I am the voice (The clockwork boxes 5)

At last I could see where my legs were walking! A relief sigh gave my frightened body the air it needed desperately. The platform was so narrow and it was slanting so much at some points that I had crossed it without falling by pure luck. I was in a dilemma! Should I go back as fast as I could or the lights would be switched off in the middle of my way to the exit, plunging me in anguish? My dilemmas of course were of rhetorical nature. Since I was a kid I  had developed a special technique on imagining myself involved in problematic situations, or standing indecisive before forked paths. Maybe that’s why my right palm had two forked spots embossed on it, deeply carved. The first was on my double head line and the other one at the end of  the fate line. An old palmist had predicted my certain craziness and my certain brilliant fame as a writer, both when I would be very old and unable to walk.

Could I do something else? Should I stay there? Should I continue my descending and walking? How much I dislike myself when I become so silly, incapable of just taking a damn decision! And this dense dark made me feel even more stupid and weaker. I didn’t have the luxury of having such thoughts at that moment. The sudden deafening creaking of an iron door split the silence around in a scary way . I was afraid that the light would switch off and I stuck my body onto the wall when a hand suddenly grabbed mine. I jumped backwards panicked, ready to shout and run, when a heavy  male voice, freed me from such a possibility.

“Come on sir! Hurry up please.You may come in.. If you wish of course..”

It was impossible! I was dreaming! Maybe that narrow dark corridor had some fumes which might have caused me hallucinations. The stranger’s frozen hand on mine, that voice of his, those words, someone I couldn’t see..

“Proceed please! You will cause a congestion. There are more people coming!”

The demanding tone of his voice didn’t give me a great choice. Hesitantly like a child that had accepted his father’s scolding, I stepped forward. I was invited somewhere, without knowing either who had invited me, or where I had been invited. Had I been hypnotised and been dragged down there or had I been self-hypnotised  by following that peculiar voice that every now and then talks into me?

“Wake up!” I demanded from myself irritated. “It is not time for thinking such things now!”

I decided to turn to the direction of the heavy male voice, following its sound. At the end of this sound, exactly at the point where its staccato echo tail was diminishing, I found a big guy who seemed to have been waiting for me, in fact waiting impatiently, looking all the time at the watch on his wrist and holding with his other hand a sizeable fan with latin numbers carved on it. He was dressed in a very expensive black tuxedo and a white shirt. A black, perfectly ironed papillon was tightening his throat with grace, making his veins bunching like a lilly bouquet over the top button of the shirt.

“I am the voice ” he said in a mysterious tone and pulled my arm softly, pushing a grey door behind him at the same time.

What I saw when the door closed was something that any reasonable man would never expect to see on an underground train platform. 

I closed my eyes tightly, my eyelids hurt so much that crimson clouds started marching in front of me. All this must have been part of a funny dream. I usually see such dreams, dreams that wake me up in the middle of the night laughing loudly. Oh, sure it was something like this! A lot of times I bury myself under my blanket so that neighbours can’t hear my loud laughter in the early hours.

But all was still there when I reopened my eyes. Nothing had moved from its previous position. Everything was at their initial point, exactly where my surprised eyes had left them hovering, having the sense of a shaking jelly dream. 

image: Toulouse Lautrec