I woke up completely lost. Took a little to remember what happened. My ears were buzzing, but at least there wasn't that surreal and unbearably cold sensation. I was afraid to open my eyes and face the reality ahead of me in that moment. I turned on the bed, but the feelling of the touch gave me courage. I was not in bed. I was lying on the ground on a verdant lawn, beneath an impossibly lilac sky with incredibly white clouds.
I had never seen a lilac sky or even met someone rich enough to have visited some planet where the sky was lilac. Planets whose atmosphere left the sky in this color were all belonging to Jomons. How could I be on another planet? This must have been one of those crazy memories that came from nowhere to me about places I've never been. But now, I was living the memory at the same time that it was "created" and I had no idea what this place would be.
Was this finally my first conscious delusion? I didn't even know it was possible. But, looking at that sky was so wonderful... So I simply emptied my mind for a while and watched the clouds pass, hoping to wake up from this madness and be surrounded by people ready to scold me for blowing up those things in the hospital rooms — even if I didn't know how I did it.
But I did not wake up. Several minutes passed and no change beyond the soft breeze and the lazy clouds. Unwillingly, I rose from the soft grass and looked where I was. The lawn remained splendid ahead for hundreds of yards until a white wall that seemed to circle the whole place. In orderly spaces, there were magnificent circular flower beds, that flowers the I had never known before were growing. I followed the wall with my eyes until I lost sight of it, so turned around to see what was behind me.
A magnificent and immense palace stretched as far as my eyes could see. I just did not understand how had I not noticed that huge building right away? The walls were made of white marble, the whole floor was of a mirrored black material, and the doors and windows looked like they were ... wood? Wood! Holy shit! Who can get anything made out of wood? It's simply too expensive! Probably the simplest wooden chair was worth the price of fifty houses just like mine.
Burning with curiosity, I approached. Although the place seemed be near me, It took me nearly ten minutes to reach an access staircase to the balcony and be able to knock on one of the doors. It was locked Not that I intended to actually enter without permission, but there was nowhere in sight. I felt the texture of the fibers of the door, I could not tell if it was real wood, but it looked a lot like the images that appeared in documentaries about the history of human beginnings, and those of decoration of rich people that the actual environment didn't could sustain anymore to anyone.
I followed a nearby corridor, fascinated with the place. In addition to being wood, many of the doors were richly drawnned with carvings and bas-reliefs showing the daily life of nobles, parties and other riches. And all locked. But after all, where did I ended up? The corridors continued for endless bifurcations. After a while I could no longer remember from which side I had came.
But an urgent need to continue walking pushed me deeper and deeper into the palace. I felt like I was not walking in circles, as if my feet knew where they were taking me and what place I should go, even though all the surroundings were practically the same. I just felt like I should keep going.
Then I finally saw a huge blue portal at the end of a corridor. In front of him, there were two bored guards talking. I approached them closely. They were definitely not natives of my planet. They were definitely Jomons!!! Their limbs were a little longer and thinner than I was used to see in Brards like me. The oval faces of pointed jaws were really exotic. And the eyes ... the eyes that stared at me astonished as soon as they noticed me, were impossible eyes to a Brard, of an intense and beautiful violet.
I would have continued up to them and introduced myself and ask for help, were it not for their reaction. I was still about a hundred feet away when they noticed me and started running toward me with an offensive air while pulling out their weapons. I had enough insight just to quickly assess that those weapons were non-lethal, but in panic, I did not want to wait to see if they would use them or not — humans always do stupid things while scared.
I turned around and ran desperately through the corridors. My feet seemed to know which path to take, but even though I was relatively a good runner, and had had a certain advantage, they were catching up fast, while shouting at me in a strange language that I didn't knew. An overwhelming instinct of danger engulfed me at every step, and I could only continue to flee in terror.
I stumbled across a corridor with no way out but a door in the back. I ran there thinking about how I would start pleading for mercy as soon as I tried to open the door and see that it was locked as all the others were like before, but to my surprise, the door handle gave way to my touch. The guards were almost reaching me as I crossed the portal, the fear and the sense of danger growing stronger.
Before I could completely pass, one of them reached the ends of my hair and without crossing the gateway, and tried to force me out. I thanked my fine hair for sliding painfully through the guard's nimble fingers, and they continued without crossing the portal, as if an invisible barrier prevented it. With an expression of immense shock, one of them shouted at me incomprehensible orders, while the other spoke with a personal Link to reinforcements that were already folding the curve of the corridor. This time with potentially lethal weapons.
Taking advantage of the guards' hesitation, I could only think of closing the door. Then I jumped on it and pushed it hard. The guard tried to keep it open and wagged a staff through the crack, enough to graze my arm. The pain was instantaneous, as if thousands of very thin and sharps needles stuck my whole body in the most merciless way possible. I felt my legs fail and my body succumbed to gravity over the door, which I do not know how, ended up closing.
I fall to the ground in the spasms, feeling my body trembling. I was already longing to lose consciousness when, as simple as it began, the pain stopped. Leaving only a red mark where the staff had been propped up and something like a different type of pain echoing through my temples.
This was definitely not my day. I was so tired, out of breath and feeling my muscles in tatters, I just leaned against the wall and waited for the guards to come in and finish me off. I took a deep breath several times waiting... and waiting.... and waiting... until I had to convince myself that they would not come. That should be some trick of all this horrible hallucination. I could not even hear their screams from outside, as if there was no one there.
But the sense of danger was still pursuing me. It was an incredible desire to get out of that room and find another place to hide. But I was also afraid that they would be quiet on the other side, just waiting for me to leave.
...
The apartment I was in was simply the most luxurious and at the same time destroyed and vandalised place I'd ever been in my whole life. Wooden furniture, opulent, velvet and rich jacquards embroidered with gold, tapestries, cushions and curtains. All destroyed, turned or torn.
The most exotic were the books. Dozens of books, made of paper, scattered on the floor, crumpled and torn. The nearest one was even written with the same alphabet used in Sattie. I had to praise my imagination for having thought of all this. I had never seen anything remotely like this to base myself, even on movies.
The sense of danger was growing. What the hell had made all this mess over that place? I wonder if it was because of fear from what was locked here inside that the guards did not come in.
I was already deciding to return to the door and leave, when I stopped for a moment and could hear... softly, coming from the other side of an entrance half hidden by the shredded furniture, which led to another room of that apartment. It was the sound of someone's heavy breathing or something asleep.
Fear gave me back some sense to run away. I really wanted to get out of there at that moment but a reckless curiosity pushed my feet, step by step, into the next room. Equally destroyed, but much less illuminated by the light of day, thanks to the thick curtains that were closed and less torn, the next room seemed to have only paper on the floor. Hundreds of scattered sheets of handwritten paper with such an alien alphabet all over the floor, and curled up at the corner of a bed almost hidden in the gloom was a man.
He seems to be as young as me, at least I thought at first, until realizing that he was probably a Jomon too. He had a long black hair that shuffled like clouds covering his round, and a childish face. He wore a black tank top, kneaded and dirty, and loose breeches, which highlighted his lean, tall body. He was lying on his stomach and sleeping heavily with his face pressed into a notebook, where, by the pencil still hanging from his loose fingers, he was probably writing before fall asleep.
That urgent sense of danger floated from somewhere in my mind to oblivion when I saw the tired and suffering face of his, as if sleep was a terribly pain. For a mad moment I felt that I was responsible, as if this suffering somehow were my fault. I approached, worried. Through the devastated environment, one would think, for the room in which he was, that he must be unbalanced and dangerous. But I could not help imagining that he might have been trapped there, and that he had not had much choice but to discount his own anger in the things he had.
When I was close enough to touch him, I stopped to think at last what I was going to do ... What could I say? It was obvious that he did not speak the same language as I did, so how could we communicate? How could I ask for information or help?
But before I could decide, he decided for me. He suddenly woke up, and much faster than the guards who had let me escape, sat down and laced his long and incredibly warm fingers around my neck, holding me tight while he was suffocating me. I felt my jugular protest against the pressed skin of the neck. I raised my hands to try to break free, but I realized too late that the touch of the staff had taken away any strength — I was too weak to resist.
There was nothing to do. I felt my arms numbing, swinging by my sides, as I recorded somewhere in my mind the voice of the man speaking to me, uttering words I did not understand. I felt every cell in my body urging for oxygen, feeling more and more the overwhelming pressure in my windpipe, and before I finally lost consciousness, the only thing I thought was how sad he was, with his silver eyes contemplating a void like if he still slept.