A month had passed since the incident, and Advait buried himself in work—anything to avoid thinking about what had really happened that day.
What Advait lived through—monsters, chaos, blood—never happened. At least, not according to everyone else. The footage, eyewitnesses, and even the official report painted a different picture.
Instead of a swarm of monsters attacking, there were images of a sudden loud and dangerous explosion, which was claimed to have happened due to a heavy gas leak in a nearby restaurant, right beside the cafe building Advait was regular at.
This led to the collapse of 3 floors right above the restaurant belonging to the building, and as a result, people were reported either burnt or crushed under the rubble of the collapsed building.
But even as the whole world was set to believe in this reality, there was one who claimed different.
"... Bullshit," Advait remarked as he watched the replay of the news report on television in the hospital hall.
'That's bullshit. I clearly saw it; those were monsters, not an explosion. I know what I saw.' Advait frowned, and his shaking arms gripped the can of cold coffee, his eyes still locked on the screen, but as he was still lost in that, his daze was disturbed by the voice of a female in a white coat standing right behind him.
Zoya's voice cut in gently. ''Are you sure you're not just... traumatised?'' she questioned in concern, her pupils were light brown and somewhat curly-haired wrapping all around her head.
'It wasn't an explosion accident...' Advait, on the other hand, seemed to have given up trying to explain to others who just looked at him with the look of a crazed man; at that moment he just sighed. "... I take my meds."
Advait brushed off the lady's remark and was about to walk away but was once again interrupted by the lady. "That's not what I meant. Stop running away."
"Hah?" This time Advait felt annoyed while turning his cranky head towards her; he spun around, annoyed. "Don't cross the line, Zoya."
"I will," she snapped. "You're not okay. You're endangering patients. If you don't get your head checked this week, I'm calling a board meeting."
"... Zoya." Advait frowned, but at the same time, he couldn't refute either. "I will..." he mumbled and left without a second glance, but as he left, the lady's fierceness also vanished, replaced by a look of deep sigh. '... What's going on with you, Advait?'
...
02:11 AM
Advait finally reached his home after a day of heavy workload; by the time he reached it, it was already quite past midnight. He didn't even have time to remove his shirt and just fell flat on the floor of his hall, using his bag as a cushion for his head as he watched the ceiling above him.
"Am I really going crazy..." he mumbled to himself, '... The news media statement is one thing, but even the people who survived the accident say the same thing. Maybe the monsters were a dream. Gas leak... explosion... crushed bodies. It all fits. Except—'
He stared at the ceiling, searching for truth in the plaster. "I remember the eyes. The voice. The roar. Can trauma invent that?"
He frowned briefly, "Shall I get an MRI done for my head tomorrow?" Advait mumbled, scratching his head as his heavy eyelids, full of exhaustion, fell close like metal shutters. "Maybe I should..."
But the moment his eyes closed off, a sound of loud thunder flashed by his windows of the hall.
Baaammm!
The thunderous sound almost shattered the glass windows with its mere charges left in the wind. Advait, lying on the floor, was also left shaken, and his eyes were wide open in an instant.
"... Huh?"
But when his eyes snapped open—he wasn't home.
The ceiling was gone. So were the walls. The world he knew had changed again.
He was there, standing in the middle of a seemingly empty street inside a city; above him was a moon devoured in an eclipse and stars shrouded in dark clouds.
The only source of some light in the night was the flame torches hanging over the wooden pillars hung over the corners of the streets at every few metres distance.
'... Dream?' he thought to himself as he looked around him; it was a strange place. There was no sensation of wind, no sound in the air; it felt like isolated space to trap just him.
As Advait looked down, he noticed his body had turned a bit thinner, skinnier and more fragile as compared to his muscular build. He was covered in some torn, two-piece, dirty cream-coloured clothes and a chained pocket watch tied to black gloves on his left arm.
"What's going on ...?" he mumbled, turning back as he looked behind him; all he could see was his shadow originating from his feet, mixing with the endless darkness behind him.
There was quite literally nothing behind him except for darkness, or maybe he just couldn't see what was behind him due to seemingly endlessly thick darkness, nor was he curious enough to go and try either way.
'Creepy,' he remarked and started to step away from the darkness behind him, walking up closer to the street filled with bright torch flames, and along the way he took out that pocket watch from his pant's pocket.
Its glass was slightly cracked and corners were all yellowish; the metal frame seemed to be made of old iron, rusty iron or something else clearly quite old, but what was even stranger was the numbers inside the clock.
"13?" His eyes squinted the moment he saw that strange number inside a clock. '13 hours in a clock?!' He was confused yet panicked at the same time as he saw that strange conflicting number.
'Dream?! No...' His eyes squinted, "The sensation of cold sweat dripping down the face is too real for it to be a mere dream..." he mumbled while pinching his nose to calm his nerves, "As expected, it's all too real..."
He was trying to keep a calm appearance, but the cold feeling beneath his chest and uncontrollable shaking in his eyes proved his horrified sensation. 'What's going on? Am I kidnapped? Am I in a coma? What happened? Hypnagogic & Hypnopompic Hallucinations? Narcolepsy? Lucid dreaming? Hyperphantasia? Is this real or fake...? What the hell is actually going on?'!
He lifted his head and turned towards the direction of the broad street ahead leading to who knows where inside the city, but coincidentally at that moment something caught his eye.
It was a glimpse of a human figure, with the appearance shadowed by darkness; their pupils clearly clicked with one another, and Advait instinctively yelled out, "Hey! Hey! I have a questio--!"
Before he could finish that sentence, the figure hidden in shadows suddenly ran away deeper in some direction, vanishing from Advait's sight.
"... What is going on?" Advait frowned, and his leather boots started to chase after the direction of that unknown person who ran away.
Arriving at the place the unknown had vanished from, as Advait turned his head slightly to the right, he noticed the unknown person still standing there beside a building, with their face still unrecognisable due to the shadow of the wall covering it.
"Why are you running?" Advait questioned a bit annoyed, while he found himself already out of breath from a little run barely over a dozen metres. 'This body has terrible stamina...' He frowned and, shaking that thought, extended his arms towards the unknown figure in front of him.
"I just have a question: can you understand me?" He asked while cautiously stepping in the unknown's direction, "I don't know what's going on, but I just suddenly found myself here. Have we been kidnapped?"
But the unknown figure said nothing; rather, watching Advait approach, it seemed to be crawling backwards into the darkness.
"I'm not here to harm..." Advait raised his arms seeing such behaviour of the unknown figure. 'The psychological and trauma patients act like this; if we really have been kidnapped, who knows what this person has gone through? They seem to be afraid of me...'
He analysed with his experience as a medical professional with a decade and a half of experience and cautiously stepped closer.
"Please don't be alarmed; if you have any injuries, I can help. I'm a surgeon and experienced in physical therapy." Advait announced his intentions, but there was still no response.
'... Are they deaf?' Advait squinted his eyes and, in frustration, just started to approach the unknown figure more quickly, this time using sign language.
'Can you understand me? I'm a doctor! I can help you; come here.'
Still no answer from the unknown figure, but maybe at that moment Advait should have kept more caution, be more aware, and adapt more survival instincts, as without realising, he had also stepped behind the shadows of the building, standing in front of the unknown figure with just its pupils shining.
He was about to say more, but before his lips could part, he found his worldview change, as if everything around him was suddenly rising upwards.
"Huh?" was the last voice that left his mouth, and the rolling head's eyes caught the sight of his own body still standing with its head missing, and that was the moment he realised he was already dead with the head lying flat on the ground.
'The fuck?'