7 Lives

Everything would be wonderful.

But that's the problem: it would be! I'm sure, though, it's not a dream. It couldn't be. Everything I feel is so tangible, so real; no dream could have this intensity. I had dreams, sure I had, but no one resembled to what I'm feeling right now. In those dreams I mentioned, an impending shadow was following me, I could feel it coming closer, I could hear its deaf tramping behind me. I wouldn't turn my eyes, afraid of what I might see. I would go on running, baffled, hampered, like when you run on a beach and it seems you don't even advance. My heart would thump as it does now, but there was no way I could master my breathing, and when the beast was closer than ever, ready to seize me, a black gulf would open underneath my feet. I would fall into the void, surrounded but nothing more than my own fear. It was a comforting feeling. You don't learn that fear can be a comforting feeling until you have such a dream. It was a relief to stop feeling you're being hunted; to know that what was chasing you can no longer touch you. I wouldn't even think that the menace was now coming from a different direction. I wouldn't realize that the gulf had to have a bottom.

...everything worked according to the plan. It didn't take long and he was giving an interview for a job at the best-sold newspaper in town, newspaper that, happily for him, housed a cultural column as well. It didn't take a hard work of convincing; the detailed curriculum vitae he brought with him, was enough. After not even a week's time, he found himself in a theatre seat, taking notes for his first review. In the next day's newspaper, his name could be read at the bottom of a fairly long column. The second step was taken.

It was a real beatitude for him to come home from work within beautiful weather, the sky shining red at sunset. And it was a real beatitude to have an apartment of his own to wait for him. Once arrived at home, he turned on the blue shaded lamp; played one of the Bach's Brandenburg Concertos CDs and sank into daydreaming. The music played in sourdine and the imponderable atmosphere helped him follow his thoughts far, far away. He stayed like that till late into the night.

At the beginning it all seemed like a happy dream, after a while, though, everything turned into routine. And like any other routine, it bored him; the same way home from work, the same house, the same music. He started feeling the need for another soul.

Then, as if the gods had read his thoughts, he stumbled into Pisu.

He was coming back from the newspaper's office like always: dull spirited and bored of the perspective of another night spent in solitude, just him and his big house.