8 Days

My Gaze

CHAPTER 3

DAY 1:

MY GAZE

                The blizzard was blinding. Blowing with great force, it moved my long coat, chasing the wind that passed behind me. The wind carried snow that covered everything on its path. The snow and the wind struck my face, my air filter —which I kept on my nose and mouth, with two bands that connected on the back of the head—, and my goggles —that stayed on by an elastic band that warped around my head—. I pulled up my hood from the jacket under my coat, but as I pulled it over, my headphones fell from my ears and were carried away by the strong blizzard, and I never saw them again. I adapted my black trench coat's neck collar to be at the level just below my eyes, so that it covered my ears and nose. With my goggles on I couldn't see as well as with the goggles off, especially in this blizzard.  I took my googles with my left hand and pushed up, and they were taken by the wind like a loose leaf.  They spun around in the air like helicopter blades, and they disappeared into the blindness of cold and white snow.

                With every step my feet would sink a foot into the snow, but every time I managed to get them out. Every step I took felt like I was frozen in time for a moment, but the strong cold wind still struck me with its frostiness getting to my bones every minute.  When I took my googles off I still couldn't see anything, until a second after. My view transformed from a white snow sheet in front of me, to clear like glass. As if I was standing there with no storm, but I still felt it on my body. With my new eyes I could see everything clearly; I could see the hatch in the middle of the forest that was stuck to the floor facing up, hidden by some trees and branches. It was the entrance of my lab.

                I was approaching the entrance that was still a bit far away, like a hundred meters away from me. I was walking slowly, so to not trip over the branches and sticks those were underneath the foot thick snow. I couldn't help noticing the dark fade on the corners of my sight, just a thin dark line of fade. This feeling crept behind my shoulders, like someone grabbing me, tighter and tighter.  The dark fade turned into black smog around my sight, thickening, until later when I turned completely blind. I was 70 meters away from the hatch. The obscure smog started to move into my sight; thicker and thicker every second. At this point I knew what was coming. "It" was coming for me. My silence wasn't 8 days in front of me, it was right here.

                The line started thickening more and more, to the point where it now filled half of my vision around the corners. At this moment, I was about 50 meters away from the hatch, when all of a sudden, my right leg started feeling numb. It felt like tiny spikes punctured my leg, thousands of them at once. The cold wasn't helping either, and it was making it harder to move. It was going to be hard to stay alive, just like the universe and everything else; I must die in sharp cold. I started running; it was an instinct of mine. But, when I started running for a second, the numbness of my leg intensified. Instead of tiny spikes, now they feel like knifes being stabbed into my leg.

                About 30 meters away, this feeling in my leg stopped. I stopped feeling the stabs, in fact, I didn't feel anything anymore. Like floating on a pool, I didn't feel my leg at all. I could move my left leg, but not my right one. As my leg paralyzed I fell on the snow. I fell face down, breaking any branches that were under the snow. My eyes were shut, and the coldness of the blizzard still ached on my back, although not so strong as before; thanks to the trees, but the brisk of it still passed through them. The snowfall touched my face. I couldn't see anything, but I could feel our exchange of heat.  It was dark under the snow. I was freezing in darkness. 

                I couldn't see anything, there was no light after all, but I could still hear. I heard the wind pound on my back and side. The trees were rattling back and forth by the gust, and the leaves falling from them, hit the floor. Throughout all this noise I could pick out my heartbeat. The same heartbeat I heard yesterday. With every beat, I saw a moment or person of my life: My work, my mom, Fatima, my childhood, my dad, everything and everyone; and then, myself. I saw myself on that thick snow, being blown by the light breeze that had come from the calmed blizzard. Everything had come to this? My efforts came to the results of nothing. If I had been more careful, if I had been more careful! If I had only been more careful...