Tick tock

It had begun almost imperceptibly. It had been a long day. A very long night. And it could have been just another sound in my head - mingling with the other commotion of a whole day of continuous keystrokes and mouse clicks, frustrating dead-end investigations in front of Google and Wikipedia, all the excitement in the life of a programmer.

Inside that cab on my way home, I was looking forward to lying in my bed and finally get some sleep. Admittedly, it would only be for a few hours as I had to be back in the office early the next day – later that morning. But then the ticking started.

Tick-tock, tick-tock. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

At first I dismissed it and continued to rest my head against the window to look out the state of Ortigas Avenue at past midnight. It’s very different from the Ortigas Avenue during rush hour. I wouldn’t say more peaceful. There’s always something creepy about urban streets late at night.

It pressed on, the ticking sound. It seemed the more I ignored it, the more persistent it became. Just like in that Edgar Allan Poe short story, The Tell-Tale Heart. I looked around, expecting to find a clock under the backseat or something. None there. I craned my head to check the dashboard thinking maybe it was the cab driver’s cellphone with a weird ringtone, but he glanced back at me, apparently thinking it was my phone making the sound. At least, I confirmed at that point that the sound did not exist only in my head.

And with the ticking sound as a faint background and all sleepiness wiped out from me, my imagination let itself loose, as it is wont to do. What if the ticking sound was from a bomb placed in the trunk of the cab? What if it was about to blow up at any moment? I sat up a little straighter. I had officially freaked myself out.

I must admit, I was scared as hell. Or of hell, if you want be to be more specific. Most people don’t deal with the idea of afterlife until – well, until they have to. I guess John Mayer was onto something when he wrote, “I am invincible as long as I’m alive.” In my head, I said a frantic prayer. These days, it seems that’s all the kind of prayer I get to pray. Frantic. And trust me, I’m not too proud of it, either.

And my morbidity kicked in because my other concern was that if my cadaver would be recognizable to my family. But of course I’d be blown up to pieces and the only way to identify me was through my ID. And the John Mayer soundtrack persisted in my head, “… should’ve smiled in that picture… it’s the last thing I’ll see of you.”