We were in that time of year when it is too cold for light clothes but still too warm for thick ones, so every morning you have to choose one of two options and hope the weather is on your side. Needless to say, that day I had bet on the wrong horse, and, as a result, I was starting to lose sensitivity in my fingertips. Actually, though, mine had been a forced choice, as sweatshirts and coats were still buried in some remote meander of the closet and all I had left was a T-shirt with the words “Try harder” on it and “office gray” jeans. I promised myself that the first thing I would do as soon as I got home would be to do the seasonal clothing change; however, just the thought of it caused me some discomfort. In my head it was like definitely acknowledging the fact that summer was over, that's why I had kept putting it off.
However, I didn't even like summer. I hated the heat, the clothes sticking to you, the smell of sweat, the mosquitoes buzzing around you when you try to sleep. The thing I really couldn't stand, though, was the change in people's behavior. All it took was for the temperature to rise a few degrees to trigger a mass euphoria. Beaches were assaulted by screaming people, willing to do anything to find a few extra inches to lay down their towels. Places like bars and clubs were filling up far beyond their capacity, showing images worthy of Dantesque hell, where bodies piled on top of each other, like beasts to the slaughter, desperate for some air, rarefied by the smoke. And this is supposed to be the pinnacle of fun. Those who do not participate in the mundane are wasting their lives. Everyone feels compelled to constantly remark how the only way to live a satisfying life is to do what they say. Given the choice, I would rather spend the summer barricaded in the house, with the air conditioning on full blast, reading and watching movies. Unfortunately, we live in a society where you must follow the dictatorship of the masses or be completely excluded. And that's what I do: I go with the flow just enough to avoid ending up in the abyss, spending insignificant days, with no particularly pleasant events, but not particularly painful ones either.
For some reason that was not clear to me though, the end of summer made me sad. It was probably a reminiscence of when I was a child. With the end of school, I didn't have to worry about anything. Duties and responsibilities were gone, at least until the upcoming fall. Now, however, it was no longer so special: it was a period of study and exam preparation, just like the rest of the year.
Classes had started long ago, and because of my laziness I had been forced to postpone until the next session one last exam, which I had promised myself I would take by the end of September. A fairly common story according to my classmates. For this reason, that day I had been invited to a study group session in the university library, with the unrealistic goal of catching up on months of backlog in a few hours. To make matters worse, we had opened our books and then ignored them all afternoon to chat with some girls sitting at the table behind ours, who apparently knew all the university’s gossip and were eager to share it. The campus was brewing more than usual since that incident. The rumors were only increasing, enriching themselves with new elements and losing others, in a huge game of Chinese whispers, so much so that every trail leading to the truth had been lost in the skein. At least I had managed not to be dragged to the party, to which the newly formed group had unanimously agreed. Normally they would not have accepted my tactical retreat so easily, but it had been enough to say that, given the times, I preferred not to return home late.
So, as my mind wandered from one futile thought to another, I walked home, taking the usual route from the train station to my small apartment. It wasn't much, but I was glad I had moved in, the building was old and didn’t have an elevator, and the creaks at night gave the impression of being in a haunted house, but it was fairly close to the university and I didn't have to share it with anyone, so, for me, it was a little paradise in which I could stay in peace.
At the time, something was off, however I was not paying attention to it. For a few days at night, those streets had been completely empty, so much so that the sound of my footsteps was the only thing that could be heard. The latest news had filled people's hearts with fear, but how could I blame them, it was a murder, in that quiet neighborhood, where only young families and students lived. It was not a very lively place per se, but to see it completely empty had never happened to me. The atmosphere was almost magical, surreal, but I didn't mind at all. Just being there felt wrong, I felt like a child who drinks a glass of wine behind his parents' back and finds pleasure not from the drink itself but from disobeying the rules.
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Turning right, I would have arrived home in seconds and another day would have come to an end, making way for the next, in which I would have repeated pretty much the same actions, eaten the same things, talked to the same people, about the same topics.
When had this spiel begun? How much longer would it go on? How much longer would I be able to hold on? I was thinking about those questions, when an image appeared clearly in my thoughts, like a daydream: “a toy train, one of those you put around the Christmas tree, forced to go round and round. I'm sitting there beside it, cross-legged, and looking at it as if it were the most important thing in the world. I focus on all the little lights going on and off following a regular pattern, listening to the choo-choo coming not from the wheels but from a small amplifier on the locomotive. The air is filled by the indistinguishable smell of freshly baked cookies. The little train begins to slow down, makes one last turn, putting in all the strength it has left, then comes to a complete stop. The battery had probably died. Then a woman's voice, very familiar, calls to me from the adjacent room, inviting me for a snack. So, I get up and leave as if nothing had happened.”
A moment's pause, then I burst out laughing thunderously, so much so that I doubled over from the pain in my belly. My face contorted into an unnatural pose that it had not assumed in a long time, as I thanked the gods that no one was there to see it. Of all the scenes I could have recalled at that moment, among all the things I had experienced in twenty-one years, I found it funny that one was the one that came back to mind at that moment. I tried very hard to find a moral in it, but in vain. I certainly did not expect a vision to explain the meaning of life or give me some kind of motivation to turn mine upside down; however, I was left with a certain sense of disappointment. I had never been that ambitious, though. I knew full well that figuring things out was still too unrealistic of a goal. It was enough for me to go off the rails once in a while, then everything would go back to normal. The cycle of life would keep repeating itself, and I would be there to play my role. Nothing more. So, rubbing my cheeks for laughing too hard, I looked at the front door of the house, but I did not take that lane, instead, I went straight ahead.
A shiver of excitement ran down my spine, thinking that just ahead the most dreadful of crimes had been committed. I walked for an indefinite time, aimlessly, for what could have been ten minutes or an hour, leaving the last houses behind and moving farther and farther away from the lights of the street lamps, only to find out that the night was not as dark as I had been led to believe. There were so many stars that a lifetime would not have been enough to count them. I realized that each one was unique, some were so bright that it looked as if they wanted to show off, others were hardly more than dots and gave me the idea that if I lost sight of them, if only by blinking, I would no longer be able to recognize them among the others. Each one had its own color, personality and story. Even the sky itself seemed to glow, and I finally understood what people meant by saying “midnight blue.”
I was ready to go back, when I felt icy fingers grabbing my arm. I was overcome by the stench of death, rotting flesh, the metallic smell of blood, and the pungent odor of wet soil. Before I could react, a quavering voice whispered to me:
I hurriedly turned around, for I was afraid that fear would prevent me from moving if I did not do so immediately, and looked at her face, which I had seen hundreds of times in the news over the past few days. The eyes, however, were only half open and circled with livid dark circles, the cheeks slightly hollowed and the lips dry. On her very thin neck were the marks left by a hand that had pressed so hard it had torn the skin apart. The blouse she wore, and which once must have been snow-white, had been smeared with mud. Meanwhile, the sleeveless dress she wore on top of it, was pierced by the famous three stab wounds that had ended her life and covered with coagulated blood spatters. Her pale complexion, made even whiter by the moonlight, together with her blank gaze, lost beyond the horizon, gave me the idea that I was talking to a porcelain doll instead of a human being. However, a ghost could never have had that expression. In her face I could clearly read what was going through her mind: she was sad, confused, frightened. She probably had no idea what was happening to her or why she was alone at night in a place she had never seen before.
My forearm was still clenched by her icy claw, as if to prevent me from fleeing. However, the grip was so weak, it felt more like she was begging me not to leave. Not that I had any intention of doing so. At that moment, I was inexplicably attracted by that girl, feeling the same joyful anxiety one feels watching a horror movie, but amplified a thousand times. Although I felt my hands shaking and a drop of cold sweat running down my forehead, the fear was outweighed by the desire to find out how the whole situation would unfold.