At Dusk

Martin is the calmest in this period, when the sun announces its goodbyes and calls on for the moon to take its place, the one they call dusk. It is weird that he also feels the strangest in this time. A feeling he cant explain to people. A feeling he cant write down. The voice inside his head, the one you hear as you read this, sets the scene of what he wants to describe. It seems to forge the metadata but it's never actually able to compile. The description never materialises to exist in the physical realm. Exist as spoken words. Martin embraces the feeling just like any other day, continues his evening and after dinner he proceeds to lie down. Sleep. 

Martin wakes up in the morning, when the sun is welcomed, and dreads how he feels. This isn't strange at all. He knows this feeling to be pathetic. He knows it of being something he absolutely hates, something any human being would hate. He could describe it with perfection, yet there's no need to explain it. Because this isn't anything special. He notices something odd, something that wasn't there when he went to sleep the night before. And then again this was how all mornings were. A scratch or a gush in his body, an injury he has no recognition of coupled with the apparent visit from the gods of hangover- without his sacrifice of the bottle of spirit. And again, like everyday, he ignores this and carries on. On for work, for the mundanity that is his life.

Another dusk. Another shitty morning.

Then another dusk.

This morning is worse than usual but finally something strange. Finally something worth describing, which he could in fact put into words.

'My name is Detective Ardent, Mr. Martin'

'Hello Detective,'

Martin feels parched as he makes his acquaintance with the detective sitting in front of him. He looks down at his cuffed hands. Looks around the room he is in. It is a holding cell. He'd seen these concrete structures on entertainment systems. They were as dull and lifeless in real life as they were in the holovisions. But a meeting, nay an interrogation, of this sort should have been carried out in an interrogation room mused Martin.

'Do you know why you're here?' Detective Ardent asks after a cop's version of pleasantries.

'I have no idea. I would really like to know considering the last thing I remember was falling asleep'

That was a partial truth, wonders Martin. Nobody really remembers falling asleep. People remember lying down. They remember waking up. They remember dreaming. But nobody ever remembers that exact moment of losing your wakefulness.

'We caught you while you were dismembering a 42 year old man and you had his heart in your mouth as you did so'

Martin did not react. He ponders the implications of this reaction.

'You seem so in control of yourself, Mr. Martin. You're so calm'

But Martin isn't really calm. He is… well it is that dusk feeling. The strange calmness buried within chaos. Yes, it becomes what he couldn't describe. That he is so ridden by conflict in his mind that he should be screaming, he is sure. And yet he is serene. Much in control.

'I don't remember this… I'

'Mr. Martin,' Detective Ardent interrupts, 'we have called in a psychiatrist. Somebody who will assess your state of mind and tell us all what's going on'

Martin did not believe that was possible. To assess his state of mind is to read the scribblings on the Event Horizon of a black hole, the mimic of matter that is spewed back by the all consuming entity. He is sure of that.

Detective Ardent now sips his coffee from a room which spies into Martin's room. On a screen, next to the window through which he sees this menace of a man, Martin's thoughts convert to text in real time. It is a wonderful observation to make. A man so unaware of himself, and yet so aware.

'What's wrong with him? He has taken every evening order till date and executed so perfectly. How did..'

'He actually doesn't remember any of those missions. His personality has split into two. He believes this Martin character to be real, that's his day life. He has crafted a whole life around the cover we built for him. At night he's your assasin, he's Shadow.' The doctor giving the answers seemed to brood, 'he's broken and he's been changing. I think his system finally crashed.'

The sun bid farewell to this side of the world, asked his replacement to come on over.

Martin opens his eyes, but there is something different about them. The screen in the secret room that prints his thoughts goes blank.