In Continuum.

Pitch Black

For some reason the lights in the toilet were screwed up a day or two ago in camp.It was rather strange to wake up in the morning to a toilet without lights at all.They work on sensors,and when a person approaches the toilet door it actually lights up all by itself.You might think that it is quite a neat invention,but in truth when it screws up everything else goes haywire.Bet the inventors never thought of a Plan-B when fixing the sensors into almost every room in the camp.Yeah,what geniuses.

So the night came,and before the sun offcially went down in the western skies a whole bunch of people went scrambling into the bathroom with bathing equipments,as if the dark later at night would consume their souls or something.I was laughing at how hysterical they were,as they fought for their turns to bath first,but in due time i understood the rush for the dimly lid toilet under the fading sunlight.

It was time for me to take a bath,and as i walked down the corridor i thought to myself,how dark can the toilet get?I mean,the toilet in BMTC was water-logged half the time and the lights go on and off like scenes from a Japanese horror movie.Besides,i lived through that with the fact that it happened on Tekong,so how terrifying can the dark get?

I guess in a way i have a phobia for darkness.Perhaps not as strong as my hydrophobic nature,but the fact that when i reached out into the dark and couldnt see my fingers,i actually got a little freaked out then.It took me a while longer than usual to actually find my usual cubicle,and when i finally found it i had a hard time hanging my clothes on the hooks behind the door.QinYou and See Hwee were swiftly behind,and they too were complaining about the darkness as they literally tumbled down the rows of cubicle.

It was pitch black,darker than dark.Like i said,i couldnt see my fingers as i reached out into the darkness.My eyes were adjusting too slowly,and mistook the shampoo for the body lotion for a while.The darkness crept up on me like some sort of blanket then,and i felt a tingle in the back of my neck,not from the cold water that rushed from the shower but rather the heaviness of the lightless room all around.It was strange,but i tried to close my eyes and shut out the darkness,but it didnt make a difference if i opened my eyes or not.This is the world of the blind,i thought to myself.And for a moment there,the thought scared me.

We made funny noises as we bathed,or rather more than usual that night.QinYou was supposed to do Guard Duty the next day,and the fact that he might be in the toilet all alone with no lights whatsoever freaked him out.He didnt show or say it,but im sure with See Hwee and myself on the opposite cubicles daunting him,his courageous heart wavered to the fear of being alone in the dark.That fear was further elevated when we spoke about the songs played while he bathes along over the weekend.I hummed the tunes of an old chinese song,one of those songs heard probably in the 60s,still sang along by your grandmothers i guess."Wo Deng Zhe Ni Hui Lai..."(I'll be waiting till you get back).Haha,it was rather amusing to discuss the possible ways to freak QinYou out over the weekends.

Nonetheless,the little adventure in the darkness was rather interesting.I mean,how often in life do you experience a difficulty at deciding if your underwear is inside out,or if you wore it the wrong way round.Miraculously i did a check afterwards and found that i did rather well in the dark,being a blind person for a few moments that night.Still,i was wondering the life of a blind person,how it is possible to have not seen anything in life but the dark,where it made no difference if you opened your eyes or otherwise.