Creation

I wake up.
I rub my eyes and realize that I’m lying on a couch, a brown couch which is comfy, but that I don’t recognize at all. When I opened my eyes, I was hoping that I was at home waking up from a weird nightmare, but I’m still in an unknown place, a situation that truly scares me. I just want to hold Leana in my arms, to feel her body against mine and have her scent invading my nose. I just want to see my baby boy asleep in his little bed, snuggled on his arm duvet, having his peaceful baby hours of sleep.

I don’t know where I am and I lost all my sense about time. As soon as I woke up, I looked at my watch and I’ve noticed that it had stopped the moment I opened the door to the waiting room… that really wasn’t the waiting room at all, but that weird corridor which now seems fortunately away from my sight. Now that I think of that, I take a look around to find out where I am. It sure feels good to know that I left that confusing corridor, but the sight doesn’t calm me down.

I’m inside what seems to be living room, an old one, with dark brown furniture. There’s a piano, it’s fully black, but what really catches my eyes are those five windows. They’re huge, replacing the walls and showing me an odd but beautiful forest. I come closer to one of them, trying my best not to touch its amazingly clean glass that glitters with the intense sunlight. The forest out there seems endless; there are trees in every direction. I see no path between them; it’s like the forest is there to avoid people coming into the house or leaving it. I feel this weird déjà vu thing that covers all my body, giving me the chills in every inch of my skin. I look again, paying attention to every minute detail of that forest: the highness of the trees, the color of the trunk, the shape of their leaves, the distance between them all, which is so minimal that all them seem to hug the nearest trees, cuddling each others as close sisters. It sure is beautiful, but knowing what place is this makes my actual smile go away and my fear levels start to elevate.

I sigh heavily, leaning my forehead against the glass. I sigh again, leaving the mark in the spot where the air collides with the cold surface. My eyes stare the bottom of the trees outside as my mind keeps giving me images of Leana. Now I realize that I really miss my beautiful wife: her lovely face and her addicted eyes and her glorious mouth; her wide-open smile and her contagious laugh and her sexy lips; her perfect hair and her striking skin and her delicious neck… my beautiful wife. Leana…

I feel my eyes flooding with tears, as her image becomes more real in my mind. I think I can even touch, now that my thoughts of her are so intense, they even become painful since I can’t really feel her near. She’s only inside my mind and heart, which is important, but not having her here and not being able to touch her, hold her and kiss her makes me weak. I miss her. I really do… as much as I want to hold my son in my arms. My baby boy, who spent nine months in Leana’s surely warm womb, and who has just been born… What if I’m living one of those fantasy tales in which the character comes back form the magical woods, where it has been lost, only to find that its world had moved on one hundred years in the future and that its most loved ones were then gone? I hope that those stories always remain simple tales, in someone’s imagination, which is responsible for everything that exists and happens in them. I hope that these stories only exist in my head… I couldn’t live without Leana and my son; I wanna watch him grow, I wanna be there when he shows his first smile, when he takes his first steps, when he says his first words, and I wanna see every little thing that will turn him into a young boy, then a teenager and then a man. I wanna be there, by Leana’s side, seeing all these marvelous things and be an important presence when they happen. So if I wanna do that and see them, I can’t simply stay here doing nothing; I simply can’t.

I take a look around the whole room that’s resting behind me. It’s pretty filled with stuff: the piano, a fireplace, a lot of bookcases with tones of different publications, a desk flooded with papers and a desk. There’s paintings hanging on the walls; they represent unknown people, old buildings or stunning landscapes; but can’t get my entire attention. What calls for my eyes is that specific bookcase, where lies a shining book. That’s funny, I did not know that books could shine like that; it looks like a new star, having its own source of light, which is still strong because it’s still fresh… I didn’t know that books could look like that, but there it is.

I come closer to the bookcase and I start to realize that the light was there because the sunlight was hitting the gold stripes that adorn the cover. It’s not words; just some stripes, every one seems to have its one place as if they couldn’t belong anywhere else in the book. The shinning impression that I had was the sunlight innocently hitting those marks of affirmation! How could I think about a shinning book, and not about that obviously evidence of our human world? Damn you, James, your mind is already giving up its wisdom…

I grab the book and carry it with me, as I walk towards the desk, to sit myself in the chair and stare a few more that striped book. The cover was all red, a dark red, with – as I’ve mentioned – those gold stripes that have the sunlight on their surface and shine. I don’t know why, but I feel this inner will of opening it. I’m not a great reader, but something inside me is pushing me to open it. That was a pretty much normal book, with its heavy dark red cover, and its meticulous stripes, but no title at all. Maybe that’s the reason why I feel this; deep inside my mind, I want to read it to find out what story doesn’t deserve a title… Oh it might as well help me to find a way out of here. We never know…

I can’t do it. Not that I don’t want or try to, but I can’t open the book. Damn! I try even harder to open it, but it seems locked. It has no padlock though, or any other objects avoiding me to open it, but I just can’t open that damned book. Why?! I turn it all ways around, trying to find some clue how to open it, or some advice telling me not to open it, or anything else that made me let it go form my hands or really read it. There isn’t though, but I get tired of unsuccessfully try to open it, and I get up to put it back in the bookcase. At the same time, the corner of my right eye glances a sudden shadow behind the desk, but I barely notice that. So I make my way towards the bookcase from where I took the book before.

As I raise my arm to put it backing its place, a guttural voice says something from the other side of the room and I freeze on my feet. I don’t dare to look anywhere else that the book, afraid of what I might see. That voice was saying something specific but it was too scary to be understandable, and I sure don’t want it to come back and repeat it… It does though; the voice screams again, a monster voice, entering me super-attentive ears and it makes me look back as I drop the book to the floor. There’s no one there, only the darkness. The darkness was part of that corridor which suddenly is in front of me, consuming me again. I can’t control my self and I scream.

“LEANA!”