NIKE -Blue Lock-

schwarze Katze

GERMAN PEOPLE I'M SORRY FOR THE MISTAKES (if I made them)
_____________________

Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic.
(Cesare Pavese)

It is said that it's only from the age of three that those first memories that will remain vivid into adulthood begin to be fixed in memory. Before that age, the brain has not yet developed the ability to store memories, but only useful information.

I remember well that cold winter day, November 11 of 2007. My third November 11. My third birthday.

I remember the feeling of the potholes in the asphalt of Rome as the wheels of the car took us to a destination unknown to me, and I remember well the silence in the vehicle, interrupted only by the wind banging against the closed windows.

The usually crowded city was at that moment completely empty, and not even the millions of souls belonging to the gladiators and servants who died during the Roman Empire seemed to want to leave the Colosseum that evening.

The cold was too much for both the living and the dead.

I do not remember the faces of the two of them. In my memory they are like expressionless dummies, without eyes to read or a smile to admire. Even striving could not remove that cloud of smoke that hides their identities.

I remember the feel of the jacket around me, a heavy jacket, perhaps too heavy for someone sitting in a car. It made me feel suffocated, hot, cooped up. I had felt the need to take it off, but had not done so since I had been advised to keep it on.

I don't remember their voices. I don't remember if they laughed, if they cried, if they yelled at me, or if they used to speak to me in sweet, soothing words. I don't even remember if they ever told me a story before they put me to sleep. 

I remember the feeling of the evening chill on my bare cheeks as soon as I had gotten out of the car. There were no stars in the sky, and the only light that illuminated my street was a hesitant streetlight, turning on and off at a strange pace.

I don't remember whether I was greeted, hugged, or simply left there. I don't even remember what it felt like to be in their arms, to be welcomed by their human warmth. Maybe because it had never happened.

I do remember the dark alley, though, and the sheetless mattress that had been abandoned next to some trash. And I remember the stench of garbage that with the wind was dragged up to my roots, preventing me from escaping the nauseating smell.

And I remember how that whiff of cold, and that fearful feeling of loneliness, had forced me to huddle in that big jacket that used to be too warm and now wasn't warm enough.

And suddenly I remember something about my parents, perhaps my only memory about them. A memory for which I am grateful, a memory I hate with all my being. My first and only memory of my own flesh and blood.

And that memory was their gift for my third birthday: a warm jacket to let me die more slowly in the cold.

Present time

He laughed. He seemed to know how to do just that. With that maniacal, hideous, loudly unpleasant, crazy laugh of his.

He laughed so hard that his face from its normal complexion had turned first red, then purple, then black. His eyes wide as if they were about to fall out of their sockets and slide to the ground like marbles.

Beside him, Abigail's marbles had never been more evident. Tears in her eyes were uncertain whether to slide down her face or not now that shock, terror and distress were taking the place of the previous fear, regret and anguish.