I had just kissed a boy and it hadn't disgusted me, it hadn't made me nauseous like it should have been. I had just kissed a boy and I liked the feeling of his lips on mine, his sweet taste, which was a mix of sweetened lemon tea and mint toothpaste...
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For some reason there was a bow hanging on the door of my house. It was a pink bow, of a very bright shade. It looked like those bows that were used when a baby was born. And so, returning from school that cold winter afternoon, this is what I immediately found in front of me, what caught my attention.
It's a dream, I thought to myself, opening the front door with my keys. For some even stranger reason I was surprised that my keys were able to perfectly unlock the mechanism inside the lock. It was as if... as if it wasn't my home anymore. In my head I was convinced that the lock must have been changed by someone, but apparently I was wrong.
I walked in the house, greeted by a silence that was frightening. Everything was perfectly tidy, as if no one had been in it for months and clean as if someone had been cleaning for hours.
When I walked in the kitchen everything was as usual, except for one thing. Something that could have been everything or nothing. I approached step by step with a slowness that didn't seem like it belonged to me. My every movement was guided by a feeling of fear and danger that reigned within me.
"Is anyone here?" I asked out loud, but the silence became even thicker than before.
I swallowed a mixture of saliva and terror, picking up the paper bag that was lying on the large wooden table.
It was a standard white sheet of paper, completely white with something written tight in the center.
XX - XII - MMXIX
I widened my eyes at the loud noise coming from downstairs, there were only three options that I would have discovered right in about ten seconds.
I left my warm blankets to go check who it could be. The clock showed four in the morning and the alarm would ring in two and a half hours.
"It was just a weird dream." I said to myself, walking down the stairs.
He was lying on the couch in my living room, a bottle of vodka was lying on the floor next to him and the stench of smoke and alcohol coming from him clogged my nostrils making it almost difficult to breathe. Outside there was still no light on that third day of the week and he was already completely gone.
There was no one at home, my dad and my brother had gone to the usual meeting which was held every month and which lasted a week. I was never invited, but on the other hand it was better this way because without the two of them I received much less beatings.
It happened often, too often perhaps. He showed up at my house and I had to follow all the steps that allowed me to send him to sleep in decent conditions. I always felt like I had to take care of a child even though he was only a month away from his twenty-sixth birthday.
"You need a shower." Some incomprehensible words came out of his mouth. "Why are you so sweaty? Where have you been? My God you smell like a sewer..." I kept talking and asking questions that I would never receive answers to. I felt like I was talking to a wall, although perhaps the wall would have been more entertainment.
