Chapter 1 – The Light
(Romanian)
The falling lead of the night seemed to have no more patience… To understand her haste… To reward her fatigue by easing her path to the peace of a short rest…
She had worked all day and was now rushing to the hotel, where she would take refuge for a few hours, crushed by the day’s efforts.
At least that’s what she wanted…
It’s impossible not to have a few “calls” from bosses or subordinates or “meetings” with a late client…
And this light! she thought, trying not to take her eyes off the road under the siege of the lights of oncoming cars.
How insensitive! At least one of them doesn’t use the low beam…
Flash, flash, flash… Pain, pain, pain…
Through each headlight, she felt something like a drill sinking painfully, deeper and deeper, between the eyes, exhausted by so much work. Penetrating mercilessly, twitching, buzzing, it spread a kind of perception of the smell of iron.
However, she dozed off… Disturbing, in this crowd… Even though she realized several times that she had dozed off, waking up scared, then terrified…
Stopping, after each such episode, in the first parking lot, to be assaulted by the terrible cold of winter that seemed to leave no way for spring… To wake up, as much as possible, from the drowsiness of the comfort of the car’s interior…
At the last stop, she realized that night already dominated the serpentines, hidden as if among the fir trees that formed a tunnel of shadows. And it wasn’t even 7 p.m…. And she still had some way to go…
During this brief stop, she tried to avoid looking at the road, which seemed to hurt her eyes, taking refuge in the darkness of the dense forest of fir trees.
It wasn’t long before shivers of fear invaded her, with the help of luminous eyes that shone with alternating reflective varnish from the depths of the forest… Giving the impression of unreal flight, of teleportation…
She returned to the car, almost scared, frozen, but still sleepier than before, almost in a kind of trance-like state.
The ETA on the flight deck suggested to her that she only had 10 minutes to her destination… She should focus on this last effort of the day…
She started the engine and barely managed to fit into her lane, forcing the accelerator so as not to stop the flow of cars in her lane…
A few moments of excitement, of activation, but drowsiness took over… And everything passed like a short dream, as if in seconds…
But she reached her destination, enjoying the slow city traffic, fighting not to fall asleep at traffic lights…
Seeing the hotel that was her destination, she hurried into its parking lot, pulled in, and…
Buf…
A dull sound and a strange whine ordered her to brake suddenly.
She looked through the backup camera, the windows, and the rearview mirrors but didn’t notice anything, then continued in amazement, wondering what that noise had been…
For a while, she relaxed in the car seat, but the fear of falling asleep made her rush to check in.
She finished collecting the small items on the dashboard, got out and locked the car, then went to the trunk to get her luggage…
The noise of the street, the sharp screeching of tires moving cars, and the honking of horns speeding traffic toward homes or nightlife spots seemed to overwhelm her, driving her away.
But, from somewhere, behind the small mound of snow between the parking lot and the street, a faint whine was heard, like a call to anyone’s curiosity…
A feeling that helps her quickly identify a… Fox… That was lying in the shelter of the road… An enormous black redhead, that seemed to be the size of a wolf…
She felt no fear… And the fatigue, the terrible headache, and the desires that begged for rest disappeared… Maybe also because of the cold she felt from the moment she sat down on the snow…
In a depressed state of sadness, almost pain, flooding her eyes with tears, as she stood up, approaching, studying the fading fox, looking at it strangely, humanely in the eyes…
A strange look, as if of contentment, that didn’t convey anything like pain or dying perceptions… A look accompanied by… Strange… A kind of smile… Yes, it certainly conveyed contentment…
Or was it just the grimace of pain?
And the fox closed its eyes, stopping the rhythmic, rapid movement of its abdomen, which was lost in a long, horrifyingly human sigh…
She didn’t expect to be so deeply moved by such a stupid situation. So stupid that she hid her face between her folded hands so that no one would notice her weakness…
Without noticing that a phosphorescent green steam, like the eyes of the former fox, rises from its body, quickly enveloping Ana’s body, to melt through the pores of her thick, fluffy, cashmere sweater…
At which point she gasped and suddenly lifted her face from the embrace of her powerful impressions… She seemed to have dozed off… Again?
Let’s get to work!
Everything went slowly and awkwardly, but she arrived in her room.
Next came the undressing, a short shower, probably because she had dozed off a few times and was now in bed with her “Foxy”, the stuffed fox that had survived her childhood, both curled up under the thick blanket hidden by fine linen, which spread the scent so common in service hotels…
With a last shred of consciousness, she remembered that she hadn’t hung up the phone or turned on her laptop to answer the people at work…
I can’t do it anymore! I really can’t do it anymore! I can’t…
She heard the phone… And tried to answer… But the light from the display hurt her eyes, reawakening the pain, driving away sleep but not exhaustion…
She had to respond… A colleague informed her that he had completed the selections for the next day’s meeting and uploaded them to the company’s server…
Yes, she had work to do! Plus, she had to get dressed, put on a little makeup… She could be video-called at any time…
She almost choked on her tears thinking about opening her laptop and working for at least 2-3 hours… Exposing herself to the pain that so much light was causing her…
But at least she could lie on the bed, holding Foxy close…
After an indefinite amount of time, she finishes…
She still had the strength to fall onto her back, falling asleep almost instantly…
But not before thinking about Vulpi, the one who reminded her of the innocence of childhood… Who soothed her with her fine scent of bergamot…
Merticaru Dorin Nicolae