The Horla

(Dedicated to Guy de Maupassant and the mentally broken)

(The Horla is the creepiest feeling ever...)

Have you sometimes felt that you are all alone in this Universe? The creepy feeling that you are dead and omitted out of existence. Have you ever felt what it is within the realm of a vast expanse of Time?  And Space? I do. And it sometimes get on my nerves. I got a nervous breakdown for that. I am normal like the rest of you.
But I have the innate feeling. I feel I am followed.

I am not schizophrenic. But the state of my mind is very unpredictable. I don’t know when I will have an episode of anxiety or depression.

 And it kills me to the core. That is what I hate most of all the things. There is nothing I can do for my own self. How can I fight myself? I am over-run by a chain of thoughts, I can’t control. Existence becomes a problem. Mankind faces the worst challenge in the form of what people would give a medical term- the mentally ill!

I awake and can feel that though alone someone is observing me. The first five minutes of my wakeful period (after I get out of sleep) I am more in another world. I am more at war with myself to exist in my surreal world which is the real world for them, or come to this world where I see things as they are. The psychiatrists tell me, that these are just

hypnopompic hallucinations.

 And I have to take treatment for them. They don’t exist, and it all resides in my brain. Maybe I will get rid of those sensations, as they prefer calling them.

And while going to sleep, it is the most difficult thing for me. The more I try to chase sleep, the farther it goes. It has caused me a nervous breakdown once. I feel frightened that I can’t sleep and worry. I try to doze, and weird thoughts creeps in my mind. It is horrible that that I have to sweat and walk to get myself tired and drowsy, and then try my best to fall asleep. And then when sleep does come, it is in the wee hours of morning and I wake up 15 minutes later, startled. I feel frightened with my heart racing, and anxious that I am alive and existing.

It is like a curse has been placed on my brain. Knowledge is dangerous. I wish I knew nothing, just the basics of survival. I would have led a care-free life, who damn cares? The brain of the human kind is a curious thing and comparable to the universe. As diverse and strange this universe is, and holds enormous secrets, so is the brain. We yet, don’t know how to fully utilize the brain. For the entire Universe resides in the human brain! And those who know this secret can get the unlimited power of the Universe. There is a limit however, to the knowledge content that a man can hold in his brain at a given instant of time. Unless you knew the knowledge of the Infinity and the potential to hold the infinity. Knowledge is limitless. And what happens if people try to acquire knowledge beyond their limit? Mental breakdown! The head feels heavy, like an additional mass of 20 kg or more is placed inside the brain (the brain for sure, not the head). The head feels to be enlarged, and you will look into the mirror to see if you are alright. If you have the courage to look into the mirror! You will dread yourself, your very existence!

 Anything that you dislike and fear will come to haunt you. Your biggest strength will turn to be your biggest weakness. Keeping chaste over all these years created an adverse feeling in me. I developed homophobia. I thought humans around every corner to be sexually deviant and feared everyone. I hate people who are sexually deviant. To know about them is to acquire knowledge about the forbidden zone and corrupt the beautiful mind. Woe is to the diseased brain and the diseased kind! Fortunate are those who sleep well at night and have a healthy appetite to eat anything they want.

There are people who have mastered their brain and rose to power. Then there are people who discovered the secret of their brain and gave up everything. But for people like me and rest of the world, it is between the devil and the deep blue sea; we really don’t know our desires. And maybe there are some hidden unconscious conflict in my brain that makes me feel those things, which others don’t feel. If someone would ever be following you at all moments? What would you do? Won’t you get annoyed? It is not your shadow. But someone is shadowing you. They listen to you and talk to themselves. Sometimes they talk to you in your brain. You scream, they only laugh. And you feel you will go mad if you don’t stop thinking and hearing those things. I have felt these and I have feared them. They suck the existence of life. Woe is to the gods who sets the devil after me. The lurking shadow comes in the garden and peeps at my window when I try to sleep. I know it is observing me. So I get into the quilt and peek from within. I can see him moving. No, it is not the shadow cast by the moon! There is something down there, something grave! And that is weighing my head down. What should I do?

I wanted to fall in love. Feel the essence of love. But how could I love without knowing love. I want to know emotion. For me everything exists in equations. I understand mathematical language. And I see love in the form of a special human equation. I have studied the psychology of love. I hypnotized myself into falling in love. And commanded myself to love a girl who would have little chance of falling in love with me! I was successful in my endeavour but that corrupted my brain and killed a part of my innocence. And I became a diseased man- an insane for sure, broken in love! And ever since I have been prosecuted. The girl is happily married, but I killed my own self. Nay, the girl never loved me, and my plan back-fired. I never knew love and emotions could be so dangerous, that they would destroy me; make me hollow from within! I wish I had a teacher so that I knew the consequence of what I was doing. I wouldn’t have ever experimented; least on myself!

So I try to recover myself from the dangers of knowledge and emotion. I scream and shout at myself. I want liberty from knowledge. I want freedom. Freedom from my own self! Acquiring knowledge and experience is an irreversible process. The mind is always receptive to new information and new knowledge. This acquiring of new knowledge may be destructive to the neurons of peace!

There are times when you feel existence itself becomes a burden. There are constant thoughts that occupy your mind and frightens you. What do you do in such case? You are angry with God for creating you. You envy the lifeless stones, the tress, the birds, and the laborers who can sleep peacefully in the summer under a tree without any care. That is the time that you seriously invoke your inner self.

Yes, the Horla has risen, and become a manifestation. From time to time it comes and disturbs me. It disturbs my whole self, my existence, the foundation of hope. The beautiful hope (maybe they are lies) that is more powerful than opium to subdue human suffering! It has snatched hope away from me and shows me nothing but the ugly, defaced truth. How can we live with truth alone? Existence is impossible without lies, so they exist in plenty and in the most natural form! That is evolution, and lies have existed with hope, because they are needed for human existence!

 This Horla clings to me wickedly. It won’t spare me, or anyone which it grips. It will make you fear what you love and took pride in! Yes, you would want to know what the Horla is? All I can say is, beware! You have to have a nervous breakdown to experience what the Horla is!

  I see the rats have become fearless. It is strange that they do not hide, like they usually do on approach of humans or other animals. Something is wrong with nature. Things are not the way they should be. And I can see the dogs acting weird. They whine a lot nowadays. And if I go, the dogs bark like as if I am a tramp with a sack full of discarded material.  This strangeness which has got into nature will leave me intensified with fear. God alone knows what is wrong. People can’t strange it out. Everything they think is natural. But I assure you, nothing is! It is just a cover in the eyes of the common public.

Why is the Horla chasing me? 

That no one knows. Maybe the Horla is chasing other people also. Those who have done some wrong to bring a bit of something about it to the world. The Horla doesn’t want to be shown in negative light. So it stays as a disease to the troubled individual, and makes people believe nothing is wrong with the environment, but only at the individual level. Slowly and steadily it will grip the whole world. And then it will be a world of madmen! Who will accuse the other of madness?