The Tick Talks

For the longest time, I wasn't even aware that I had died. I was surfing the internet on the laptop when suddenly the connection went plonk. Or so I thought.

I did everything I could to fix the problem. But it just felt like the dream when you're trying to escape or call someone for help but no part of your body moves?

I wanted to unplug the cable from the modem, but couldn't move from my chair. Bizarre, isn't it? There was only one thing to do in such an emergency situation.

Wake my roomie up. She was lying dead in her bed. Not literally, but I knew waking her up would need the resourcefulnes of a stand-up comedian or a sexual pervert.
But imagine my surprise when I found myself unable to even lift a finger to rouse her from sleep.

Was I dreaming? I couldn't fix the internet line, couldn't move from my chair. Shit, I even tried opening my mouth to say something and absolutely nothing came out. Not even a sigh.

I tried listening for some vital clues to make sense of what was going on. And then I could hear it. The deafening silence. Like outer space.

I was terrified and paranoid. Imagine a plight when you can't turn to anyone for help, no matter how hard you try, and to top it all, your senses abandon you like a gold-digger wife. This could only mean I was paralysed or some crazy shit like that.

And as I found out later, that would have been still better. I would have at least kept believing that and sat there till the roomie woke up the next afternoon and took me to the emergency. Had it not been for the sudden assault on my senses.

Out of the blue, I started seeing things in the weirdest of ways. Or to put it more clearly, I started seeing things FROM the weirdest places. I looked up, and there was an enormous growth right above my eyes. It stretched on for god knows what, a mile? And below me? An eternal abyss. If I fell from the angle I was looking down, the only way of escaping would be clinging to the cluster of thick bushy hair right under my eyes. And that was really confusing. Eyebrows under my eyes?

Anyway, I somehow managed to look up beyond the stump that was right above my eyes. Something even bigger was towering above the stump, but way above. Then I recognized it. It was my face. I couldn't have mistook the scraggly beard and the unkempt hair for anything in the world. The face I'd adored every single morning in front of the mirror. And outside while shopping in the mall, or in the office window pane. I knew what I was looking at.

But there was something horribly wrong with it. Instead of eyes, it had two very ugly orbs sticking out of the sockets. Round, but so not like my eyes.

Suddenly I knew what had happened. Someone was playing jigsaw puzzle with my anatomy. And that could mean only one thing.

I was dead.