4 April 2008
It is year 1984,
although I am not quite sure. I shouldn't be grown up and all if it was so.
We are living in a gigantic, gloomy, soviet-like apartment complex. It is as
though the whole country is boxed into it. Most of it is comprised of large, windowless
cubicles; with greasy-gray walls, cracked floor and battered rusty-iron tables.
Posters are abundant; and an overwhelming smell of filth, tobacco, and bad
coffee fills the place, altogether creating a suffocating atmosphere of misery.
Groups of weary, fearful men are roaming the place…
Suddenly, the
scene changes: I am inside a small, neon-lit detention cubicle faced
by one of these men. He is a middle-aged, grim man with an untrimmed, short grayish
beard and a tough complexion. For a second it looked as if his face combines all the hatred in our
world...something about him was sickening and formidable. Simply, you can identify him as the big boss.
Although I don't remember the details of questioning, but he suddenly comes up with the brilliant idea that we are no longer allowed to live in the complex. Not to be evicted, instead, to be...evaporated. He orders his men to “get us”. They receive the order with almost ecstatic eagerness. Off they go, like wolves after their prey. A dreadful feeling of approaching doom filled me instantly, an instinct sensation of imminent threat. An unexplained catastrophe was about to fall upon us.
Although I don't remember the details of questioning, but he suddenly comes up with the brilliant idea that we are no longer allowed to live in the complex. Not to be evicted, instead, to be...evaporated. He orders his men to “get us”. They receive the order with almost ecstatic eagerness. Off they go, like wolves after their prey. A dreadful feeling of approaching doom filled me instantly, an instinct sensation of imminent threat. An unexplained catastrophe was about to fall upon us.
I don't know how
or why, but I had the power to fly! The next thing I know, my father and I are
standing in front of an elevator, a clean, hotel-like one. He takes out $10,000 of his pocket, all of what he has left, he split it into halves. He hands one
half to me: you're going to need this, he says. We go in to opposite
directions.
I am flying all
around the complex, although I feel something is holding me down. We are being
followed. The Big Boss's lads are after us. We had agreed to meet outside. We should be able to escape out of the back door of an old mansion: a large wooden cottage that is strangely built into one of the complex's upper levels. It is a
long way to go. After many twists and hides, I reach the upper level. It is a
classy, shiny place that you would not hope to find an old wooden cottage behind any of its doors. A group of Asian men are meeting with some local
officials, and there's only one possibility, I think, of what they might be doing:
conspiring. I manage to reach the front door of the mansion, where I see the
boys pulling one poor old man, apparently trying to escape, out of it. He is
handcuffed. They close the entrance. It is the end, I think. But then I somehow remember that the old mansion has a back door, although it is a long way to
reach it. I had hoped to hide behind the stairwell, but I find it guarded, my heart sinks as I think for a second that they saw me...
I don't remember
how, but somehow I end up inside the mansion, hurrying towards the back
exit, and the lads are after me. I reach a glassy room, with small, dirty glass windows that are locked by iron bars. One guy is immediately
behind me. I find a tool to cut the bars, but it is dull; and I fear it is going to take a long time
and they'll get me. But time I have not, I make two crossed-cuts in one of the smaller
glass windows and I break it open with my bare fist. I escape out of the
small window while the guy is just about to cut across my waist with a huge iron pliers trying to stop me. I notice how beautiful the place outside the complex is: a large
extended green pasture with a river coming across. I fly over the place, filled
with great joy, heading towards an unknown destination. I finally feel
relieved, and ... I wake up.
But for some reason, I have a very strong feeling that I will, one day, somehow, break out of that filthy complex and go see the world