Pain is now a friend. The peace in between frightens me. As long as he, through his methods, continues the practice upon my body; tender, devouring pain is all I relish. The small room has only one hole, one bed and a single chair. From some distant world, a masked man enters every hour.

I can tell, as they hung a clock in the room, for me to see it. It is sealed, so I can’t do something with it. I won’t. It works in a strange way. Sometimes, it just chugs along but when he enters the room, I don’t hear it. I wonder about it, I try to remember what it sounds like, but I never can.  I am a doctor, I feel I should comprehend. But then, whenever he leaves the room, that clock starts to tick again.

He comes and pulls me out of the bed and then I am on the chair. After he’s done, I am again on bed. I have calculated; 1,356 hours. Every 8 hours he comes and feeds me a loaf and some water.

Whenever he comes, he does not speak. Standing in-front of me, he first smiles. Every time I see him smile, in the back of my head somewhere, strangely, I smile.  At last I will again be content and the pain will overcome any consciousness leading to a feeling. At last I will be free of this body and my mind would hover above the earthly measures that make me sick with every passing moment. He has a stick and I have a body. I laugh sometimes in my head, pondering over the simplicity and yet the sheer effectiveness of the whole setting. The stick has a rectangular detachable head with tiny sets of shining blades on it. I remember there were 9 when I used to shout; now there are 23. He always tries. Try to stick all of them together in my naked body. Often it works out for him. A slight moan of grunted breathing shortly before, and I realize that he is going to strike. I hardly see now what he does. The tiny blades with a swift movement burst my epidermis, then tearing through; they suck out my blood vessels. My replying moan plays his muse. And in a fit again, he swings both his hands and meets the stick with my chest. I moan. And again sprites of dark, thick blood squirts out from my chest. I try to search for a spot where there isn’t blood but then I just keep staring. The new blood slowly convulses the dried accumulation of black dead one.

When the hour hand slowly trod from 12 to 6, he stops. This has become the time that I hate. He stops and stares at me gradually bursting out into hysterical laughter. It is not the laughter, which I barely grasp. It is the blood that starts to flow out and I realizing it, that it did. Sometimes I wish to be dead, but then I know he wouldn’t allow me that.  The blood in small trenches of the wounds, leaks down my shivering body. It collects into the circular beaker which surrounds my chair. After that, for the remaining half hour I am pushed on the bed and I stare at the clock. The hand reaches 12 in the clock and the same things occur all over again.

All of my time here has been through two stages. Initial hope sank into the darkness of fear.  It was not enough, for the vessel of my life slowly departed into the abysmal depths of pain and gloom. Though now it had completely convulsed in that black sea, the land of death was, unfortunately untouched. I just could not have it, the serene silence of death. The burden of this sickening life made my soul bleak and finally empty. The problem of death, I wished, if only could manage to shed its grim façade. Then only, I would shine in the shimmer of eternal light. At last I will leave this room. All this, my moaning body, this creaking bed, the blood stained chair and that dreaded dark clock with its second’s pin tearing every inch of my soul with its shrieking glide.

“I come again” and he entered again. In an instantaneous outburst of pure frustration and some tiny flakes of psychological depravity, he held his weapon and trusted me to respond. Respond I did, though it was duly compressed. His rage seems monotonous now, so does the pain. It hurts, however, the feeling that it begets has turned dull. He shoots and I respond. He says he likes to have fun. I watch at that dark fatty face, at those darker resilient and resolute eyes. Madness, anarchy but something else shyly comes out to light, Fear. He possesses fear whilst I rejoice to meet it again. Neither the source nor the purpose intrigues me; it is the humble presence itself. To watch him in fear, to stare right in his eyes with complete indifference to his position; is what intrigues me, holds me, cheer me, make me live. I know he will one day, driven by his thirst or his fear, will release me into the sweet lap of death.  It will be on that day, finally, that I will be satisfied for I know until he would meet me again, I will make him fear. He will always fear my dead, bare stare peering through the shackles of logic and reason and his madness. My stare, which will tear him apart every moment he would try breathe life in. Every minute passing of the clock, my stare’s vision would torture his soul and eventually, his body. Each juncture, my blood would wash down his crooked dried throat and he will have to swallow. He would choke and cry. He would not be human. It will not be human to him. He strikes and I burst into laughter.

I am dying at this exact instant, I am leaving. I have failed his test. My wait for my death is over. I wait for him to try to look into my eyes as he is battering me now. Flesh and blood is making him happy. In his ecstasy he just landed his eyes into mine. In this ecstasy, he just opened the door of this room and locked himself now.