Παρασκευή 16 Μαΐου 2014

RELEASED MEMORY – by Angeliki Bouliari

What if... 

I didn’t sleep well. I woke up several times during the night only to find out in desperation that I had tight teeth and fists and it would still take long for the dawn. So about an hour before the alarm clock would sound, I decided to end this torture myself. I got up, had breakfast and got ready to go. It would be my first day at work.
I followed my friend’s, Ismini’s, instructions and went to the gas station, opposite the General Clinic and waited for Tony, her friend and my colleague in the near future, to pick me up and get me to School. It was very early in the morning and an unfamiliar chill made me think that I should have put on warmer clothes than this simple, grey, woolen suit. Few people and cars were on the street. I felt strangely cut off from the rest of the world, wrapped in a dreary, familiar silence.
What if nobody ever came to pick me up?

Sunday morning, after the Church. Four years old. I have well brushed brown, curly hair, decorated with a big, white bow tie, I am wearing a grey coat, black glossy leather shoes and white knee socks. I am outside a huge, shut door of a house. “Now, I’ll ring the bell and the door will open after a moment and Grandpa will come and take you inside. I’ll come back in the afternoon outside here to get you”, says Mum. 
Me and Mum live elsewhere, far from here. Alone. Dad is always away. He visits us sometimes, but he doesn’t stay with us, as it happens with the other children. Mum says he travels a lot for his business and that one day we’ll live altogether and I’ll have a baby sister. And Grandpa is very angry with Mum, but he loves his only little girl. 
Mum is very beautiful, with her dark long hair and the white-pearl necklace. As she bends to give me a kiss, her hair touches my cool face, tickling tenderly my cheek. I reach up and idly caress for a while the all round and shiny white pearls.Then, she takes her warm hand from mine, she rings the door-bell and flees, the street corner swallows her up. Grandpa delays, the huge shut door scares me and I start biting my nails.


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