‘The lights went out last night and I was forced to hang out with him. I should have charged my phone that time I had thought of it.

I had been dreading this for a long time. That piercing glare that he always throws at me. I avoid it but still feel it at the back of my neck. Ignoring him has been easy. Distractions are easy to find nowadays. Just look at a screen or listen to something, anything. But those weren’t on my list of options last night.

I had been left with him in the dark where he is, ironically, more visible. Light has always been the biggest distraction. It is the backdrop against which marks of lies and half-truths disappear.

His stare, as haunting as it is, was the least of my worries. What I dreaded the most was his whisper. A single word would plunge me deep into the rabbit hole that is my inner conscience. It would send me spiraling down into an existential crisis. His voice is like that sad hymn that always breaks me down into draughtable pieces. 

I knew that if I would listen, it would take me months to recover. But in the dark, my room turned into a cage and I was locked in with him, and my bed into a vessel that he would use to drive me into the depths from which I would never return.

I found myself appreciating the streetlight that always lit my room. What I would do for it to blink just once! Had the whole country conspired to get me into this situation? Was the streetlight, my dear friend, a part of it? How far does this plot go? Are you too, in on it?

I shut my eyes, but he started to whisper. I blocked my ears but his voice grew louder drowning that of the crickets that had come to my rescue. My bed had become a canoe. Under the guidance of his wind, we were wafted soundlessly on cold, calm waters. He reached out to me and helped me sit up. Two figures sat in the canoe floating on the misty river.

His burning eyes saw through my outer shell and for the first time in a long time, in his eyes, I saw a true reflection of what I had become. 

We drifted into the judgemental cataracts of the promises I could keep but broke anyway, and then to the steep rapids of bad decisions I had made knowingly. But he just sat there, a gentle guide through the bleakest scenery. He showed me realizations that my cowardice wouldn’t let me come to, among them, that he was not an enemy but an ally.

As the canoe docked at the shore of my newly rediscovered awareness, I wished the trip wouldn’t end. The lights stuttered on, casting its illusion across my four walls. All this time, had I been avoiding such good company?

Inevitably, the first thing I found myself doing was turning on every screen close to me.’