peer in the dark lest I should fall or bump into something. She walked continuously devoid of any stumbling whereas I had to continuously grope for the nearest tree in the dimmed light of my cell phone. After having walked for about ten minutes, when I felt that everything I was doing was fruitless, I decided to rest, I thought wherever she was going she would certainly come back the same way.
I sat down on the ground and instantly jumped up with a start because I had sat on something soft similar to the lap of some person. When I focused the cell phone's glowing LCD towards where I had sat, a cry of fear escaped my mouth. There she was, sitting on the ground, her hair looked like some failed getup from a horror flick and her eyes were closed.In the dark, I had sat exactly on her lap. I shook her with all my might to take her out of this dream but she gave no response. I was terrified; listened to her heart and there was a faint murmur.
You know a psychiatrist always doesn't think in the Freudian way, and me too, I didn't think that it was some ordinary sleep walking but something paranormal. I called the ambulance but we were out of network coverage. I ran towards my house, which was in fact just about a kilometer away. I opened the door with a bang, rushed towards the living room and immediately ran out of it because there in the center of the room was she, standing and asleep. Quite baffled with this new phenomenon and believing that something paranormal was going on with my wife, I approached her cautiously and shook her. Oh yes, she was a bit warmer now, much more warmer than she had been in the woods. And her heart too, was beating louder.
I gently carried her in my arms and let her sleep in the bed. It was already 3 in the morning so I decided I would do the talking the next morning.
Next morning, she was cheerful as usual and didn't complain about any difficulties in her sleep. My mind was being nagged with this question: how had she reached home before me the other night? Can sleepwalkers run faster than one who is awake? I didn't let the question out of my heart as she seemed very much normal.But I had decided to tell Ravi everything about this and I was going to request him to stay around the house that night. We had to do something about this strange phenomenon.
Ravi, to my surprise, arrived with a friend and he said that the friend was a researcher on the paranormal. At first I was a bit cross with him but later conciliated as I felt that anyone who had some knowledge on a thing would be better than a dumb ass.Our plan was simple, as soon as she would walk out of the house, one of them would follow her which would be me and the other two would get inside the house , stay in two separate rooms and wait and watch her arrival. Our main aim was to find out how she would arrive from the woods, flying, running or like Ravi's friend told- in some astral travelling or some shit.
Awakened by Ravi, tugging at my pyjamas, I understood the signal and hurried downstairs with a torchlight. As I came out of the main door, she was just getting into the woods. I ran as fast as I could but couldn't get a glimpse of her. I searched for her frantically with the torchlight but to no avail. She had disappeared in the bushes. I returned back after some minutes, she hadn't returned so Ravi and I decided to go into the woods again and search her as I felt too creepy to go out there all alone. We searched and searched but found no one.
After about an hour, when we returned to the house and as we crept upstairs, we could hear a faint moan coming out of my bedroom. What we saw inside was quite infuriating, Ravi's friend was about to fall atop my stark naked wife. I pulled him by his collar and kicked him out of the house. Ravi, embarrassed, slipped away in the dark. But my wife was still asleep!
So, the idea of any help disappeared from mind. I never bothered to ask the man as to when and how exactly she had returned back. But this phenomenon continued and I requested Ravi and his friend to lock their lips. Since she didn't hurt anyone and always came back home, I stopped worrying about her.
Not until one morning when a police officer knocked at my door. I opened the door and had him seated.
"How you doing Mr. Rai?'' He asked with a cheerful face but I noticed that as soon as I had opened the door, he had tried to peep inside through my shoulders.
"Fine officer! Anything I can help you with?"
"I have some questions for your wife. Can I see her? This will take just some minutes." He spoke authoritatively.
"Of course officer but she is asleep. Would you mind coming back in the afternoon?" I felt a bit tensed up.
"By the way, what is it about officer?" I felt anxious.
"Oh it's nothing serious. We have some complaints from your neighbour, not about you but the folks who live near the woods. I just wanted to know whether she could confirm their suspicions."
"Oh yeah ! The folks down there are pretty nasty. Is the complaint about late night noises?"
"No, sir. The matter is a bit complex. Some stalker, it seems climbs up everyone's windows late in the night and peeps inside. Some voyeur I guess!" And the officer gave a hearty laugh, that was a really loud laugh indeed but I heard the door creaking me behind too. And before I could turn back to see who it was, the officer who was standing in front of me had me caught in a lock with his arms and two men more from behind were cuffing my legs. I was completely at a loss and shouted for help but it seems no one heard me.
In the police custody, they charged me with the murder of my wife. They said they had found her remains buried deep in the woods.She had been killed immediately after her wedding .I told them my story but no one believed me. I called Ravi to my help but he plainly denied that he had ever come to my house for the investigation of my wife's mysterious appearance from the woods. I was baffled and trapped. They said I was sick, sick with some form of psychopathology but they never understood that I had lived with her throughout this time, laughed with her, teased her, slept with her and I even told them that when I would go out of the custody she would surely be waiting for me in the house.
But nobody believes me....................................nobody believes my story............
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