Darkness

The darkness, it bites, it bites so hard. Yet the biting was nothing compared to the stabbing feeling that Yun-He felt. It was a strange feeling. Stab stab, stab stab. Yun-He sat in the darkness, heart throbbing, stabbed, and his ears ringing from the silence that was so piercing loud. Disorientation had long since set in and Yun-He found that he was already past the stage of caring about it.

`Let the disorientation set in,' he had thought. `I don't care any more, I don't care about anything anymore!'

The silence was suddenly shattered by a loud ticking sound. Finding something different, Yun-He temporarily dropped back into alertness, his earlier delusions seemingly gone in a flash. The ticking sound seemed to come from all directions at once, yet at the same time, it sounded like it was coming straight from within his head.

In desperation to keep his temporary sanity, Yun-He scouted around within the dark cavity, seeking in vain for the external source of the sound. It had to be external, it just had to be---it was ludicrous for a loud ticking sound to occur within one's head. Or was it?

It was hard to tell what was normal and what was not anymore. Yun-He had been in the cavity for too long, far too long. It had been days, if not weeks. Food was never a problem---he never felt any hunger. How that was so never really crossed his mind; he could no longer trust anything: his senses, his mind, his thoughts, his feelings anything. Nothing seemed to make any logical sense---nothing seemed to really matter, really.

The random nature in which the ticking sound came was starting to irritate Yun-He. There was a short series of ticks, followed by some period of silence, then a tick or two, more silence, ad nauseum. Yun-He's desperation of finding the source of that ticking was fast going beyond that of desperation and into that of obsession---he needed to find the source of the ticking sound, and perhaps make it go away since its randomness was really burning a deep mental wound in his already frayed nerves.

Tick. Tick tick. Silence. Tick tick tick tick, tick tick. Silence.

Yun-He groped his way through the dark, straining his ears to look for the sound, trying to find that tell-tale difference in perceived sound from each ear to triangulate and determine the true source. But in spite of his best efforts, he could not determine where the sound came from.

The ticking started to have very strong variations in its perceived volume; at times it sounded really loud and close, yet at times, it was hardly a whisper. Yun-He groped around for a few more minutes, before finally deciding that it was a complete waste of time.

There was no way that he could ever find out what that sound was, not when he was still within the cavity. `I must find my way out of this place some how,' he thought to himself, trying to keep his rediscovered wits about him. `I simply must.'

Strange coloured haloes seem to materialise in Yun-He's vision, and he knew at that moment that it was just an illusion; the rods and cones within his retina were triggered by random noise that fluctuated from the lack of proper external stimuli that is the darkness.

The swirl of colours of the haloes were working their magic on him, and Yun-He was fast discovering that the little sanity he had from the interruptiosn from the random ticking sound was ebbing away as the hypnotic swirl of colours formed a cacophony that shattered slowly the suspension of ratinoality on his predicament.

Then the ticking sound came once more. Yun-He was instantaneously alert once more, seeking, searching. Tick, tick, tick. Silence. Tick. More silence. Tick, tick.

``Stop this infernal sound already!'' Yun-He shouted into the darkness at no one in particular.

``I cannot take this any more! Stop this! Stop this! Stop this! Stop this please!''

By then Yun-He was already down on his knees, sobbing uncontrollably, his psyche finally in shambles.
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``Test subject two-zero-four: failure. Subject was enclosed in anachroeic chamber for twenty-four hours as part of initiative fifty-six point three. Randomised omnidirectional ticking sound was administered twelve hours into the experiment. Subject demonstrated great signs of distress and general anxiety consistent with Hallusane Syndrome. At twenty-four hour mark, subject was released from chamber in state of permanent shock. Electro-stimulation of neural matter was administered to no avail. Test subject is unsuitable for deployment by the State as part of new-age intelligence programme. Suggest different protocol and incentives to obtain better candidates.''

``File closed.''