Fluctuation

Back to my apartment balcony, this morning, the week of 'Songkarn' festival had just passed and my day off was about to end. It was the morning that I had to go back to my precinct and faced the reality of my life as a low level civil servant. My boss, the inspector of the precinct, granted me a twenty-four hours off-duty time after Songkarn festival. Yes, a single day-off after nonstop working for the whole week, what a lovely job I have got. My ongoing case investigation never allowed me to have my own private time more than one day. May I ask you, what you would do if you have only twenty-four hours off duty time from the week that you have to work eighteen hours a day, for everyday? Yes, me either, I slept all day long and woke up only when I was hungry.

Before I could finish my first cigarette of the day at my balcony, the second alarm clock on my I-Phone jerked me back to the reality from my vivid reminiscence about the dream last night. It still lingered in my mind like a tattoo on my inner body. The doctor's medicine worked well for just only the first three nights but after that I was raided by that strange dream again. I looked at the time and I knew I needed to hurry. I supposed to be on my precinct at O six hundred for the morning briefing. Time is always against me, a metropolitan homicide detective. After the long hours of sleeping, the reality in front of me looked vaguely familiar to my eyes. As I remember, the time I went to bed last night was around nine in the evening, right after my single-man-do-it-myself dinner. But I did not know why I felt like I went out of this world far longer than that. I felt like I was still dreaming. I reckon it must be because the doctor's medicine that I took it double doses last night according to his order.

' Pinggg...'

My message notification alarm beeped again while I was walking into my room from the balcony. I seized my phone instinctively from the top of my television set without looking at it.

'Thirty missed calls and fifty messages...'

'What the hell...' I exclaimed softly.

Now I knew that I was really awaken. This was a kind of damning evidence about the reality of mine. The people in my precinct could not really live without having me around. All those fifty massages said the same thing about a murder in the Kao San Road area yesterday. I rushed inside my bathroom and got myself ready to go out from my apartment within ten minutes. I always hung my police uniform inside my bathroom because it was the thing that I had to put it on over my police uniform everyday. My black windbreaker jacket with the word 'Detective' embroidered on its backside by the yellow threads was hung beside my apartment's entrance door. Ready now, I seized my jacket and briskly left my apartment. I did not know why I felt like my floor's hallway was quieter and colder than usual.

'Help me...'

On that dead silence, I heard a fainted human voice. The voice was very light, however, it was loud enough for me to know that the voice belong to a woman not a man. But the thing that piqued my curiosity the most was that I could feel some latent pain in her voice. I stopped my footsteps instinctively and tried to listen to that voice more carefully. I just wanted to make sure that the source of the voice came from somewhere else rather than in my head. However, when I attentively tried to hear it, I could not hear anything but silence. So, I decided to move on to the elevator hall.

'You're a liar...'

Just only a few steps further, I could hear that voice again. This time it was louder. Now I was quite confident that the source of that mysterious voice definitely came from inside my head.

'May be, it's time for me to see him again.' I thought about my psychiatrist.

I forgot to tell you that I used to have a benign mental illness since I was born, the condition, which your doctor would call it an OCD. After a long arduous and time wasting years of treatments, I decided to turn down the modern way of mental remedies and turned back to the oldest from of inner self healing- meditation. My mental conditions were getting better and better since I started practicing some meditation. But there were still some remnants of those old days illness manifested its symptoms on my behavior until today. What can I say? I do not like crowded spaces, unfamiliar places or a snap changing of particular situations.

I hate to become people focal point. But the thing that caused me troubles the most was when I was standing among other people. My eyes always move uncontrollably around me to observe all the things nearby. Something like, inside people handbags, costume textures, skin colors, details of people limbs like hands like feet, hair and everything that caught my attention. It always ended up with a displeasing or reprimanding looking back from the people around me. I knew they must think that I have got nosy eyes or something like that. But deep inside my heart, I consider all those symptoms as a gift from god. Why? Because those symptoms always helped me to become a perfect observer of the crime scene when I was inspecting it. It is a unique quality that every homicide detective like me yearns to have. I called it, a natural sense of inquisitiveness, all right, it is nosiness as you may call.

However, this morning, at this very hallway, without any warning, the manifestation of a new symptom began inside me. I did not understand why it could happen because I just came back from the consulting with my psychiatrist about my annoying dream just a week ago. For now, I assumed that it might have something to do with the new medication that my doctor friend gave me. I knew I must find a time to see him again as fast as possible. Hearing a voice talking to you from inside your head was definitely not a good sign. I suddenly had an apprehensive feeling about tomorrow, what would happen next. My evil mind abruptly had a picture of the movie 'A Beautiful Mind' emerged somewhere inside it. However, for the time being, that voice did not annoy or irritate me just yet. It just happened when I was completely alone in the very quiet circumstances, like on this very hallway of my apartment floor.

Oh, talking about a woman, I almost forget to share with you about the girl in my dream that I have mentioned her before. She appeared in my dream for almost two weeks now. She was the reason why I had to go back to seeing my psychiatrist after a long while of absenting from meeting with him regards my OCD conditions. However, after I took the new medication, which the doctor gave me, the dream disappeared from my life for a few of days. But it was last night that she... I mean, the girl from my dream, came back to my dream again. She was not a dazzling beautiful girl but I have to admit that she had some strange seductive personality and intense sex appeal.

This had not yet included her hardly to resist mesmerizing eyes. Her face still vividly lingered somewhere in the circle of my thoughts. Then again, in those blazing white eyes, there was a perceivable dormant sadness mingled with hidden anger, the feeling that was beyond my caliber to fathom at the time. In the dream, we were lying together on the bed and having a zestful conversation. And after that, a kiss, she kissed me like she never kissed any male human being for a long time. I have to admit that, it was a lust-provoking kiss. And only I think about it, I have to shake my head very hard to dispel those titillated feeling out of my mind. Yes, I really do crave to feel it once more.

After one of the hottest kisses in my life, she ripped her blouse buttons off and leaned back against the bed. With her naked honey color skin and her gesture, it clearly showed that she was ready to be punished by a bittersweet pain. The last thing I remembered from that dream was an utterly painful and terrifying screaming of a woman, then followed by an intense smell of human urine mixed up with feces. For me, the last part of my dream was quite an eerie business because I used to remember someone told me that you could not smell anything both fragrant or stench in your dreams.

But after many times of recalling of my memories, I was quite confident that, I could really smell those scents. I also had an absurd feeling that the smell still adhered in my nostrils until now when I am telling you this story. The missing part of my dream was still nagging on my mind and I did not know why I want to remember it. But it was like an arbitrary feeling that happened to me. But no matter how hard I tried to dig those memories up, my attempt seemed to be useless. My mind still kept thinking about the missing part of my dream along the way that I was walking to my precinct on this very morning.