TIME TO KILL: PROLOGUE ——————————————-

IT IS TIME!

It was a small voice; small and distant. I looked around and tried to figure out where it had come from. But, there was no one else there. The room was empty and I was alone. I was alone before and always had been.

There was no one with me.

That thought struck me as weird. How could I even have imagined there would be anyone else in my room, when I lived alone and invited virtually no friends to my apartment? Then, another thought struck me – how come I was hearing it? That voice that sounded so close, like someone was sitting behind me and whispering in my ears?

I stamped out the first signs of fear that was beginning to lurk around in my mind, threatening to swell and swamp out my last remaining awareness and kick out my anchor to reality.

I should concentrate on finishing the first chapter of my story which I started earlier at the office. Well, I didn’t actually start it…that was another story in itself.

It had been a weird day.

I turned around to face the computer screen ready to get on with it. But, my eyes almost popped out of their sockets when I saw the three words that blinked back at me, like neon lights advertising a strip-tease club.

IT IS TIME!

My skin grew hot and my head began to vibrate. A sense of de javu enveloped me as I stared at the words on my computer screen.

It was happening all over again!

All at once, I felt sick to the bottom of my stomach and before I could do anything to stop myself I served up the semi-digested mixture of boli and epa that I had for dinner. I was however able to avoid serving it on the keyboard. It was my one singular act of heroism all day – to save my laptop from ruin by short-circuiting it.

I couldn’t breathe well. I couldn’t focus well. My hands shook and my heartbeat raced as I blinked at the words on my computer screen.

They blinked right back at me.

Three words.

Three words that stood together like a row of anxious prostitutes waiting for the night’s fare. Three words that were marked by a singular blinking vertical line made by the cursor, waiting for someone to continue… to issue commands for the next steps of action. They were three words that seemed to be guarded jealously by that cursor – the cursor that kept blinking back at me like the purring cunt of a hyperventilating virgin. They were three distinct words that bore a markedly different meaning to those of their very famous cousins – another three-worded phrase people use so affectionately and so carelessly these days.

That’s right, Boyo! They use those three-word phrase so carelessly these days.

It was that damned voice again. This time, I didn’t bother to locate its source. I couldn’t have even if I tried. The noise inside my head was now ringing so loud that I lost all sense of equilibrium. My grip on the edge of the writing desk slackened and I fell to the floor, sinking my face smack into the center of the vomit pile I had discharged there earlier. I couldn’t muster enough strength to get up, not even enough to think. All I was aware of was that ringing noise in my head and the constant whisper of the voice that won’t stop saying…

IT IS TIME!  IT IS TIME!  IT IS TIME!  IT IS TIME!  IT IS TIME!  IT IS TIME!

IT IS TIME!  IT IS TIME!  IT IS TIME!  IT IS TIME!  IT IS TIME!  IT IS TIME!

IT IS TIME!  IT IS TIME!  IT IS TIME!  IT IS TIME!  IT IS TIME!  IT IS TIME!

I struggled to wade through the fuzziness that was crowding out my mind. I tried to focus on the words in my head. It was difficult, but I tried…

Time for what?

I forced my mind to fight for control, to resist the feeling of slipping into oblivion and darkness which was fast creeping up on me as I laid prone on the floor, my face buried in my own vomit.

For a moment, the noise and voice stilled. In that momentary lull, my mind seemed to stabilize and quickly adjust to the situation at hand. I was not sure if I could have withstood another minute of the ordeal I just went through – that voice in my head and the noise were killing me.

Now, they were gone!

But, I spoke to soon. Like an avenging and ruthless angel it came back… this time, it was not a voice in my head, but a voice issued right through my own lips… It came in a hoarse shrill.

IT IS TIME TO KILL!

10.12 p.m.

***

“Hey Buddy!”

It was Vincent who was yelling at me from across the lunch room. As usual, his plate was full and matched his body mass. He was a big chap who ate big. His mouth was full with the rice and stew he had stuffed in it.  He looked comical, his cheeks puffed and his belly distended below the table towards the floor.

Vincent worked in IT – had been working there since I joined the company. He was the go-to man when we needed system errors or software and hardware issues resolved. He also was a very funny guy; he could make you laugh till you lost ribs, literally speaking.

However, he had the unwanted habit of farting uncontrollably and it was the main reason people avoided his office as much as they could, and his table during lunch time. He didn’t and couldn’t control his pipes. But, I liked him and we carried on a very good relationship that beat the understanding of the other staff.

I collected my food and walked over to his table. I placed the tray down and went to get a drink from the refrigerator standing in the corner.

“Buddy!” I greeted back when I returned with my drink. It was our greeting ritual – we called ourselves buddies, even though our friendship starts and ends in the office. It had never gone beyond that. I looked around the lunch room, noting that it was typically sparse. Another pointer to the presence of the big guy.

“How is your meal? How is work?” I opened the Coke Zero bottle and settled to eat. I wasn’t hungry, but after last night’s episode I needed it for energy.

“Yeah, you know the usual na,” he settled back in his seat and proceeded to regal me with a loud belch. He shook his head and peered at me with those deep eyes of his, “You don’t look very well buddy.”

“I know. I didn’t catch much sleep last night.”

He grinned wickedly. The kind he reserved for when he nursed mischief or had a mischievous trick up his sleeves. The guy is always up to one trick or the other. It was a private joke around the office that he made things happen to systems so that he can remain relevant and be seen to be useful to the organization.

“What did you do last night, buddy?” His eyes quizzed mine, trying to spool any information they betrayed.

But, I was not ready for his inquisition and dropped my eyes to concentrate on my plate. If I didn’t give him much he would leave me alone eventually. It was my defense mechanism all the time and right now I don’t want Vincent or anyone for that matter quizzing me over anything. The shock of the night before was still fresh and his remark about my outlook had pricked things I had tried to blank out all morning. But, not now… it was all coming back and I was fading away from the present again.

I was picking up on something familiar, eerie and definitely uncontrollable. A constant humming in my head…the same I had heard most of last night.

The one I heard for the first time in my life yesterday afternoon, before I fell asleep.

At first, I must have missed what he asked. Then from a distant, like a voice through water I heard him repeat the question, “What did you do last night? Or should I say, who did you do something with?”

I was about to answer when the voice in my head intruded my mind…

Do not tell him anything! You will never tell anybody or else…

My head snapped back and I was pulled into the abyss of nothingness as my mouth clamped up. Nothing existed, except for that voice which kept warning me over and over not to tell anyone.

“Hey!” It was Vincent’s shout that brought me back to the present. I broke free from my semi-trance with a mental start that made my eyes water and my throat constrict.

“Wha – a – a- t?” I was almost choking on the food and quickly sipped the coke. It was also a ploy to hide the fear that must have crept into my eyes at the sound of that voice again.

The voice.

I couldn’t tell him. Not now, not ever and not to anyone. I had heard that voice yesterday and I have seen what it can make me do. I have done everything it has asked me so far and I was not ready – not willing, to go against its instructions.

That voice was the voice of the devil himself.

“I asked you what you did last night that kept you off your precious sleep. How many did you go? The bags under your eyes tell me four or five!”

I waved him away.

Vincent can joke. But, I wasn’t in the mood to joke around with him. I was not feeling good, and he just reminded me of how bad I felt.

That voice!

I heard it first yesterday afternoon… Then, it had come back in the night.

I had woken up this morning around four with my clothes all soiled and bloodied; it was even worse that I had woken in a messed up room with vomit everywhere on the floor and no memory whatsoever of all that had happened.

Now, that voice! Yes, I heard it yesterday night. That voice that spoke to me last night, the one that told me it was …

Time to kill…

Just about when I was ready for my night’s work. Then everything in my life, the life as I know it had changed from that point. But, I couldn’t remember much of what happened. I was scared shitless when I woke in the morning to find my room in the state it was and my clothes bloody.

It was the scariest moment of my life, and standing in my room in all the mess of vomit and bloody clothes, I almost concluded I was dead or insane if not for the shrill trilling of the alarm clock. And it was that alarm clock that had reinstated my state of consciousness and also brought on back the sense of fear and foreboding which had crowded my mind when that voice had first spoken in my head.

Something bad happened, but what?

Vincent’s voice carried through to me over the short distance between us pulling me back slowly to the present, “Are you okay, man?”

“I am fine,” I flashed him what I hoped was one of my best smiles to reassure him. He looked at me for a while, and then as if to say I didn’t convince him shrugged and got up.

“I’ll see you around, tough guy.”

I watched him walk away, and then turned my thoughts back to all the troubles that have come with the voice of the devil.

===== TO BE CONTINUED =====