Have you seen Bincy? She was not there in the garden hunting frogs. Nor was she catching butterflies. I couldn't find her at Didoo's- the shoddy attic up north. I asked Bahadur. The reply came almost instantly in the form of a finger pointing towards the red clay path that meandered into the pine woods.
''Bincy'', I whistled a couple of times before climbing up the lush slope. Still an hour to go before it gets dark and I lose it completely. I don't know these woods. I know Bincy. I know the poor thing will never leave me alone out here in the cold night. I can hear the night already. I have heard it before but then it is one thing to hear it on your warm bed under a cosy blanket and another thing to hear it devouring you all ends up out in the open.
There is a glimmer out there. The last rays of hope blinking from behind the tall trees. I haven't even made it halfway into the woods. Bincy needs to find me somehow. I cursed Bahadur for not having stopped Bincy on her way to this insane adventure. My brain and my heart are already at odds splitting me in two. One pulling me out of the woods, the other making me stay respectively.
I shouted, ''Bincy''. The mountains mocked me. Night was no more in my mind but all around my body. I flashed my pocket torch and realised that it was far less scary without it. Darkness is without direction and distance. All those spicy stories of death, demons and wolves that I relished during bedtime were starting to play on my mind. Memory can be a monster at times. I cursed Didoo for all that nonsense… now making perfect sense.
The fear of the unknown in the form of a dark mass was digging into my skin with its icy fangs. My ninety odd Didoo with her trembling body and mind can only scare herself to death worrying about me. Bahadur can at his very best point a finger towards the woods. And there isn't anybody else in the house.
I am famished. Bincy too… if she is not being served already for dinner. I have stopped searching for her. I am lost. Can Bincy find me? Just then the thought crossed my mind and with a shiver sprinkled goosebumps all over my body: What if Bincy is already home? I don't know. Maybe, she found another way out of these woods and is now cuddled under Didoo's warm blanket. It took me a while to understand that I haven't even moved a finger on my body and am standing there in that perfect blindness for quite some time now.
The fear of seeing the horror has completely outshone the very existence of horror. But then there can be a snake somewhere, I don't know and so I decided against my will to flash my torch on the face of my fear. The circle of light like an isle only revealed the ocean of darkness that was around me. The light was floating about in the darkness that was me. So little is known and so much more to know. The Universe is weaving itself out of the unknown. Knowledge is infinite. Knowledge can be eternal.
This hunger, this cold and this darkness have always been there all around me, in me. I was not aware of it. I am made out of this nothingness. Didoo, Bahadur, Bincy we are nothing but Nothing: One found in the night, many lost in the light.
DoubleSpeak 