CHAPTER 1 - Lizard

Lizards always died inside his room. But for the stench that his room would always bloom in within a few phenomenal hours, Dubleu never understood if the misfortune was meant for the lizards at all. And there were other facts too. He could swear, for one, that there were no lizards in his room except for times when they were dead. Moreover, the corpse of the dead lizards (whatever that means!) were always to be discovered in the same place – inside his waste basket, so that Dubleu never had to go hunting for the corpses. It was almost as if the corpses… or rather, the lizards had taken extra care to make the event of their death look perfect. Dubleu could swear (once again. Yes, swearing is one of his manias) that they died in the exact posture, every time. I’d rather call it “every time” because Dubleu had come to believe that it was the same lizard that had been dying in his room over and over again.

“You’re no lesser mad. Are you?” is what she’d say, “There’s a lizard inside your head, Dubleu.”

Dubleu never told any of these to her for he knew what she’d say. But even when he thought of telling any of these to her he could still feel the headache surge inside his skull, feeling the lizard move inside his head.

Tonight wasn’t like any night. It was darker. Perhaps, it was so because Dubleu had been approaching a phenomenon called Nyctalopia (Dear Mr. Author, we all know you’re good with medical terms. You won’t really want to scream it in your reader’s ears. Okay, so ‘Dubleu had been approaching a phenomenon called night-blindness’) and if you’d ask him he could swear (for the third time) that he had no idea of anything as such happening. It was always the same with Dubleu. All his complications were frighteningly simple to him. Let’s take tonight, for example.

When he entered his room tonight, it was darker than the darkness. He knew all his mindless accessories were lying scattered all over the floor. He didn’t bother to find his way through all of those to the light-switch. He knew exactly where the stench had been originating from. He walked straight towards the waste basket, picked it up with whatever there was underlying the lizard and threw all of it straight out of the window. Never for once did it occur to him that the switchboard was exactly in the midway from his door to the basket.

And whenever he had been unmindful like this, he could feel the lizard waltz inside his head.

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