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✲꘏ ꘏ ꘏ ꘏✲
I awoke in a bright room. The walls were painted a pale yellow-green, and the small windows, left slightly ajar, were framed in white-painted wood. Turning my head to the left, I noticed a bedside table with three drawers and a small lamp topped with a round shade. Another open window stood in the far-left corner, while a second was set into the wall directly opposite me. A third stood closer to the white-painted door.
Through all three windows poured the oppressive heat that drove one to despair, though the curtains fluttered gently in the soft breeze drifting inside. It caressed my skin and lightly stirred my long black hair, still matted with sweat and tangled in every direction.
I sat up, lowered my feet to the floor, and rested my palms on my knees. My gaze fell upon the mahogany floorboards. When I stood, they creaked loudly beneath my weight, and I clenched my teeth as the piercing sound echoed painfully through my temples.
Pathetic.
The house seemed ready to collapse of its own accord, though not a single bomb had touched it. It was stranger than strange.
Walking to the window, I looked outside. The view itself was nothing extraordinary. The house stood beside a gravel road, beyond which rose a line of tall green trees—a forest, or perhaps merely a small woodland.
Desert on one side.
Life flourishing on the other.
The contrast could not have been greater.
It raised a single question in my mind:
Why?
Or perhaps a more important one:
How?
Deciding to push those conflicting thoughts aside, I turned toward the door. Before I could reach it, however, it opened, and the same woman from whom I had begged shelter stepped inside—the woman before whom I had uttered Tobias's name just before collapsing unconscious on her porch.
She looked at me as though I had pointed a gun at her forehead.
In her hands she carried a neatly folded white towel and a dark brown rectangular bar of soap. She approached without a word and thrust both items rather roughly into my hands.
"Come with me," she ordered sternly, jerking her head for me to follow before leaving the room.
Silently I trailed behind her until we reached the bathroom.
Stepping inside, I looked around.
"When you're finished washing, don't forget to clean the tub. And don't leave your hair behind. You'll find shampoo in the cabinet."
She frowned once more, cast another wary glance at me, and shut the bathroom door from the outside.
