The Blue Book

The sixth chapter. The Blue house.

My first breath was wonderful. It was quick, and undramatic, just one of those you take on an average day without even thinking. Oxygen and hydrogen rushed past my oesophagus desperately hurrying to fill my aching lungs for what they craved. My limbs started to wake up, longing to be run on, my fingers twitched and finally my hand turned to a fist and what's best, those infernal lids that had been keeping me from watching the maddening world around me for weeks now flew open. At the beginning everything seemed as one big lump of vague colours but soon I my eyes fixed and I pieced together impressions. My breathing was heavy. I was indeed getting air, but not enough. More, I thought, more. I turned my head upwards, then to the sides. What the heck? The pace of my rising and sinking chest rose. I'm trapped. Effervescent with energy my arms rose and I put my hands on the cold glass above me. I was lying down in some sort of box. I wanted to scream but had no words to use and no voice I could trust. Forcefully I put more pressure on the walls of my claustrophobia-provoking prison. No warning came before the ceiling literally fell down on me, the glass broke into a million pieces with a sound I'd heard countless times commonly followed by a few childish curses. Greedily I sucked in air to take away the pain in my chest. A dozen small cuts appeared on my hands and arms, but I payed no attention to them. Someone had kindly put a simple brown dress on my body that was slim and displayed my collarbone. I didn't know what to think about that.
Where was I? Who had put me in this thing? They'd have to be some wicked beast, surely?
I rose to my feet, testing them finding that they carried me with clumsy steps. I looked around me in somewhat influent movements seeing as I was rather unused to be able to move my body. There was something so far away I wasn't sure it was real. Only just itching at the back of my head like trying to remember a dream. I'd known what it was, of course I had, but gone now that I up. My dress tailed behind me, I looked back at the giant glass box one last time before stepping out in brilliant sunlight.
Like a bat exposed to the flashing surroundings around me I quickly shut my eyes and rose my hand to my face. Then I remembered I didn't want to hide anymore, I would never again close my eyes like that sociopath who'd put me in that suffocating casket had made me. Now there was music in my head. I played it in my head, slowly while my face cracked up to display my unused teeth for the first time in a breathtaking smile.
I threw myself into the music, asking my limbs for permission for new spectacular advancements. They granted me every single one. Minute by minute my rate quickened until I was spinning around on a white road on each side surrounded by green and yellow straws.
This could be the reason why I didn't hear brisk footsteps successively slowing down on the white road. To me, there was no difference.
Unlike the young man walking down his route I did not slow down. Why should I? I'd been distant, letting weeks, days, years, for all I knew, decades slip me by. Granted, not being able to do something about it, but no more!
I'm awake now. I will never sleep again. Curses to the one who should try and put me down. I'll always remain unclaimed. Property of no one, not belonging to any kind of living being.
Now my pace was downright neck-breaking, until my so far trustworthy foot gave away without warning betraying the rest of my body that soon collided with the sand. Dust whirled and small stones pressed into my so far unpierced skin, leaving small marks in my hand that tried to catch my unfortunate fall.
Somebody ran, to no use, I'm perfectly fine I was just testing myself. The speed of the steps almost could make one think one was dying over here. Oh, no, none of that. I've barely just begun to begin.
The mans' steps stopped, and was at present crouching beside me with his own oxygen and hydrogen more or less stuck in his throat. I laid in the middle of the path gazing up at the blue desert. Content with laying peacefully for a few moments smiling at the sky I had my arm bent over my head and the other resting on my side. None of my hair was getting in the way of my view, all of it was spread beside my neck in a wild tangle as if crows had made it their home.
The man seemed to be waiting for me to speak. Otherwise it would make no sense why he'd be looking at my face, immovably. A minute came and went by but I didn't want to be the one to pull away from the game. It had to be a game, right? There's no other explanation other than for this to be a game. It wasn't that I was getting inpatient, rather that I felt this could go on for quite a while, and a girl got places to be, things to unveil, people to meet, music to listen to, food to taste and faces to punch. For example, the crazy person one who'd put me in that coffin while I was very much alive. Finally his dam walls gave under the pressing water and a flood of frustration splashed my face.
'What is wrong with you? What were you thinking? What's wrong with walking? Are you hurt? Christ! People don't start dancing just out of the blue!' Then it seemed to me as if he realised what he'd just said and faster than a fox's jaw could clutch, he changed his handsome visage from accusing to formal. Next to distant he straightened himself from his position bent over me so that he sat on his knees looking down on me. Unfortunately for him, I saw through him. I saw that he was still passively aggressively measuring me. Perhaps courtesy forced his indifference.
'Pardon, it's simple that I don't generally come across dancing women down this road.'
'Oh, but you've come across them on other roads?' I wondered, smiling broadly. 'What kind of business you could have in there?' I said nodding towards the house.
'A friend sent me, why?'
'Take care, you shouldn't go in there.'
Before I could stop it, we lapsed back into our newly invented game of silence. I decided to dislike it. The quietude. I've been locked up, for who knows how long in a glass-box missing out on who knows how much! I promised from now on to surround myself with music, colours and people. Only one thing stood in my way.
'I don't know you, but don't you have more ... nice things to do? Other than this?' I thought back on panicked gasps for breath and I knew I could never connect that house with anything but lack of air and walls of glass, as if someone wanted to watch me. With my eyes closed. How sad that I'd been awake for less than an quarter of an hour and already I had a bad memory.
'Oh, mr.Golovin's alright, bit strange. Very strange but I've always been one to appreciate strangeness.' He sat on his knees with a expression as if I were a particularly difficult square of a crossword and he didn't know what to do with his clue to find out the rest of the letters. 'It's just a form on enthusiasm.'
Finally he made the connection between me and the house and he went blank. It didn't even tended as if he wanted to say something, he'd simply frozen where he sat by my side. My head leaned over the side to wake him up but he just kept his position as dumbstruck.
I put my palms against the ground and pushed. Now I sat in eye-level with him and he still didn't move.
Boys. I knew it. From every novel Jeremija has read for me to prepare me I should have known. One hand behind my back on the gravel and one just beside my shoeless foot, I stood up so that I now was the one to do the down-looking. And he had the audacity to brand me as a madwoman, did he? Tell me in what universe sitting silent in front of a stranger for minutes was not just as mad as dancing from that evil building behind me. True, I hadn't said anything either, but only because I'd nothing to say to him.
Impulsively and most certainly without consulting the rest of me, my hand reached out for him to pull him up so that I could be on my merry way, and he on his, even if his led to the blue house which made sure that his way would be a whole lot less merry than mine.
He took it. Inpatient I tugged his hand upwards without result. It turned out he didn't need my help, at all. In full control his feet found the gravel and now he stood, in fact, only a few inches above me.
'Very well, then.' He smiled thinly.
'You should walk away.'My voice was stern but kind, or at least that was what I was going for but he just shook his head softly. It must be one important friend. He never took my advise. He waved to me and started walking off and I put one naked foot in front of the other.
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