I woke up in a field of sunflowers feeling a sense of nostalgia. She stood just barely visible with the sun to her back, hands outstretched, attempting to hold up the entire sky above. Her white sundress and shoulder-length hair fluttered gently in the midsummer afternoon wind.
I was no longer in a hospital gown, which barely covered my private regions, but rather I was wearing my school uniform, which I hadn’t worn in more than five years. Where could this possibly be?
The girl in the sundress ran towards me once she noticed my presence. There was something serene about her presence, very much unlike the garbage heaps in the form of human beings around me that I was accustomed to.
The girl, who must have been no more than fourteen, smiled at me disarmingly, as if we had been childhood friends and took me by my hands.
“My name is Petra. What’s yours?”
“Err- I am Raphael, but what’s going on here? Where am I?”
It took some time to get used to being able to talk again.
“This is the village of Mura! Where are you from?”
We walked in a westward direction towards the setting sun. Others passed us by on the unpaved road, but we didn’t speak to them. When it was night, we arrived at the girl’s wooden cottage. There was an old man with a white beard wearing suspenders and a red and yellow striped shirt, smoking from a pipe, sitting on the porch. He looked like a farmer. Petra bowed toward the man, and he petted her head, making her blush. I followed her actions and bowed.
Then Petra walked back a few steps away from the porch and knelt in prayer.
“I, Saintess Petra, will attest to how miserable and unjust his life has been. Please give him another chance.”
The man let out a puff of smoke, frowned, but then returned to his amiable appearance.
“Very well. Go.”
Petra and I entered the cottage, leaving the man behind.
“Who was he?”
I asked Petra while adding more wood to the fireplace. It had suddenly turned cold, and when I looked outside to call the man inside, where it was warmer, he was nowhere to be found. Only the wooden chair he had sat on was left.
“Oh, he’s somebody that you used to know.”
I didn’t inquire any further. Part of me felt like this was all some kind of dream. Like I was dreaming while still naked and suspended in a glass container filled with a mysterious substance. I tried to pinch my face very hard until I hurt myself.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, me? Nothing.”
I tried to play it off like those times when I talked to myself and got overheard, but then pretended it was nothing.
“Let’s eat some of these! And play some old maid!”
We ate roasted marshmallows like a bunch of kids. Well, it was not like my ordinary pre-hospital diet of soda and snacks was anymore adult, not that I’d ever apologise for it. And then we played cards until she fell asleep. What a kid, I thought, to be able to tire herself out by playing games. I absentmindedly caught myself looking at the pure white skin of her exposed shoulders and noticed that I too was knackered and close to passing out. That was strange; unless I went to work, I practically couldn’t sleep, and if I did, I would fall asleep at the lightest opportunity. I guessed it had been a long time since I had done something for fun with someone else.
Petra had fallen asleep on the couch, further away from the fireplace, the only source of light, but I could see she had very delicate features and white hair. How odd, maybe she was an albino. I covered her with my school jacket, and glanced outside the windows of the room. I was used to the sound of vehicles passing outside and the noise of random drunks on the road, so I found the total darkness outside quite disturbing. The windows looked like those which faces would look through at night in a horror movie. I didn’t want to go and look at any of the bedrooms, but forced myself so that I could bring back some futons and sleep in the living room where Petra was. I was in a mysterious place, but Petra had at least been kind to me. I still had to wonder if Helena had betrayed me in some way, but the circumstances through which I had ended up here were so convoluted that I didn’t want to think about them.
When some time had passed, and I was lying still but not really asleep, just embroiled in worries, as I had always been, the fire went out, and I expected the familiar darkness which followed me in blindness to persist, but after a while, I could see again thanks to the moon light. Crack…There was the sound of someone stepping on one of the floorboards. I could see Petra get up and head towards me. I suddenly felt a jolt of fear as she escaped my vision, and I didn’t want to turn my head to give away that I was awake. My heart raced fast, wondering what she was going to do to me.
Before I could recover from that thought, someone’s soft breath was blowing next to my ear. Petra had decided to lie down next to me. My heart raced fast for yet another reason, but I soon heard her snoring and calmed down. This was not one of those games. This was reality? I told myself.
