Sorrows of the Floating Ocean

46.9480° N, 7.4478° E

The hands of the Zytglogge strike at exactly 03.42 in the morning. I check my silver Rolex that's stationed on my left wrist and realize my watch has been behind by 2 and a half minutes. I turn the knobs on the side of my wristwatch and quickly fix this problem. Bern had been quite silent around this time, only the occasional groups of drunk adults and teenagers alike had been quite active. Not to mention those who'd been working the night shift and maybe even some shady looking figures glooming about. Otherwise, I had been surrounded by nobody in particular that seemed to be of threatening character. My beige knitted bomber jacket and burgundy turtleneck had been enough to keep me warm for this peculiarly cold spring evening. I reach into my right jacket pocket and take out a pack of Camels and a matchbox along with it. I put a cigarette in between my lips and light it. „He's 12 minutes late." I mutter to my slightly drunken self.

I had just returned from „Les Amis", a quaint little jazz bar located near the Marktgasse of Bern. A fairly casual place with great cocktails. I'm quite fond of their gin tonics. I sat by the window next to the entrance of the dimly lit lounge and enjoyed a cover band playing Dave Brubeck's Take Five while I devoured a vegetarian sandwich I'd ordered with my gin. Perhaps I hadn't exactly been a fan of Dave Brubeck, but Take Five was a jazz classic, a quintessential example of jazz music that I just couldn't dislike. After the annihilation of my sandwich and gin tonic, the young waiter comes over with an expression, that obviously seemed as though he were a nervous newbie who'd just started learning how to wait tables.

„Anything else you'd like miss?"

„Yeah, I'd like 3 Heineken Lager." I reply with a hint of exhaustion.

„Oh, and another one of those vegetarian sandwiches. They're great."

„Right away miss" he replied in a perfect mechanical tone as if he'd been saying that for several hours.

I return my focus to the band on stage, and they were now right in the middle of Dizzy Gillespie's  A Night in Tunisia, coincidentally one of my personal favorites by Gillespie. I spend some time dreading the thought of the weekend coming to an end. I'd just finished my second semester at The University of Bern, although it had been an enlightening experience, I'd become quite exhausted of the work. I'd always been quite interested in human culture, especially that of the prehistory. Perhaps my mother had been at fault for that. She'd been the type of mother who went traveling around the globe, returning with cultural artifacts and merchandise she'd often use as decoration for the apartment we used to live in. Bones, sticks, statues, pictures, clothing, you name it, she had all of it. But after much time had passed, my studies in Archaeology had indeed, become quite exhausting. So this dread, is in fact, justified. Archeology by far, isn't the most popular of disciplines but it was perhaps one of the more deep rooted of them. Uncovering the undescovered shards and dust of the past.

The waiter returns with a trey in his right hand. „Enjoy your meal miss" and he places the 3 bottles of Heineken Lager in front of me along with the sandwich I'd been awaiting to devour. After placing the goods on the tables he immediately leaves to serve the other customers.

I take a out copy of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis out of my small checkered rucksack and begin reading where I'd placed my rectangular yellow bookmark. I squint softly, then fix the placement of my delicately rimmed round eyeglasses and move them back to the bridge of my nose. The cover band was now playing Chet Baker's Almost Blue, my absolute favorite in all of the jazz genre. I mellowly begin to turn pages all the while drinking my Heineken Lager, when I notice something wasn't right with the book I'd been reading. I'd been 2 pages into chapter 3 of The Metamorphosis. I'd just turned over to page 36, but it had been a completely blank, empty page. I suspiciously skimmed through the rest of the pages after that, but they too, had also been blank. I take this with a grain of salt thinking perhaps, that I'd bought a faulty copy of the book, although I had been quite certain I hadn't. I disappointingly turn back a few pages from where I'd noticed the odd irregularity only to be greeted with astonishment. "Huh..." I was completely amazed. The pages I'd just read were vacant empty whites. I quickly scurry through the pages throughout the book in confusion. Everything, all the pages were clear, even the front hard cover and the summary on the back had been turned into empty, unfilled, blank whites. I mechanically close the book and place it in front of me. It's completely empty. I was quite sure that I was just reading Kafka's The Metamorphosis, but now it's as bland as a newly bought sketchbook.

I give myself a moment to gather my thoughts, I start to sweat in slight confusion, despite the irregular chill of this May evening weather. There wasn't much I could really do in this situation except contemplate about what exactly happened. Perhaps I'd just begun hallucinating from a certain sickness or my mind had just begun showing symptoms of schizophrenia. Either way, the thought just filled me with more anxiety than I previously had. I set that aside for a moment, resume the devouring of my sandwich and drink my Heineken Lager. It takes me a moment to register that something had been awfully wrong with the atmosphere.

A shot of dread courses through my body when I realize, that it had been extremely quiet inside the bar. A chill goes through my spine and I look at my surroundings. "What the..."

It seemes as though everybody had stopped what they were doing, and were now looking directly at me. The cover band on stage had stopped playing Almost Blue, the people who were enjoying their drinks and food and were now frozen like statues looking at me with a piercing glare, and I felt their eyes stabbing me like elongated sharpened needles. It didn't seem as though they were all looking at me because I had perhaps done something innapropriate or shocking, but it was like they were observing my soul with great interest. Eyes wide open, not a single noise came out of their slightly opened mouth. Uneasy silence devours the entire atmosphere and I'm frozen.

I quickly grab my things, clumsily stuffing them in my bag and walk towards the exit in the painfully, cold silence of the previously lively bar, all the while everybody had been following me with their ominous looks of vacancy, their bodies motionless. Only their penetrating gaze were fixed on me.

As I exit the bar and gone outside, I had spotted more people, stiff and standing incredibly straight, looking at me again with those interested stares. Even the pigeons didn't move, nor did they make a sound.

"What the actual hell is going on?..." I mutter to myself in slight desperation.

I take out a pack of Camels and put a cigarette in between my red lips and light it.

I make an attempt to study the woman in front of me, who, like everybody else, had been staring at me with eyes wide open. "Hello? Excuse me?" No response. 

I take out my smartphone and flash the light in her eyes. No response. Not even the slightest movements were noticeable in her pupils. Her gaze was stuck on to me like strings had connected her eyeballs to my body. As if a power outside of mortal capabilities were forcing her to do so.

"Is this some odd television prank or something?" Yet again, no response.

I decide to examine the anomaly further and try to interact with these "starers". I push the woman in front of me and she falls like a sack of meat onto the cobble pavement, as if every muscle in her body refused to do anything and decided to plunge ungracefully into the stone like a doll of flesh. I whimper slightly at the hideous sight and somewhat stumble backwards into the open street. Even when she was sprawled on the ground like a forgotten puppet, her eyes had still been fixated. I inhale a long drag from the cigarette and let out a very exhausted sigh along with the clouds of dusty white smoke. I then decide the best course of action was to not let her lay out in the open, so I drag the limp unresponsive woman who was lying on the pavement by her arm and seat her on a nearby bench. I decide to walk around and see if there was maybe a place with "normal" people.

The dimly lit street of the Marktgasse had been filled with a few crowds of "starers". It seemed like everybody had been put under a spell except for me.

"Maybe I've lost it."

"You might be right. Maybe you have gone insane. But I don't think that's the case."

I startle at the sound of another voice, and turn around.