Dark, humid nights follow the disappointing days, in a mirthless game of Tag. The people are apathetic. They offer no emotions in exchange for yours and no attention either. They walk in and out of the paper thin walls of your day and leave you feeling strange; like there’s a tug in the pit of your stomach.

In these nights, when the clouds all come and make small talk above your home, you wish you were a child again. You wish you were five, maybe six, playing in rubber slippers in the stairwell.

You wish that your days were wrapped in endless games of cricket and tall glasses of juice and your nights were blissfully calm, in preparation of another riotous day.

In the mornings, after you’ve woken up from a warped nightmares and the fizzling hope of a childlike existence, you find yourself wondering when you can sleep again. Then you remember the unpleasant taste that the nights bring along and you are lost; because there’s nothing to hope for even.

My room is black.

It’s black like the bottomless pit we stared into on some childhood trek. It’s dark like the ocean, in the sliver of time between sunset and the street lights coming on.

The walls are warm and dusty. The bed is full of the remnants of bad dreams. It’s all pretentious but real at the same time. The cupboards are all the same colour and the pillowcases smell of mothballs. The wooden cupboard has all my books peeking out through the glass.

Somewhere, under the pillows, my phone stays hidden, quivering with the suspense of an SMS from someone who remembers me but has the good sense to not call.

The black rooms moves swiftly around me. It’s like being inside a washing machine – with the swirling water and the detergent. The detergent is making my eyes water.

My room wasn’t always black. Last week, it was a lemon yellow. Black is definitely preferred. It gives me more space to think, in the make believe sleepy darkness.

Doom. Impending doom.

It's filling up spaces around me. And quicker than you can imagine. In the mornings, it presses down on me. It smothers me like a TV show murderer. In the nights, it lies down next to me and slowly begins to jab fingers into my back as I try and sleep.

It follows me around like a jilted lover and when I scream, noiselessly, on trains or elevators, it looks shocked that I have such a negative reaction.

In bus queues and cafeterias, it presents me with people I'd rather not meet. People with plans. People who have no idea for whose team they're batting, but they play well anyway. Because, you know, just in case.

My doom is a contradiction. It's shapeless yet concrete and inadvertent yet direct.
On empty days, it sits on my back - like that dreaded monkey.