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Well, this must be a dream. Everything certainly seems normal, but somehow you get a feeling of unfamiliarity you can't quite put your finger on. If you had to describe it, you'd say it was like observing everything twice at the same time from a heated room through nacre-coloured vision.
You stand alone in the vast and bright lobby of the building you work in. It should be filled with people at this time of day, but this isn't the fact that strikes you as broadly different, only as kind of odd. Now that you think about it, the thing that's off is definitely about yourself and not your surroundings. You are missing something, so you start to check. You wear your business suit, as usual. Your hair is straight and neat, as usual. Your left wrist is sporting a watch you received on your last promotion. When you search your pockets, you find a coin the size and shape of a standard Euro, but both sides were seemingly filed off and now only fashion smooth blanks. As you stare at the coin, looking at the small, blurry reflection of yourself, people pass you by. Some are coming from the distant exit, heading for the long flight of stairs behind you, the others head in the opposite direction. This is when you notice that all the people carry a small, silver suitcase. You, however, do not. Relief and pain strike you at the same time as you realize that you have located the one thing you are missing. Putting back the empty coin into your pocket without giving it another thought, you start looking around for your own suitcase, which you perceive must be close-by. While you explore the lobby, which does not really seem to end anywhere, save for the easily distinguishable exit embedded into a massive wall of large windows, only granting a dazzling impression of what must be the sunniest day of all time, more and more people begin to litter the entrance hall, streaming in and out of the building. You try to reach the side walls, where you would expect some benches where you might have had lunch and forgot to pick up your case after finishing, but even after a few minutes of dodging the crowd you don't seem to get anywhere. A slight feeling of panic and exhaustion embraces you. What if you lost your suitcase? What are you supposed to do then? You get the notion to ask random strangers if they had seen a lone suitcase, but you quickly disregard doing that. You won't get the answers you need from these people.
A string of intuition suddenly pulling and turning your head in a 90 degrees angle is making you look at the open entrance one more time. You notice something that either wasn't there before or that you simply overlooked: the doorman sitting at a table right next to the entrance and on that table a single silver suitcase. Meeting the demands of your reflexes, you start rushing towards the entrance. You don't run, that would be inappropriate, but you certainly make an effort to move faster than any other person around. Nearing the table, which more and more looks rather like a pedestal as you come closer, you reach out for the suitcase's ready and waiting handle. A few centimeters before you clench your fingers around the object of desire, you suddenly stop yourself. Your manners. You leave your outstretched arm in a position right above the handle, but you now look at the balding doorman, who doesn't seem to have reacted one bit to your behavior, although you can't say for sure, since the pair of pitch-black, rounded sunglasses are making his expressions nigh impossible to read. Sitting kind of slumped down in his chair, hands folded in front of his belly right above his lap, you first thought he was keeping an eye on the suitcase, but as the moments pass you come to the conclusion that he has either dozed off or stares right through the suitcase into an infinite distance. That, or he is blind. You open your mouth and out come the words: "I am missing a silver suitcase. I think this one is mine. May I take it?"
Without changing the slightest detail about his posture, he responds: "That depends. If you arrived early, you should take the suitcase. It is rightfully yours. But if you are late, you should leave it. Someone else will need it to save himself and those around him."
You do not question the value of what he said, but instead you ponder whether you were indeed early or not. You honestly don't know. The first moment of clarity you had was when you noticed that you were missing something. You try to think back before that, but your mind is in a daze. Remembering simply isn't possible. But you can't shake the feeling that this is your suitcase, that it belongs to you, thus your time of arrival should be of no concern. You grab the case, beg the doorman farewell and make for the entrance. Breathing out in relief you finally step through.
You find yourself outside, heading away from the building you work in in a straight line down the street. It is a bright but also very silent day. There are no cars on the road and you hardly pay any attention to the few people on the sidewalk. You are lost in thought, but you think about nothing, almost as if in trance. Not even your own steps are audible to you.
You didn't feel a tremble in the earth and you didn't hear a sound characteristic to an exploding, collapsing building. The only thing that made you turn around was the singing of birds behind you, which sharply clashed with the absence of noise all around. You turn around and there it is: a hill made of clean, lightish-grey rubble and glass from the building you worked in, sparkling in the broad daylight.
Zuletzt geändert von Rianq am Fr Aug 05, 2011 15:30, insgesamt 2-mal geändert.
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Ich finde immer interessant, was der Autor eigentlich vor hatte, aber na ja - muss man halt so hinnehmen, wenn einer's nicht verraten will.