Obscura: The Dark Chamber Series Book 1

Chapter 3

               With all the chaos and confusions running through my mind I close my eyes to straighten it out. When I open them, I am staring again at our apartment ceiling. Another dream, I say to myself. I turn my head to where Jarek’s bed is. He wasn’t there. I reach for my cellular phone in the right pocket of my jeans. The time reads 9:43 pm. I’d been asleep for more or less forty five minutes. I stare at the ceiling. Who’s the person that I dreamed about this time? Where and when will it happen? Who is that woman? And what the hell is Jarek doing there? I ask myself. The questions constantly nagged my mind.

               After an hour, I am still wide awake. So, I stand and went to the bathroom to take a bath. The moment I turn on the shower, I still can feel the slight sharp pain at the right side of my head where I hit something when I got knocked down in my dream. I shake my head hoping for the pain to disappear. As the water flow down my body, I start to feel small muscle pains all over. It’s like my body is in the last phase of healing after being beaten up. I reach for the soap with my right arm and I felt a tiny sting in my right shoulder. I remember the pain in my dream, the dislocation of the person’s right arm.

               After I took a bath, it was already just past 11 pm. I walk into my shared bedroom and find Jarek by his closet.

               “You just arrived?” I ask.

               “Yeah.” Jarek answers. He takes off his black t-shirt and my attention went straight to a purplish bruise with the size of a fist at the left side of his lower ribs. 

               “Whoa! What happened to that?”

               He looks at his bruise and point at it. “This one? I got beaten up during my boxing sparring earlier,” he says.

               Knowing Jarek, he takes fitness seriously. So, it didn't come to me as a surprise that he is having boxing class. But a guy his size, being beaten up is something that my mind can’t fathom. “I didn’t know you can still be beaten up by someone.” I doubt. This made me skeptic in what extracurricular activities he has been doing. Maybe these include killing people, if he is an accomplice of the man with the red-lit eyes or a savior just like what the girl did in my dream.

               “You have no idea,” he says. He takes his towel that hangs on the wall beside the closet and left.

               Yeah! I have no idea. I whisper to myself. Now I start to doubt Jarek. He’s just over six feet with an athletic body and I am sure his punches can break his opponent’s bones. No one can beat him up that easily.

              I shrug my doubt on him and got dressed. I don’t feel the pain in the different parts of my body anymore. So, I lie down on the bed and help myself to fall back to sleep and hope I won’t have any of my weird dreams again. But as usual, it happened again.

…

               I open my eyes and I am staring at the ceiling made of woven dried coconut leaves. I am lying on a mat that is laid on the floor. I force myself to sit and try to make out the surrounding. I am in a small room covered by woven abaca wall with bamboo flooring. It’s a small nipa hut. My mind prodded me to look outside the window to my right. The stars were in the skies. At that moment I knew I am no longer in Manila.

               Stars usually don’t show itself in skies of Manila.

               I look around inside the hut. There is not much to see inside. It's dark but I am still able to make out some things because of a kerosene lamp place at the center of the room. There were a dining table with a bench and a make-shift kitchen with a barrel of water on the side. There is also a curtained doorway to my left.