A Story About Visual Spectrum

He sat in the dark, waiting.

He was the kind of person who was blunt, impulsive and brutally honest, and he proved to be so in what he said to himself: “I am scared shitless right now.”

The thing about waiting in the dark is that you never know what lurks out there, beyond the visual spectrum of our eyes. And because we are sadly unarmed of knowledge, we use our favourite tool in surmising what we do not know of – our imagination. It occurs in all sorts of contexts – men use it when they want to have a picture of what a woman looks like underneath her clothes. Dejected souls use it to picture their moment of triumph and escape from their self-perceived miserable existence. And similarly, our minds use it when we are in the dark, to picture what our naked eyes cannot picture. What makes it seemingly sinister is that ghost films and childhood urban legends fuel our imagination in these circumstances.

He knew all this, but he found that logic does not always overcome irrational fear. Fear aside, however, he knew he had to stay. The other person would come, in time.

There was a voice from the abyss before him. He strained his ears to catch the soft whisper emanating from the darkness.

“Robert,” he heard, and jumped to his feet upon hearing his name. For several moments, there was silence.

“Robert” again, this time, unmistakable. It was a rough male voice, and Robert was surprised such a voice could even come out as a whisper. His apprehension was limited though, as the voice was familiar.

He met the man at a bar – a friend of a friend’s. They were introduced on the grounds of their shared interest in board games. Robert, naturally, was in good spirits at meeting a person who enjoyed board games as he did. The man however, was reserved, and hardly spoke. He told Robert his name, but he was so inaudible that Robert did not ask again for fear of forcing the man to speak – an activity he clearly found a chore. His longest sentence during their acquaintance had been, “I have something that can help improve your board game experience.” Robert responded positively to that, and they arranged a meeting at this place, at this time.

“I’m here!” Robert called to the darkness. There was a long silence after that.

And then, there was laughter from the darkness. “Do you wanna die, Robert?”

Fear gripped Robert with its cold, iron fists. His impulses were taking control of his mind. Before they could however, the man spoke.

“I am going to dice you up.” He sounded like a deranged salesperson, selling death at bargain price.

Robert ran, away from the voice. He yelled. He ran on. He yelled again. He turned, to see the man standing there, shouting at him. Robert did not want to hear it, and blocked it from his brain.

They found Robert 8 miles on, unconscious. He had collapsed from fatigue and overexertion…

**********************************************

The man stood there, and watched as Robert sat there uneasily, waiting for him. “Do you want a die, Robert?” Robert had told him of how he kept losing his dice, and the man empathized, knowing how difficult it will be for a board game enthusiast to not have his dice.

Robert did not reply, so he used his best salesman-presentation-voice: “I have an offer and with it,” he began slowly, and increased his tempo and volume, “I am going to dice you up!”

Robert then ran off. The man stood there, in the darkness, laughing at the peculiar behaviour of what his eyes’ limited visual spectrum hid from him.