CLUTCHED

Through a very small aperture, I saw a sight, blurry yet beautiful. It was full of calmly toned colors and had a very pleasing texture. I had no idea what it was, but the unknown soothing effect, that the aura carried along with it, induced a smile on my face.

This urged me to reach closer in order to have a better look.
And as I approached, to my surprise, it was way beyond my happy imagination.

My eyes widened, clearing the view. 

Few strange creatures or “Vaguely humans” were now in sight. To my surprise, the very next moment they doubled, and tripled and kept on multiplying likewise. What made them furious and even stranger was the fact that each one of them was continuously staring at me. Their eyes were linked and locked with mine and were telling me clear and loud…

 “YOU ARE TO BE KILLED….!!!!”.

The blur, cleared. The beauty turned monstrous. The calm colors converted into devilish grey. And the smooth texture was now eye piercing thorny.

Next, I found them moving towards me in full rage. It seemed as if they were some long lost kind of enemies and were there for revenge.

But I hardly knew them. I couldn't have made them culture such a degree of antagonism by a mere eye contact. They were nothing but “strangers” to me. Now I had hundreds of questions in my mind, with explanation for none. I was surprised, bewildered and severely terrified.

I gathered courage to confront them and let them know that I should not be harmed. But they kept on nearing me. They were unstoppable. I found myself shivering head to toe and was completely cold and numb. Yes I was terribly petrified. All my physical defense mechanism seemed dead. Arms stiff, palms tight fisted and legs jammed.
I tried to use the last asset that I had…. “MY VOICE”…

I wanted to ask the reason for the probable brutal death that I was about to face.
So I tried…..

    “W….whh…who…….aaaaa…………………………………”
    “…ppplll…..please…..”
    “wwwww…….”

This was all I had, nothing firm, nothing concrete and nothing profound.
I could feel something strangling my vocal cord really tight. I was chocking. I tried really hard to say all that I wanted to, but everything was simply helpless.

All panicked and in full terror….what happened next was even worse…..

"The Vaguely humans", all of them, were amused on hearing the kind of “funny foreign dialect” that I was using. They found it funny, they found me funny. I was 
being ridiculed. Their boisterous laughter was torturing me.

The place that made me picture a heaven was now even worse than hell.

I again tried to say what I wanted to. But each time I opened my mouth, there were even louder laughs. They were enjoying all that I was going through.

“Vaguely Humans”….no I was wrong….they for sure were “Cannibalistic Demons”.

Now I couldn't even make an attempt to say anything.

With tears trickling down my cheeks, I felt completely broken. I was shattered. I turned my face, buried it in my palms, and sobbed vigorously.
I wanted to forget everything.
I wanted to forget those monsters and the torture that they were creating.
I wanted to break-free of the clutches that have tied my vocal cord and was still suffocating me.

I wanted to go beyond all this.
I wanted to skip every single day, every single second and every single fraction of LIFE that made me feel so.
I wanted to let those demons know that I am not an object of ridicule.

But I couldn't.

……
All I could do was cry….for hours and beyond that…..

.

.

.

.
After hours of weeping and being tortured by everyone, by myself and by destiny itself…..I found myself with a warm, smooth and comforting bulky thing, a wet white cushioning mass under my head, a swollen set of eyes and a somewhat sweating body.

It took me a few couple for minutes to figure things out and realize that……

Those monsters were sheer imagination.
The laughs were unreal.

Yes, it was all a dream.
……
But "MY STAMMERING” was not...

“My throat was still stifled with an unseen rope, like it has always been. I was still clutched, to an extent of suffocation.”

The dream for sure was over, but the “impairment” that I inherited or was born with or somehow cultured was a sheer reality that I have to coexist with. 

I smiled rather sarcastically….
It was another “usual day” of my life and I was ready to execute “A PLAN” for a somewhat normal survival, facing even worse real life “monstrous situations”.
And all I had at my disposal was a big burden of expectations and a wobbly set of words accompanying me all through.

P.S.- I have a very basic set of reasons behind sharing this very personal story-

a) Wanted those “monsters” to know, how this feels like.

b) Wanted to make, a person similar to me, realize the fact that there is someone out there who totally understands you, and yes…I can’t really remember who said me this, but here it goes…. “It’s totally cool to be stammering because that can’t stop you from being who you are.”
We all know that there have been people in the past who underwent similar situations and still lead a remarkably impactful life. Even the present has many such flourishing personalities.
And the future will have ME and YOU that millions of people will look up to.

c)Through all this, in real life, I've always had an excellent set of people accompanying me, helping me restore the ever so fragile faith in myself, and I can do nothing more than thanking them from the bottom of my heart.