Images

“Snowy. It’s snowy. The ground is covered with snow. 

A cabin. A cabin in the middle of that distant place is decorated. 

There are Christmas lights-- Blue, green, red, yellow.

A Christmas song can be heard from far away. A tree with red decorations inside the house.

Steps. Hard steps due to the snow. Someone walks towards the little cozy cabin.

Now, I see a car. A blue car covered with snow. It’s parked next to a garbage can.

The door is opening. Someone is going outside.

A woman. Middle-aged woman. Black hair, purple shirt, a leather jacket. She gets a cigarette. Smoking now.

Into the cabin, a family. A small family. An old lady completes a puzzle. A very young boy plays with his smartphone. A couple kisses under the mistletoe. Happy. Everyone is happy...

Now, they eat. Eat the food and smile and laugh.”

I lose the old woman’s hand and clean my throat. In my front, Cynthia smiles. Her white hair contrasts with the light. The woman looked satisfied, she was bursting with joy. It’s so easy to make her happy, it’s just to say something good and let her imagine those things.

“That’s it, Cynthia,” I say. “70 dollars”

“Thank you, young lady. Thank you!” The woman gives me the paycheck and very, very, very, extremely slowly gets up.

“Do you need help?” 

“No. I’m not as young as you but I can still handle it.” I fake a sympathy smile.

Doesn’t she know that I have more clients? That more people want to know their “future”?

I couldn’t believe it yet. I finally had a great job. It’s a scam but, who cares? People that are muggles to believe, I just enjoy it and get the money.

“Are you sure?” I ask the old lady once again when I see Felicity coming.

Felicity was a very loyal and good friend. She’s kind of crazy but...you know, nothing besides the common. With her redhead and short hair, I’ve met her a long time ago. She helped me to start this business.

“Hi, girl!” She says. “Am I the last?” She asks.

“Nope,” I say staring at the blue ring in my middle finger.

“So, after you finish here, go to the bar in the corner of the street. I’ll be there celebrating my friend’s birthday. You’re very welcome.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

I “see” the future since I remind me as a person. I started with this “I’m a fortune-teller” bullshit when I was in high school. It was my biggest accomplishment. For sure.

...

I woke up. Head is aching, I’m in a bed with a thin blanket over my legs. I feel a body next to me. I don’t remember anything from last night. I realize I’m naked.

I scream. The man wakes up.

“Who... are you?”

“Can you stop screaming?” I scream more.

“Please, you’re breaking my ears.”

Quickly, I get dressed. I’m dizzy. I stumble and almost fall. The man says something, but I don’t listen to it. 

Pictures. Pictures of me were around the room. I felt like I was having a heart attack.

Where was I? Where he had taken me? Who was he?

“Where...where...?” I can’t say. It’s like there is a frog in my throat.

“In...your place...?” I look around. 

The place was filled with pictures of me and animals, but it wasn’t my house. It isn’t my home. I don’t live here. My bed is not this one--it’s smaller. My walls are blue, not red like those in this room. I have a lampshade next to my bed and this room doesn’t. 

It isn’t my home. It isn’t my room. 

“I...I...it’s not-

“Are you fine?” He asks “ You’re a little pale.”

Everything is spinning. I listen to bells, see lights, snow, blood. 

Bells. Lights. Snow. Blood…..Bells. Lights. Snow. Blood… 

An image passes through my head. I know the images even though it is a little blurry. Scared. I feel scared. Something was wrong. I feel it.

“Linda?!” the man says worryingly. I try to put those images away from my mind, but I can’t. They keep coming back.

With a gasp, I fall. Hitting my head against a headboard. I feel pain. A lot of pain in my head.

...

Bells were chiming. Lights were low. The room was filled with life. Christmas lights. Christmas songs and choirs. 

Presents surrounded the place, the tree was decorated. 

No one was inside the cabin. It was just me. What had happened to the others? 

The song was getting more intense and louder. Twinkle. The lights started to twinkle. The song was getting darker and rougher. 

A leak. There was a leak somewhere. I heard the sound of the water falling against the wood. I followed the sound in those flashes of colors and horrible sounds.

I was getting closer. I could feel it. The bathroom’s door was closed but I just knew that the leak was there. It needed to be there.

I saw a drop. One, two, three… I had found the leak. It was in front of the bathroom. I just needed to get a bucket an-

A drop fell on my arm. Another drop fell. They kept falling. But there was something strange about them.

The drops were different--they were dense and weren’t transparent nor colorless. They were red. An extremely bright red and it was warm. 

I looked at the ceiling and noticed that the drops were getting bigger and bigger. My body was filled with blood. My heart? I couldn’t feel it. Seemed that it had stopped.

I entered the bathroom to clean my body. 

I washed it so fast that I barely could think about what was happening. 

Breath in, breath out. Breath in, breath out. My mind kept telling me, insisting that I breathe.

Numbers. Murmurings. Sighs.    

Numbers. Murmurings. Sighs.

Numbers. Murmurings. Sighs.

I started to listen to numbers, murmurings, and sighs. Someone was there.

Slowly, I started to get out of the bathroom.

Scream. A painful scream. The shatter of glass. The end of the song.

The lights were off. They weren’t blinking now. It was dark; very dark. But a weak light was coming from behind the sofa.

There was a low light next to it.

Destabilized, I walked towards the light. The white light in the middle of the room.

Stop. The time stopped; I stopped. 

Blood. There was blood all around the cabin. I was walking on a lake of blood. Dark and light red blood. Brand new blood. 

I found the fountain; the matrix. It was coming from the body. It was so vivid, so scary.

Someone had died there. Someone died while I was there and I didn’t know that there were people in the cabin.

There was blood all around the place. I was covered with blood and I had just cleaned myself.

The body of a girl was drowned in the blood. A dark-haired girl with a mutilated face. She was frozen, frozen in time. Her hands were tied and she was without one of her feet. It had been a recent amputation and most likely, against her will.

And then, I realized. The dark-haired girl was familiar. 

I tried to untie her hands and, on her neck, I saw a tattoo. A butterfly with a glasses tattoo. 

That tattoo wasn’t common and I knew who had it. 

I had it. 

It was me. My body. My death.

I was dead. Dead. Without breathing. Heard a noise. It was time. Time to die. Heart jumping. Body shaking. 

Someone was coming, chasing me. Steps. Loud steps.

A touch on my head.

Dark. Dead body. Blood.

I was drowning in the blood.

…

The blood was gone, the body was gone and the dark was gone. I was waking up, an awakening of death.

Whispers. People are whispering around me. 

The glimpse of light doesn’t let me open my eyes completely because of vertigo.

I raise my hand.

“Linda?!” A familiar male voice says. The same voice from earlier. I see the shadow of the man. “Are you fine?”

I don’t answer. Who was he? What he was doing here? Why did he have pictures of me? How did he know my name?

The doctor approaches. Abruptly, he opens my eyes and throws a yellow light into my eyes. Hurts. It hurts.

“What’s your name?” He asks.

“Linda,” I say.

“How old are you?”

“32…,” I wasn’t sure. How old am I? I noticed the doctor and that man exchanged a look.

“When were you born?”

“19 of November of 1993.”

“So, how are you 32 if we are in 2021?” I think, “You’re 28.”

“No.” I was getting sick again. My head was aching again, my heart was jumping again. I was going to my death again, I was being thrown to it.

Those images were stuck in my mind. I couldn’t forget it. It was so realistic and truthful. Everything in that dark and lonely hole. 

The lights, the sound, the body. My death. That was my death. I didn’t remember that man and barely knew what was happening in my life. But I was sure that it wasn’t 2021, right?!

I couldn’t stay there.

I passed out. Once again.

…

Christmas carols were singing, snow was falling. The winter had arrived.

Everything was different. I was in an unknown place, an unknown world. Who was I over there? Why was I in the middle of a street? What I was doing with a lamplighter?

Nothing. No idea.

I couldn’t remember the reason. I couldn’t remember. Though I remembered my name and my roots, I had lost my essences, I didn’t remember what moved me, what made me be me. I was simply following rules. Rules of a game. A game that I didn’t understand, that I didn’t know and that I didn’t wanna play.

A car honked as it passed to me. The lights of the headlight made me uncomfortable.

But there was something with the image of my death. That terrible vision of how I might die. Was it true? Was that my future?

…

Someone was calling my name. I know the voice. A sweet voice with a gummy and pleasant sound. A calm voice.

“Hey, darling. You’re opening your eyes again,” my mom said. She puts her hand in my head. "It’s okay. It’s just a scare.”

My mom was there, I'd get better and go home. My real one. Everything would be just fine. I’d get out of the hospital and-

Images. Images came through my head. 

A red Corolla in the middle of the highway. Three people inside the car. The rush to get to the game. The voice of a little boy saying “you’re too fast.” The red light of the traffic light. The crash.

Violently, I escape from her touch. Her warming and comforting touch. She shouldn’t be there...she shouldn’t. And, before I had noticed, words escaped from my mouth.

“You're dead,” I move further away from her, she stares at me with that worried maternal look.

“No, hone-

“You’re dead.” I interrupted her, “The accident… The accident. You died there. You and the boy….” I was mumbling and sliding to the side. I needed to get out of there.

“Relax,” I fell out of bed and crawled to the window, “Sam, calls the doctor.”

I just noticed that the man (apparently called Sam) was still there. I thought that he had left. Why he didn’t? What he was? A boyfriend? One nightstand? An ex? A friend?

The world was spinning again. Everything was spinning. More images reached my mind. The pain was coming back. But this time is stronger. 

I yell.

A lake; a frozen lake. A park. I walk in the park. Someone walks with me; a redhead woman. She talks.

“Sometimes you need to jump; to go away,” I don’t say anything, I just pay attention.

The park was strange. Just the two of us were there and it was the holiday period. Blinding sunlight passed through my eyes. 

“Sometimes people disappear,” she takes something shiny out of her pocket. Something sharp. “And, sometimes, karma happens.”

The knife pierced my belly in a region just below the heart. I couldn’t talk. I saw the blood leaving my body. The woman wasn’t there anymore; she had gone.

There were loads of blood coming out of my body. I couldn’t feel my legs nor my arms. A piercing pain hurt my belly. I was getting dizzy again.

My legs give out and I fall. Fall into the frozen lake and into the darkness.

The last thing I heard before jumping is a scream. A grievous scream. 

I was flying now. Floating in the magnificent sky. No more pain nor confusion. It was a dream and I was escaping from it. I’d wake. I’d wake at some point.

I kept falling. Never hitting the ground. Never awakening. I fell into eternity and into the loneliness. I fell into a trap that I couldn't escape.