UFOs, devil kids, & mutants

Quick update. I've been busy and I'm afraid, going crazy as well. I've been doing headless chicken again where I go on and on convincing myself that one good night's sleep and popping several vitamin pills a day supplies a weeks' worth of energy refill to run around on. But time wears on and I will find out for the 100th time that I'm wrong. You get bloodshot eyes, bad headaches, rubber-like limbs, jelly-like joints, and general uselessness if you keep it up for too long. But the worst is always the way sleep deprivation and lack of proper rest wreaks havoc on one's mind...

Like this one instance some nights back, I was in bed almost asleep, all the lights switched off. I was lying on my side, facing towards the window, when suddenly, I 'felt' this bright light on my face, you know the way you can always tell with bright lights even with your eyes closed.

I immediately panicked, and why? Because for the first few seconds, I was convinced that it was an alien spaceship, with multi-color lights flashing, hovering around my 3rd floor window, on a mission to abduct me so they can perform all kinds of weird surgical procedures on me. What a relief it was to finally open my eyes and see it was only fireworks!

Another night, I was alone in the house when I heard a noise on the balcony. I went out to check what it was, and I saw something move. I won't say I thought it was him, but the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the thing move in the dark was Nightcrawler :P I didn't think it was him of course, I may have thought it could have been him, only may have :-) Anyway, it was just a cat. But what in the world made me think of Kurt?!

The most shameful one happened last night. It was still early, around 6:30 PM and I had just reached home, tired and sleepy. I had been sleeping all the way home, I think I was only still half-awake when I got out of the car. In that extremely muddled state, I, for some strange reason, decided to take the stairs instead of the lift.

As I reached the first floor, I saw these two little kids playing - a girl and a boy. The girl had a dupatta wrapped all over her, and when she saw me, she playfully threw one end of her dupatta on me. I smiled and just shook it off, but as the dupatta fell from my face and I looked at the little kid looking up at me with her now suddenly expressionless face, and big blank, unblinking eyes, some kind of cold horror crept up my spine...

I quickly lost my smile and decided to walk a little faster. She followed me, which freaked me out, and when I looked back and saw her looking at me with the same expressionless stare, I lost it completely and bolted, running with wild panic up the stairs, cursing myself for not taking the lift.

I was thinking of the devil kids that chased Judas into the desert in 'The Passion of the Christ'. I was thinking children of the corn.

I ran up the stairs as fast as I could, lugging my heavy laptop bag and my gym bag (believe me, even gym bags and gym clothes can be extremely heavy at the wrong time). Of course, no small child can really overrun a full grown adult and I easily left her behind, but I could still hear her little feet running up the stairs after me, which was almost worse than actually seeing her.

I was completely paranoid by then, and tried to take several stairs with a single bound, which resulted in me losing my balance and unceremoniously dumping myself in a heap on the ground. Only saving grace = there was no one around to witness this divine comedy :-)

I picked myself up pretty quick, gathered my bags and continued running, grabbing my keys ready to unlock the door and let myself in into the safety of my room. Horror of horrors! Our flat was locked from the inside. No one was supposed to be home. Nevertheless, I rang the bell and waited, but couldn't take it when I heard the kid's laughter ringing up the stairs and banged frantically on the door and was about to scream when Orpi opened the door in her bathrobe.

I had apparently frightened her out of the shower. Seeing me standing there panting and wheezing, she asked me what was wrong, and as I started telling her, the absurdness of the whole thing struck me and I started laughing. I told her the entire story in between the crazy laughing, and we both collapsed on the floor doubling up with laughter.

Well, it was good because it ended well and it made us laugh. But it sure wasn't funny at the time. It's not funny when in the middle of the night, all the image search results from your search on keywords like 'beheading' (mine) and 'dog eat' (Macavity's) keep popping up in your head so vividly the only solution is to sleep with your music on full volume, headphones plugged in extra deep in your ears.

And I wonder how normal it is for a normal, sane human being to panic and take flight at the sight of little kids, or be plagued by thoughts of UFO's and scary looking, albeit friendly, mutants. And it makes me wish that I could really count my marbles, because I sometimes fear I may have lost some.