Anna

Chapter 2 Oblivion

No birthday was celebrated on that hot August day. A wake was held dedicated to the grandfather, who died in his sleep, probably around 8 in the morning.

I was sitting in the kitchen, on a small chair, in a corner, and I could not speak, eat and above all cry.

The relatives and mother asked me several times if I wanted to say goodbye to my grandfather, but I didn't answer, at most I nodded while observing a fixed point on the opposite wall. There was a small spot and I felt sucked into that black spot, that oblivion.

I couldn't say that in any other way I could describe what I was feeling at that particular moment. There was no sadness or anger. Not even a sense of guilt at the moment, despite the premonition he had a few hours earlier.

This was the point, there was absolutely nothing and I was groping in that oblivion like a sleepwalker does along an infinite corridor. The semi-suspended arms, the slow and stunted step, the consciousness lost elsewhere. That was how I felt.

Mom screamed, then she cried, then she hugged me, then she slapped me for saying nothing, then she left me alone.

Now only the relatives threw me a few glances from time to time and sighed. They talked to each other about things that came as muffled to my ears and were lost before they came to mind.

Their movements slowed down and so were mine. I sat for a long time, without eating, drinking or talking.

In the end, I don't know why, I decided to get up and go to my room.

What to do was more difficult than expected; I felt distant from my own body and the world was like a fictitious reality that enveloped me and blended my every movement. I walked and floated, in something cold and dense. It was the air, no longer hot and muggy. It had turned into an icy wind that penetrated right into the bones. After I don't know how long, I reached my room and with difficulty sat on the bed, enveloped in the semi-darkness of the sunset. My birthday had passed in a flash. My special day was already over and I hadn't even noticed it.

On that day I was dead too, or so I thought, because I could no longer express any emotion.

I took the soft toys, with automatic and clumsy movements, and hugged some of them: one in the shape of a dinosaur and another in the shape of a bear.

Their softness gave my fingers some sensations. They were empty and distant, but better than absolute emptiness. But I still felt out and away from my real self. It was like looking from the outside or observing some parts of your body as if they were distant and not your own.

The light that filtered through the window quickly turned redder hues, outlining the contours of my room in a spectacle of colors that I had never paused to observe.

My sense of time was altered and I didn't realize that another hour had passed. Eventually I could hear my mother waving to the last of the departing relatives. The next day there would be the funeral but I was not present to myself and maybe I would have pretended to be ill, just not to go there.

I firmly decided not to have dinner and to go to sleep right away. Somehow, I was so tired. The strength had run out in that long journey into nothing that had emptied my chest.

I fell asleep almost immediately, having troubled dreams that I don't remember. I only know that I woke up in the middle of the night, with my body completely sweaty and out of breath, while my heart was pounding in the rib cage.

Trying not to make any noise, I got out of bed and felt the cool floor barefoot. I was there again. At least in large part. Resting had done me good. But soon after, from the remnants of the forgotten dream, I again had a strong urge to run to the log cabin.

The air was heavy and almost unbreathable and I was completely wet with sweat that only increased. Despite this, I felt a strong cold right up to my bones. Drops that trickled down the spine seemed so sharp it almost hurt.

The darkness was intense and I was afraid to turn on the light for fear of seeing what it might hide. However, I was able to orient myself well even without it, having always had an excellent memory.

One step ahead of the other, as if on a trampoline, I continued on that journey that seemed like a spiral of hell.

My knees were shaking and I began to flail my hands when you reach the garden. Between outside and inside it didn't change much; the cloud of humidity and the darkness were persistent and suffocating.

As if walking through a labyrinth, I arrived at the door of the log cabin after an indefinitely long time.

The gnarled door was closed and it was dark inside, as I could see from the glass window on the left side. I put my right hand on the handle and another shiver went through my back. I began to flicker my left hand frantically. I also wanted to scream, but it was already a lot for me to be able to do that self-stimulating movement that served to calm me down. I pushed hard because everything felt heavier than usual, even my own body, then slowly opened the door. It made a creak that it had never done before and it made me very upset, increasing my tremor.

It took me another indefinite time to move from in front of the entrance and take a step, now I wasn't even sure I was in the real world anymore because everything around me seemed distant and muffled. Now I could describe it as a hologram of reality that only resembled it, deceiving the senses.

I finally entered. I took a single step and turned on the light at the same time. And. I. Saw it.

I closed the door and ran into the garden, falling to the ground.

“No, that's not - No, that's not Grandpa. Where is my grandfather? What is that thing like him?”.

Thoughts flowed frantically and questions abounded. I was too young to even imagine that what I had seen was now nothing more than a puppet. A sort of huge doll similar to their grandfather, which they had dressed in elegant clothes and placed delicately on his bed.

The bed in which they had often played and talked.

Now his deathbed.

I didn't know how to give myself answers, I didn't know how to give myself peace, I didn't understand and I didn't accept. Besides, the sense of guilt weighed on my chest.

Like in a nightmare, where you are chased by ghosts who want to kill you, I ran and went back to my room in a flash, closing the door and turning on the light.

The glow blinded me and staggering, I began to spin around.

It was my fault if he had died it was my fault if he had become a puppet it was my fault if I didn't say hello it was my fault if I knew in advance that something bad was going to happen it was my fault because I was not next to her it was not I had listened sometimes we hadn't played together enough and what will happen to the cuckoo clocks who will fix them more because I feel my heart explode and I don't cry because I feel my head pierced by pain and I don't faint because because because because.

I went around for an enormous amount of time, until I fell to the ground and vomited what little I had eaten during the day.

I coughed several times, spitting out saliva and stomach juices, along with bits of food. Mucus was dripping from my nose. Everything revolved around me without stopping, like on one of those rides that were in the park.

Pain, in the chest and head.

Anger, inside the heart.

Guilt.

As the world whirled relentlessly, I could not help but stare at the disgust I had regurgitated as the mucus entered my mouth. The taste was salty, like the tears I had never cried. Everything in my heart was in turmoil and I longed to disappear.

It was at that point that, when my head stopped turning , I got up and trudged to the mirror. I didn't know what to look for exactly… maybe just find myself again.

And I saw. The reflection of the other time; my naked body, my face hidden by the shadows, with the exception of the half-moon smile. I reached out with my right hand and gently placed my fingertips on the smooth glass. The reflex did the same and we made contact.

I was no longer afraid. I wasn't even sure who I was anymore. I only know that I returned the smile to the naked reflection of myself.

She looked up, allowing me to scrutinize her face: what I saw was the Oblivion of the desire to abandon ourselves to pain.

I smiled even more and also put my other hand on, feeling the warmth of her fingers through the glass.

“We are alone,” she said in my mind.

"We are alone," I repeated.

“We are dead, because we are lost”.

"We are ... we are us."

"Come with me."

At that point my bare feet, stained with vomit, lifted off the ground and feeling a strong suck, I fell into the darkness.