Escape

Our stories before all began deep in the night. This time, let's try the morning. A morning so early the sky hasn't fully brightened, a morning that can barely be called one at all.

There's only you. Please pay no attention to me, the one telling this. Or, from where you stand as an observer, there is only me in this story.

The dream hasn't quite ended, but the temperature has already grown distinct, a cold with a faint familiarity to it. Perhaps it resembles some moment from many years ago, resembles it so closely that, before you even begin to marvel at the turning of the seasons, you're already straining to recall the last time this particular cold appeared. No, only fragments come back. Something like a story, it seems. Another person, it seems. The dream stretches on and on. That's right, late one night. It seems it was late one night.

Late one night doing what? You wonder: am I unconsciously refusing to let myself think about it? After all, at some point I've already gotten dressed, and I've started brushing my teeth; my body is making me flee that cold. Late at night. Late at night. And yet the sun has already climbed high. And at last you sense something is wrong, because before you brushed your teeth, this was still a morning whose sky hadn't fully brightened. And now, you can't even remember whether you really did brush your teeth. The sky is still the same, not fully bright, accompanied by some familiar cold. Am I dreaming? you ask yourself. But everything around you is so real, so distinct, real and distinct enough that you remember something else again. Some kind of impulse, you think. The impulse to go do something. The impulse to go feel that cold.

But why would I have forgotten it? You put the question to someone, you don't know who, as if that alone might let momentum carry you back to whatever it was you forgot. Forgot what? The sun has already climbed high. Late one night, on a night when the sun has already climbed high, the self of that moment was still dreaming. Or maybe it's all the same dream, the dream stretches on and on. That's right, late one night. It seems it was late one night.