The Impulse
Pascal
I got up at 3 a.m. this morning, my mouth was dry; it felt like waking up from a nightmare. As I looked around, it was dark; my bedroom mirror reflected only darkness, creating all sorts of phantoms from a horror show. All I could hear was the vents hissing, as if whispering something.
As I was drowning in my thoughts, the doorbell rang.
I sat up, disoriented. For a second, I thought I’d imagined it.
I walked to the door slowly, considering every possible outcome. My spine froze, and sweat rolled down my neck. I gathered every ounce of courage and unlocked the door.
I looked right and left.
Nobody.
A book!
Worn out with an initial carved on the inside: “Arthur, 1999”.
The pages had turned yellow, and the words made no sense. I frowned, left the book on the table, and went to bed. Still, I kept thinking - whose book is it? A prank?
Who leaves a book at someone's door at 3 a.m.?
I drifted off.
When I woke up, I thought it was a dream, until I saw the book still lying there, a spooky way to start the day.
My stomach growled. I grabbed my coat and headed out.
Sunday mornings usually meant cappuccino and a hot dog from The Hungry Bites, enjoyed at the community park.
As I admired nature's beauty, the sun looked brighter than ever, the leaves whistled in the wind, and children laughed in joy. It was a perfect delight.
“Hey”, a soft voice came from behind.
I turned and saw this girl wearing the warmest smile I have ever seen, wearing a blue top and beige pants.
She stood beside me. “I come here often, and I see you here always”
I chuckled, and before I could reply, she introduced herself.
‘I'm Arene”
“I'm Pascal. Lovely to meet you.”
“Do you live here?” she inquires.
I nodded.“And you?”
“ I work at a bar!”
“Which one?” I ask out of curiosity.
“The ballet bar, heard ‘bout it?”
“Yeah, end of the street, right?”
She hummed in agreement. “You live alone?”
A crease formed between my brows as I quickly looked away."Yeah...umm..I had a wife. She left."
I don’t know why I lied. Maybe because admitting the truth hurts more. So I did what we humans do best: “lie”.
“Sorry,” she said with sorrow in her voice.
Before I could say anything, her smile faded. She grabbed my hand, her eyes darting around nervously, and then she whispered:
“It wasn’t your fault. Play along. It’s gonna end soon, and you’re not ready.”
I froze.
"What?"
Before she could explain, a crowd pushed between us, where had they even come from? They swept her across the road.
A black car came from nowhere.
It didn’t slow down.
I screamed her name.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. Her last words kept echoing in my head:
“It’s gonna end soon...”
Just then, a memory surfaced, a talk with Dr. Den, my old psychiatrist.
I was sitting across from him, barely able to meet his eyes.
“It’s always me,” I muttered. “People get hurt, and somehow I’m the reason.”
I stared at my hands. “I shouldn’t have made Sophia get in the car that night. She said she was tired, but I insisted. And then... she never made it.”
Dr. Den looked up. “Pascal, it’s been 7 years. Guilt doesn’t erase our past. But it rewrites our future every single day.”
I nodded, barely. But I didn’t believe him back then.
My vision got blurry, and I got back to reality.
How did she know what happened that night? And what was gonna end? Was she warning me about something?
Suddenly, the room felt dead silent, and the lights went out. Gasping for air, I noticed the book glowing, faint, and greenish. It pulsed from the book’s cover, I moved closer. My breath caught in my throat.
There were the words I hadn’t seen before:
“Don’t let them make you believe it.”
Before I could react, I suddenly felt this pressure in my chest, as if someone was squeezing my lungs, and then I realised “THE VENTS’’.My breath shortened. The air had turned… thick. Bitter. I dropped to my knees. My head felt like it was underwater, heavy and floating.
Blackness.
I heard a metallic click. Doors sliding open.
Muffled voices echoed nearby:
“Subject 114 is non-responsive.”
I tried to move, but my limbs were dead weight.
“Vitals stable. We proceed to containment. Dr. Collins will want the brain intact.”
Somewhere in the black fog, a voice kept repeating:
Get up. This is your chance. You were never supposed to get this far.
“Move,” I whispered.
My eyelids were heavy, but I opened one, blinding white light above, cold tray beside me, sharp tools, gloves. I gripped the forceps. I was awake. Fully aware.
Turning my head slightly, I saw it—my room.
But the mirror... It was a one-way glass. They’d been watching me.
I stumbled barefoot into the corridor. That’s when I heard him. A room full of white coats, all facing a stage. On it stood a silver-haired man in a spotless lab coat. His name tag gleamed: Dr. Collins.
“The brain,” he said calmly, “is the most dangerous weapon. Not muscle, not instinct, this organ, this universe of neurons.”
He paced, voice rising with intensity.
“It makes you fall in love, sacrifice, lie, steal, and kill without ever asking for your permission.
Dr. Collins leaned forward. “But tell me... which is the strongest emotion? Love?. Hatred?, Envy?” He smiled”
“No, my friends. It’s guilt.”
A murmur passed through the room.
“Guilt rots you. It sinks its claws into your spine and rides you till your last breath traps you in your worst memory. And that is what we erase. We cleanse the human mind. We make guilt-free individuals. Peaceful and Unburdened.”
He raised his arms. “We haven’t perfected it yet, no. But we will. We must. I will."
“We’re curing humanity”
The crowd clapped.
My blood rushed to my ears, boiling with anger and anguish.
And then I saw her.
Arene.
Sitting in the second row, face pale, nervous, not clapping like she didn’t belong here.
This is what she meant, I realised.
Her cryptic words, “ ….You just have to play along.”
She tried helping me.
I slip down the corridor. My grip tightened on the forceps in my sleeve.
Dr. Collins turns a corner.
He sees me. He stopped. Smiled.
“Ah. Subject 114.”
“You weren’t meant to be awake yet.”
I said nothing.
“I know what you must be thinking. Pain. Rage. But see, Pascal, you are part of something far greater than you understand.”
I stared him down. The hallway suddenly felt suffocating.
“You blame us?” he asked, inching closer. “But let’s be honest, Pascal… what did you have out there? A dead wife? A ghost you carry on your back every day? Your guilt eats you alive. You punish yourself every waking moment. And that pain… we gave it purpose.”My hand trembled.
“You cry over your wife every night, Pascal. What if I told you… we could take that pain away? You’d never have to carry it again. Not the memory. Not the blame. Just peace.”
My hand trembled.
“All you have to do,” he said softly, “is give yourself to us. Let go. Let us do what we do. You’ll be remembered. Honoured. Your pain won’t be in vain.”
For a moment, I falter.
But then I remembered the glowing message “Don’t let them make you believe it.”
And then I remembered what it all meant.
Somewhere deep inside me, my soul whispered:
“It's okay to feel deeply, but we don’t run from our emotions.
We're meant to face them. To be human is to carry pain and still choose to walk forward. To fight the weight and still rise.”
I took a deep breath and drove the forceps into his eye.
He didn’t even scream at first; he gasped, and then blood came gushing down his cheek. I slash his throat this time.
He collapses, twitching.
“You don’t get to rewrite my story,” I said. “Not anymore.”
I stepped over his body and ran. The alarms, the sirens went wild.
I stumbled down the hallway, I just knew I had to keep going.
The walls were lined with small pictures and names engraved beneath them.
Subject 19: Meera (1986) — Deceased
Subject 20: Ibrahim (1990) — Eliminated
I swallowed hard. Then I saw the next name.
Subject 21: Arthur (1999) — Deceased.
I stared at the photo.
It was me. Same eyes, same face.
I stepped closer, and then I noticed something.
The background: My room.
Beneath the photo, I saw files. Different years.
Same face. Different names.
My heart skipped a beat.
But this time, I walk away. Not reborn. Not again.
