The Hum

The tap dripped slowly, the cold water from it softly landed onto the scalp of our protagonist, who lay spread-eagled and motionless, hugging the floor as an old friend did upon a chanced meeting.
Every hair on his body stood up, craving for heat to keep him alive. His bloodshot eyes stayed focused upon a distant point on the wall, as if it contained the secrets pivotal for his existence.
The nearest window lay opened, and from it came to a gust of cold icy wind, making him shiver. His jaws clattered, and every muscle in his body reacted to the severity of it.
The wet cloth that clung to his body worsened the situation.
The wind stopped howling, and that was when it happened. He could hear the small poundings on his eardrums, which increased steadily. It wasn't the sort of sound that he had ever heard before. It was both pleasant and irritating at the same time. His heart began to race, in coherence with the pounding. The intensity increased.
He could not stop it. It was so intense that he had the urge to break everything around him. He pushed himself up and stupidly enough, bumped his head to the tap on his way. His body ached already, with it the throbbing pain in his head that blurred his vision, it was like living a nightmare.
A sudden darkness engulfed him for a split second and when the vision came back, the noise had quadrupled. He ran out of the bathroom. He really wanted to break something! He punched a window on his way to the living room. The gashes on his fist seemed to deliver a shot of adrenaline and that seemed to subside the noise that continued to bother him. And then, something involuntary happened, a coarse laugh escaped his throat! Driven now, solely by the involuntary instincts, he threw the television set at the wall.
He shot past the living room, towards the door and flinging it open, he exited it.
He roared in laughter, as though the world manifested itself in a comical sense.
He had picked up something which he did not bother recognize, for, he had lost his conscious self, now he was driven by madness, by the hum that controlled every aspect of him.
Flinging whatever was in his arms at whatever his brain perceived as 'breakable'.
He saw two dark figures approaching him, he flung the weapon, and one of the figures fell. He felt something warm splash across his face.
He looked around and he saw silhouettes running helter-skelter and he had the urge to run. As he began to, he heard a loud thud which echoed between the intertwined mess of nerves that was protected by his skull. He heard it over the noise and now he felt pain the in his left foot. He lost his balance and fell face-first onto the road, whose warmth was welcoming.
It was still evening. The pain in his left leg sent adrenaline coursing through his body and that subsided the noise, bringing the conscious part of him back to the body. He could not make any sense as to why he was lying face down on the road, while the last fleeting memory he had was of his bathroom floor. He looked at what he was holding and what it was covered with. The realization hit him and so did the guilt and the enormity of what he had done. He could not help it, as he stared at the road in such close proximity, he thought of the power of the human brain and how, when it goes haywire, it becomes one of the most lethal weapons. He had slipped, just as every one of us will, with insanity thanks to the monotony of the life that we are living. And that his threshold was smaller than all of us does not make us better off, does it?
As he stared at the road which went on forever, he saw people approaching him, to take him and lock him away. The thought seemed to have triggered something in his body and that brought back the pounding in his ears. As he glimpsed at the face of his subduer, fear invaded, with it he lost grasp and then there was darkness.

Photography by Anirudh Chandrashekar