Those lights again. Those crystalline lights, those glassy beams striking my eyes like blows from a club, bleeding into one another, making me see colors. All of them are there. Some I've never seen before.
Those sounds again. Those calm, innocent noises. I don't know how a sound can be innocent. And yet it is. It's pure. It's beautiful. But persistent, almost invasive. I can't help but keep listening.
Meanwhile, I get up. Out of bed. I won't pretend otherwise. I feel like hell. For a moment I can't feel my legs or my back. My arms either. But I can move them, even if not the way I'd like.
The room is dark. I mean, it's lit, but it's dead. Bare. To me, it's dark.
The lights on the ceiling flicker. It's an acute pain behind my eyes, but I don't feel like complaining about it. I don't feel like doing anything. I'd like to talk to someone, but no one seems to be available. I could talk to myself, but that feels repetitive at this point, I've been doing it for years.
I'm having trouble breathing. The air feels heavy. Like I haven't breathed it in a long time. My chest feels like concrete. Like with every breath it's cracking, like my lungs have been coated in it, or buried under a landslide. The air smells strange too. Dry. Like something burned. Like blood.
Sure enough, touching my lower lip, then looking at my fingers, I see the blood catching the light perfectly, forming a small, blurred white point on the red surface of my knuckle.
That, for a moment, shakes me.
I glance by accident at the mirror next to my bed, above the sink.
My eyes aren't surprised.
"God, I look like shit…" Victor said, studying his body, covered in bruises and cuts, blood seeping slowly from his mouth and tracing a line down his lip. His eyes stayed fixed on the mirror for several minutes. He couldn't look at
anything else. He barely seemed dazed. Maybe he wasn't even looking at his reflection. Maybe he was trying to remember, to piece together, to understand, whatever he still could.
In his head, wrecked and broken, only one thought held still.
"What the hell happened…?"