Requiem

Fugue

I... there was an I... and the I wanted to...

... what did he want?

"Can I call you Johan?"

There had been a white coat roaming around for some minutes... maybe hours or days. It didn't matter, time was meant to relapse... melt.

It spoke again.

"How are you feeling, Johan?"

Who was that Johan? He closed his eyes, looked for that one but failed in finding anything named like that.

Johan was his face. His hair, his eyes. His voice. All that was left for others to observe.

Johan was a body, a figure.

Johan wasn't anyone. I... was I... one... the monster.

'You are alive to be punished' The monster's consciousness spoke this time. 'They learned.'

One wanted... one...

"He wants to go home." Johan's mouth decided to answer.

'Where is my home?' a childish, hoarse voice came for beyond the barren land. 'Is there a place I can call home?'

Was there a home? What was... a place? A smile?

He had no such things, neither Johan, he had... no, he hadn't. Once he had... then... what happened?

I want to find something I can call home, to conceal my existence inside, and erase the rest. "I want to die..." Death was my closest home. He agreed.

It had been the fire, what destroyed all, the flame of choice.

"Where is it? Here, in Munich? You... lived here for some years... is it right, Johan?" the voice dressed in white was insistent but contact wasn't meant to succeed.

'Had you a home in Munich, Johan? Were you that lucky?' Yet it required no time to comprehend that there was no cottage in the Bavarian forests for Johan to call home.

Home...

"Anna was his home, but not anymore." Johan explained, eager to make sense to himself. "The door was shut down... Anna left..."

And then everything turned suddenly black, for Johan and me, right before an alarmed voice yelled at him and arms tried to stop the fall.

The body had been sick enough times for him to recognize that fevering sensation, like being burn alive. The exhaustion was too much for him to care as hands were constantly touching him, professional, in that impersonal contact of medicine. A cold, wet piece of cloth pressed against the forehead.

He looked down from the ceiling. His damaged body looking so tiny, like a wooden doll dressed in an ugly green outfit, being puffed up with a dropper like a balloon. Maybe he could fly away from the hospital, through the window, and reach outer space. Obluda was back, it could join.

Obluda was not happy with that proposition and offered him a severe look, before walking, jumping from one foot to the other in its characteristic idea of steps, out of the room as a couple of nurses left the door open. He could see it leaving through the corridor... was he hungry?

Back behind his eyes, his hands tried to move, weak, so weak. Only his eyes reached the dropper that turned into a tree. Four different liquids being pumped into his blood.

He's bored.

He's bored...

"I... I forgive you... Even if we were the only two people left in the whole world... I would forgive you...That is what I can do..."

Look! Obluda was back, looking through the window.

"What is that you see?" a muted ask. He always asks. She always asks.

"Trees, a city. People in white. People in blue. Grass crossed by a path." It wasn't as good as Anna, there's no story attached, just pictures shaped by descriptions.

"Some things can never be amended."

It was desolating to think that the closer possession he has to a name is Johan.

His condition was worsening, and he knew because the people in white forgot he could hear and understand, although he had shown little responsiveness. And he was happy to finally welcome death, even if it was in the hands of a bacteria instead of a gun.