CHAPTER ONE
There was a thought swarming around my mind. My imagination was paying off. The thought was perhaps giving me a weird feeling. It was somewhat disturbing, but still I had to think of it. You can’t actually help it. The thought you don’t want to think is the thing you end up thinking. The thought was showing me a pair of socks. There wasn’t anything else. That was it. A white transparent background and a pair of white socks with brown strips on it, in front. The socks were a bit torn and looked quite shabby. It was zooming up and down, which was disturbing. I couldn’t concentrate my mind on anything else. My laptop was there in front of me. A blank page was on it. I was to write in it, but had no luck whatsoever. For quite a few days, I had been under the impression that I was actually crap at what I do. This thing didn’t come up in my mind not for once when I was younger, so why now. This thing was troubling me these past days, and now a new trouble has come up. Since childhood, I experienced a problem with myself, moreover with my mind. There were times when a weird thought came in it. The moment I felt that thought was weird, it didn’t go away. It stayed within my mind, not wanting to go. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else, that particular thought made me literary disabled. I couldn’t do any other work. That was the prime reason I got expelled from three schools, I just couldn’t concentrate on studies while the problem took place. But sadly nobody believed this problem to exist, so I was blamed to be a crap student, then when I told them the true reason for my expulsion, they made me a crap liar. Saying I can’t even lie good. I knew that it wasn’t something I made up. This was something serious. My doctor even made fun of me saying I was hallucinating all this rubbish.
Anyway, so was I for real, crap at the only thing I thought I could do. I couldn’t be a crap writer. I just need time, like everyone else in the business needs it. And I can assure you, hitting ideas take a hell of a lot time. But when I was already in all this tensions these socks had come in the way to disable me again. I almost wanted to scream for a bit. But I knew it won’t go away that easily. I put my hands over the laptop and wrote four words in it. I don’t know why on earth I did that, but I couldn’t think about it too. The socks were blocking me. The four words were “A PAIR OF SOCKS”. I guess, the thought was now controlling me. As soon as I wrote it, the owner of the café came towards me. This café meant a lot to me. I used to come here in my teen years when I could find time to specialize on writing, which was a talent at that moment that I found out I could have. I couldn’t honestly make up for anything.
“Hello, Raad. I guess you’re still trying to write” he said eyeing me weirdly.
“Yes, I am” I said not finding anything else to say. I never liked the man. He hates struggling artists. All these years seeing me coming to this place with a laptop trying to find something to write, I swear he secretly is waiting for the day I would finally would realize I’m not good in it and would quit.
“How’s business going?” I asked.
“Good as always” he replied. He glanced towards the counter for some reason and without saying anything went over there. I actually didn’t care. It was good seeing that he was gone, I could now actually wait for this “sock” thing to get the hell out of my head. I for some reason found myself staring at the big four words I wrote in block capitals. A tiny bit of tiring sensation trickled over me. No wonder how much time it would take to get it out of my skull. I can without realizing can think about how tiresome it would be to get rid of this block. But when I actually try to think, I end up in failure. So as these complications were arousing in my mind, I noticed two queer people entering the café. They were white people; they had long brunette hair that reached their shoulders and had their faces painted in black. Their lips were pierced. The two guys were actually wearing pink skirts. But the most disturbing thing I felt about them was their hands. They had worn a pair of socks at every of their hands. The socks first looked familiar. Then I realized that it had resemblances with the socks that were stuck in my mind. I kept staring at the guys. I looked at the other people in the cafe, but found that they weren’t giving that much attention to them. Were they even noticing that someone had entered the café? I had a strange feeling, that I was the only one being able to look at these guys. The place at that time actually went slow-mo. That wasn’t a feeling inside my head. It literary went slow-mo. Was this a hallucination? Everything seemed to take a lot of time happening. The guys were coming towards me. My insides took a leap. Was this all a commotion going on in my mind? Or was all these real? It can’t be real. I tried to make sense of it. This was pure bizarre. Like some cheap movie, where for no reason the protagonist gets chased by some black-suited guys. A similar thing was showing of hints of happening to me or was all these mere imagination conjured by a hapless writer. This was not. I figured that out when the two guys were some three feet away and when the slow-mo. dramatically vanished and everything reached its normal speed. One of the sock-handed guys took a chair in his hand and suddenly tried to blow my heads out with it. I ducked it. I was on my senses now. I got out of the table and looked at everybody else’s reaction on it. There wasn’t any. Nobody was even realizing that all these were happening. I held a rare facial expression in my face which was hard to name. What on earth is going on?!!!
