chimere-Chapter6

Chapter 6

Home.

 

Grandfather Pio offered the tumbler to me, which I took hesitantly. This scenario somehow exuded a sense of foreboding although I should have felt relieved to finally be able to return to familiarity. Slowly, I twisted off the lid of the tumbler and dipped a hand in. A sensation of mud and broken clumps of moss met my fingertips. Drawing a deep breath, I closed my eyelids and threw a handful of the substance over myself. As I faded off, the last thing I heard was Grandfather Pio’s words, ”Remember, nothing is stopping you from coming back.”

 

Once again, I opened my eyes. I was standing in my own apartment, old and dull coloured, but familiar. The sounds of evening traffic and neighbours’ television sets leaked through the walls. The tumbler was no longer with me, but what I did have was my car keys in my left hand. My briefcase and documents lay on the coffee table beside me. Heaving a sigh of relief, I walked myself downstairs to check on my car. My footsteps echoed melancholically down the thinly carpeted staircase as I passed by the closed doors of different neighbours on different floors. Reaching the ground floor, I extended my hand to open the front door. I could have swore that the door knob felt of cold brass for a split second. I could have swore that it was solid and globular for a split second. But to my shock, as I tightened my grip on the knob, it suddenly turned to crackling white paper and fell through my fingers. I stood there stunned for a moment, not believing my eyes. Was this a dream? Had I been deceived? Snapping out of my thoughts, I instinctively placed a palm on the door. It was a painted grey wooden door, or so it seemed. But at its contact with my palm, all it’s colour drained to the floor in a pool of black liquid. Sensing what was coming next, I quickly withdrew my palm, but it was too late. The door seemed to dry up before my eyes and collapsed in a pile of white confetti at my feet.

 

Bright sunlight poured in through the newly created hole. I stepped outside into the light, but the light was not warm, yellow, and natural as I expected. It was fluorescent. My eyes, slowly adjusting to this blinding monstrosity, were met with another unsettling horror. For around me were not the houses, roads nor gardens I was accustomed to. Instead, there in front of me spread a flat terrain of unending whiteness, dotted with millions and millions of rusting and dusty radios. Trembling with fear, I walked dazed amongst this ungodly field, passing radio after radio. Each had a different sound; the sound of a car engine being started over and over again in a loop, the sound of a barking dog, the sound of someone cooking dinner; sounds of a natural neighbourhood in such an unnatural setting. I turned around and faced my apartment. As I had come to expect, it was nothing more than merely a house of cards. Loose pieces of paper occasionally fluttered down to the ground. More to prove my conclusion right, rather than any other reason, I stepped back into the apartment building. Black liquid drained off every surface where once there used to be colour. Pools washed against my ankles as I sloshed through the doorway. I looked up the deserted stairwell. Was this the real reality or a figment of imagination? I brushed a hand against the handrails and watched as the whole building collapsed in a storm of white confetti all around me.

 

I wished myself back.