Chapter 1
When the phone rang I was not yet aware if I had been lying in my bed or locked up in my closet. Only when I opened my eyes, rather frightened than disgusted, I managed to let out a sigh of relief: for the first time this week I welcomed morning in my own bed, now too big for the child that I used to be twenty years ago, and too cramped for the man I am today.
Everything had started five years ago. What happened back then is still blurry to me, becoming much clearer in time than it was back then, but perhaps foggier still with each passing day. Thus I have come to call it: The Incident. Even though it would be better called “The Illusion”. In my mind it is more related to an oil painting being slowly washed out by the passage of time, a painting which I admire hanging in the hallway, both of them covered by dust, leaning crookedly against the wall, its frame polish slowly peeling away through the ever widening cracks. Or maybe it’s related more to some sort of fine haze bordering slumber from wakefulness, separating dream from the fear of that first cut, that leads you into thinking that your inner self is slowly draining away, while everything you see outside is creeping in to muddy, defile and chip away at what is left of you inside.
However, the fog in which I found myself engulfed upon waking up anxiously during that first night was, and I can certainly say that now, over the tense arch of time, as real as it could have been. I can clearly remember my own heavy breathing, which was most likely the main reason for the hasty awakening. And that fog... A dense uninterrupted rolling cloud of milky vapors slowly flowing in rivulets through the pores in the walls, through the cracks and openings of the drawers, crawling on the floor, slowly licking the solid wooden feet of my bed, dripping like countless fine white threads from the ceiling, filling up the dirty glass on the nightstand and any folds in the bed sheets. At first, being under the impression that I was still dreaming and that, as it often happens in this state, I was awake inside this particular dream, I tried falling back asleep, while gulping down a cold mouthful of fear and lying perfectly still, being certain in my numbness that this fog was a living, conscious creature, endowed with sight and hearing, that would be able to sniff my terror with ravenous and lustful hunger. Something suddenly snapped inside me and my anxiety dissipated in a thick soft darkness that actually felt very much like the velvety nose of a horse and was as warm as a stove.
