So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
-Corrax Entry 7:17
Right before waking up today, I felt a slight tingle on my back. Winter just ended, and the infestation of mosquitoes is on the rise. So, while thinking the cause of that tingle to be mosquitoes, I subconsciously slapped and squashed it with my right palm and only to feel it get doused in something slimy and wet. Too slimy for a mosquito with a belly full of blood which may have resulted from the tiny insects enjoying a gourmet feast, or so I had thought. After trying very hard for a brief moment, I barely was able to open up and peak through one of my eyelids to look at it. It's a tiny centipede. For a moment, I thought I was seeing stuff and was still asleep. Then a subtle realization of how in the place I'm living right now, it's nothing to be surprised about slowly set in. A damp dorm room with walls covered with newspapers from the previous decade can offer only so much sanitation.
The other day my roommate had brought lunch for me from the dorm cafeteria. Chicken stew, some unknown unsavoury looking spinach and a lot of rice. As I was studying for the exam the next day, I forgot that the cafeteria stops serving food at three o'clock. If not for him, I would have starved till dinner. Only when the smell of lunch hit my nose, I realized how hungry I was.
I was almost halfway through when I bit on something crunchy. Almost as crunchy as a potato chip. Some kind of a sour liquid gushed out and filled up my mouth. It was a cockroach that I pulled out of my mouth. In such situations, I think usually people vomit out in disgust and give the cook a beating of his life. But I was too hungry to be disgusted. And complaining about the food never changed anything. And even if I did, it could backfire, and I can not afford to lose two daily free meals. And so I did something that civilized people might deem as unthinkable. Without even hesitating, I swallowed the rest of the bite and proceeded on to finish the whole meal. Besides, I have read somewhere that cockroaches are aphrodisiacs. Cannot confirm it as I have no way to try it out now, still can't complain.
Whenever life had forced me to realize how poor I am, in a futile attempt to escape and forget, I always imagined myself to be standing on the vast open fields of bohemia in an autumn sunset. Wind sweeping through my hair, the smell of wildflowers and from somewhere far away, a soothing tune of harp flowing all over the landscape makes it all the more maddening and euphoric. But, as the duchy of Moravia doesn't exist anymore, my dreams will never come to pass in reality. Even so, one does not need to pay anything to dream, and so I keep divulging in the lands of fantasies quite often.
Throughout my life, I always wanted to pursue medicine as a career choice. My parents could never have afforded private schools, so my only option was to sit in public admissions. But as always, life had deemed me to be not worthy. It was the most controversial medical admission exam in history. Before the exam, somehow, the questions got leaked and destroyed my only chance to become a doctor. I could have tried the following year again, but my parents were reluctant to feed their jobless kid anymore. So, fate had deemed me to study criminology, mainly because there were no other scholarships available. Well, I'm not condemning criminology in any way; it's just that when I think I couldn't pursue medicine only for money, I get inescapable aches deep inside my heart. Well, I guess beggars can't be choosers.
Sometimes when everything seems too bleak, so much so that a retreat to my imaginary bohemian fields too seemingly can not do anything about it, I find salvation in writing. I use my hands to drain away all my emotions, convoluted philosophies into words. When I read through what I wrote, most times, I can find nothing but meaningless mumbles. Even then, I keep typing away with my keyboard. In hopes that if someday life decides to throw me a bone-pick me up from this bottomless pit of endless misery- I can look back and find closure. In hopes that one day my walk through this shadow realm too would end.
