Bedtime Story: The Puzzle

I woke up with my hands smeared in deep red blood. It was puzzling. I couldn't fathom how it had got there and I had no remembrance of my prior actions. I was just groggy, feeling dazed as if I had been drugged. Dizziness, feebleness and lethargy had gripped me. 

I pulled off my quilt and heaved myself up. The bed groaned underneath and I felt a spasm of pain around my midriff. I felt as if the air had gone out of my lungs. So, I inhaled hard willing the cold wind around me to gush into my throat. But I still couldn't breathe. I coughed to clear the air passage. But no sound emanated from within. I lifted the jug from the side-table and drank deeply. I could feel the water streaming down my windpipe, traveling down the ribs and into my belly...and then my stomach appeared to leak, as water drained out of its walls and into my bloodied hand.

I felt my stomach with my palm, and felt a dagger entombed in it. I pulled out the blood-stained dagger and let life drain out of me completely. My soul had been hanging on there, just holding on to the long-dead body. But now it was liberated. I had finally solved the puzzle, of how my hands got smeared with blood. It was my own blood, as you must have realized by now.

I had committed suicide. I had committed suicide in my sleep. I, for many months, had been a sleep-walker.