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Double Identity(Part II)

You were always certain that those preternaturals did exist, although in your life you might not have the privilege to witness them within a nail's distance. You knew they would exist, although your mother had been trying desperately to wean you from those 'ominous mumbo-jumbos.' You read them in havoc-wreaking stories by Allan Poe; they were all fairly familiar to you: ears on walls, cat in walls. You sneered, dismissed them at times but still, you had to admit that they did give shivers down your spine. It's like a tribal statue, looming, standing stock-still before you. It has preoccupied your mind for ages to remove the statue, for it triggers unnecessary fear. But every time when you happen to glance at its eyes, red-beaded, infernal perhaps, in a shimmering way, your plan of dispelling the statue freezes up.

So I lived with him for days without taking any measures or extending my shocks. I lived with him, that phantamagoric image of mine. He was there while I was toiling with my daily chores. The chores weren't too tedious though, I only swept off the dusts on my books, a well-organized library of them; never too bothered to scrape off the fungi climbing on my walls, for they give out a titillating smell which made the termination relatively difficult to perform, hard to put into words.

He was also there, every meal, thrice a day, made me have penitence of even swallowing the smallest morsel of food. This conjured up my childhood memory of swashbuckling in my backyard and even before my mother came scolding me, I could feel the moon kept its severe vigilance. The moon itself didn't have eyes, of course, but I was sure it never dropped its stare.

Things stayed unchanged for days. I was kept under rigid vigilance(or hostage) by that wooden phantom, whose eyes were two completely arid allotments in where torrents were impossible to awake the sprout of rod. But the innocence was there, the wicked innocence which exempted him from the profound understanding of the viciousness behind this hideous shenanigan and my intractable hatred. Yes, the case had become pretty ominous instead. The mysteriousness had worn off over time once you took into account that it was even madder not to believe.

I'd always suspected the wood behind my hut to be something more than what it deceived me- with trees and trees and myriads of trees. My mother, when she was alive of course, used to warn me of not straying near any distance of the wood. She wouldn't acknowledge enchantment, sadly, for the atheist's mind was always doggedly scientific. But I knew something must reside there. Something I might never witness, but took advantage of the ripened time to seep into my dull life, to weave itself into my fruitless storyline, and cast its necromancy on me.

(to be continued...)

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