I get occasional short shivers from my childhood. It feels like, for a split second, I’m struck with a fever and my body combats to raise me from a sudden drop in my body temperature. According to google tho, it’s a natural activity of our bodies. Although, maybe it’s just me who later found it unnatural.
Totally unrelated, but, I have watched enough horror movies, and the ghastly entities I see on the screens won’t cut it since I am aware of the cliches. The only time where they can scare me to death are in my dreams. Seriously, I remember me jumping up awake scared to some demon in one of my childhood nightmares.
However, I’m way more afraid of strange looking lights. Basically, smaller spots of lights. A good example would be the light bleeding out from our living room at night through the small diamond-shaped fanlights up at our walls. Let’s say the scary stories woven around UFOs or those footage from Iranavila, Puttalam, Nocchiyagama, Anuradhapura, and Kovilyaya, Mahiyanganaya about a strange floating disk or an orb caught on camera triggered this fear.
Back to the shivers. As far as I knew, I used to get one of them once in a blue moon, I mean, once in a month, to be precise. But about a month ago, it got strangely frequent to the point where I get a chill every fortnight. And I started noticing that it happens only in night time. Isn’t that strange?
I have a fascination with electronic and electric stuff. Audio equipment hold my interest. The first (and only) assignment I had with Analog electronics was to make a simple audio amplifier, and I was the only one to make a stereo amplifier rather than a cheaper mono one with 2 out of 10 LM386 chips. That was a bed of roses until we had to etch the circuit using copper boards, ferric chloride, and finalize it with a bridge rectifier, so we can run our amp on mains, i.e. our 230 V 50 Hz AC grid supply, Keeping in mind the risk of electric shocks. Hopefully, that gave me none since I was overly careful with the memories of me getting shocked by faulty power outlets, or in our words “plug points.” Those shocks weren’t “humble” like those chills I was going through. It feels like me getting a cane strike from an angry teacher combined with a devilish tremor surrounding my heart.
The shivers I got to talk about here, started taking a twist into a territory kinda like that. And man, I could get so descriptive on differentiating different types of chills I got to experience daily. Got a “normal” chill while listening to a news about immense floods in Florida despite having nobody related at there to worry about staying here in Colombo (I beg you pardon if that was rude by any means.) and my mom asked, “Are you alright?” and I responded by shrugging that off as a normal thing, so that I won’t disturb my sister rote studying in her room for her upcoming A/L exam.
And that was the worst mistake I made.
I usually sleep facing to the empty wall next to my bed rather than to the window. Because, my messed up mind is too good at bringing up some sort of an unearthly glowing orb out of nowhere. I have asked many folks whether they have seen a thing like that. Based on what they said in response. I have built up some faint confidence on “Nothing’s out there.” Albeit, I remember many occasions where I mumble some random nonsense alone in the dark to make an escape from a fear rising out of nowhere but my mind.
Again, my body shook. Except, I heard a sting of some sort of hum. From before, I thought it was a figment of my imagination, based off of the fallen angel at X-files. But my ears pulsated. My sleep quality is hella low, and I experience false “falling downs” in my sleep that snap me awake, but that’s another story, however, The clock read 11:24 at the bottom of the night. That shiver was sustained, as if my body struck a heatwave of mere five seconds, and I remember my wooden bed crackling like never before, sort of like someone’s jumping on it. Only I can remember myself gagging. Miraculously, I saw some blue tint through that god forsaken window I ignored to face at in the night. Hell, I was that nerdy to make up my mind, thinking “no, maybe the blue receptors in my eyes are refreshing since I wear those “blue cut” glasses. A chill is an act of refreshing my body, get over it. Blah blah blah…” But can that explain the whoosh-like transition to the usual pitch black of what I see in the night?
The following day, out of confusion, I asked my mom, dad and even my sister on any trace of sound, a light or eventually, whether they got a sudden chill in that night. Well, guess what, they were asleep. And they had no idea what I was talking about. However, having some idea that I frequently experience sudden shocks, my mom asked me to come meet the doctor. But, I even passed on that, seeing how we went “on roll” with nothing much to spend having paid another installment of a hefty university fee.
I managed to do my medications myself. I started laying a cloth dampened with cologne on my forehead when I sleep, Got overly curious about my posture, moved to drinking filtered or hot water. Avoided cold food and got my tongue burnt yet again. But the chills never left.
I had a habit on reading. Lately, YouTube got the best of it and I kind of moved to watching or listening to documentaries. TechTrack, Raamuwa (Randika Wijesinghe) Vsauce and Veritasium were my all time favorites. In one of Randika’s videos, I listened about near-death experiences where experiencing a dramatic slowdown in time was fairly common when the tragic accident was taking place.
The last day was exhausting and it was too late when I arrived at home after clearing our stall of the annual exhibition held at our campus. However, I had such a peace of mind receiving good comments from those who viewed our project. Anyhow, having no more strength left to do anything else, I hit the sack in a hurry when the clock was just about to read 11:28.
That damned shiver came back. Maybe, it’s just me who felt a fake slowdown of time. Pain was rising from the inside and moving towards the back of my whole body. And this time it was obvious that I was levitating. In place of that blue tint I had once seen through that window, there was a violently glowing pale semicircle. A few frames later, I heard a glass pane breaking as if some bomb blasted it to smithereens. The hum in my ears went louder and louder like an amplifier cranked up to saturation. Through the grown semicircle, I saw someone or something gazing at me, My back was lying against some irony cold fabric, inside my head, I felt some sharp but delicate “legs” crawling down into my brain, and I have no clue how was I laying on the porch with no trace of any scar when another morning was dawning.