DAVID

Ek

A bright day. A beautiful day. A day like any other to my undesirable life. I made a cup of coffee and didn't bother with breakfast, went to the old garage where I worked, ate an excuse of a lunch and headed back home in the evening.

However, as the sun faded away and the air turned misty, something in me churned up. I don't know if it was because I was opening up to myself often or if it was the dusk playing tricks upon my incompetent heart but as the night dawned in, I started panicking. My chest felt burdened and for a moment I felt the same delirium I used to feel as a teenage boy on hard drugs. The uneasiness overpowered me and before I realised where I was, I found the doctor's weary eyes upon me.

"John?" he exclaimed, "What are you doing in the middle of the night?"

I couldn't speak.

"If you're here for your next session then let me tell you, it is the day after the morrow. Come back then." He waited for an answer but I just stared at him. Maybe he somehow heard me praying to him to let me come inside or it was a doctor's intuition, but as he looked at me in the eye, he shrugged once, sighed twice and took me in.

"Whenever you are ready." he said.

I felt like a storyteller, about to narrate someone else's incident.

"The first time I met him, it was at a wretched bar. It was named 'Tom's'. I remember that because one of my friends mistook me as a manager. Tell you what doc, in those days I was a damn good looking gentleman. People sometimes mistook me for a professor.

"I liked that tavern quite much. It was the only place where all my daily miseries were washed away with the liquor that I engulfed like a wolf. And it was the only Abbey where the awful vices of men lay naked amist the lanterns that hung upon its walls like a veiled fiend, ready to blurt out the truths he sees for mere money.

"John." Hyde greeted me. An old friend. Very tolerable and compassionate fellow. He knew my secret and yet didn't abandon me. And for that I was very greatful.

"Hyde." I acknowledged.

"Meet Raymond." I shook hands that were offered to me and then looked at its beholder. For a moment, I couldn't speak at all. Nay, it felt as if everything around the man had blurred into the darkness of the tavern. I couldn't move doc, I... Pfft

"Hello Raymond, I'm John. First one's on me! " I ordered him drinks and we had a merry conversation. He told me that he was working for a publishing company, had a good paycheck every month and was seeing this girl whom he consistently called terrific.

I got a bit uncomfortable as the conversation shifted upon his girl and how any other girl in the whole of England couldn't match with her. I would continuously glance at the direction of Hyde who would put up his hand occasionally as if to say, "It's okay. He's just a bit nervous, that's all."

But no! I was the one feeling miserable. I hadn't come here to listen to some old boy caught in his love tale. He kept on speaking of her as if she was some pearl he had only the pleasure to glance at and by some great grand fortune it had finally landed upon his hands.

It was enough. I got up to leave and was about to turn away and leave Raymond blabbering when he caught me by the hand.

His grip was firm and for a moment I couldn't understand what was happening.

"I can't bear you anymore." I said.

"And I can't bear being someone else too." my head jerked towards him and I saw his eyes piercing in on me. His face had changed completely and in his deep grey eyes I saw a raging desire pulsating down upon my hand.