“Emilius! Emilius! Wait a minute!” A familiar female voice forcefully broke into the swarm of thoughts that drowned out all the sounds from the outside world, and “woke” me up. I turned around and saw Ema (one of my best friends) coming toward me at a fast pace, almost running.
She was out of breath; it was clear that in an attempt to catch up with me she had been running for some time. Her long fiery red hair fluttered in the strong wind, and her open cloak, like wings behind her back, gave the appearance of an angel descending from Heaven to Earth. Seeing this fragile girl, anyone could think of her being ideal: her figure, face, character, but her life would not seem enviable at all.
She lost her parents at a young age like me. An early marriage did not bring the happiness she had dreamed of. After a few months of marriage, her husband found out that he had a serious form of leukemia, which turned out to be incurable. His days were numbered. But suddenly, unexpectedly and to the delight of everyone, and especially Ema, one day he was getting better out of the blue. Unfortunately, Ema’s happiness did not last long. In six months, the disease returned and took such a merciless and cruel form that it killed its victim in a few weeks.
It took Ema several months to get out of depression and came back to normal. The most amazing thing was that she coped with grief on her own, without the support of close friends. Only a truly strong person in spirit and body is capable of such a thing. Although there were moments when it seemed to everyone that she was ready to commit suicide because of an irreparable loss. Still the girl managed to resist the misfortune. Therefore, I looked at her with great respect and endless admiration.
Although our friendship seemed strong, I still felt like Ema did not let me get close enough to her, so to speak, keeping her distance. Her actions as if were saying: “When I’m ready.” I didn’t insist, even though I didn’t understand what she meant.
“How are you?” Ema asked me.
“I want to know what the hell is going on with me?” I blurted out, again not knowing why. I looked straight into her eyes, and they seemed to encourage me to open up and not be afraid of the consequences.
“All in good time,” replied Ema, coming close to me. Despite the gusty wind, I could feel her hot breath and the scent of perfume.
“Did you know everything? But how?” I was amazed at the discovery.
“I was just waiting for your time to come. It remains to wait just a little bit more.”
She put her arms around my neck. It seemed that we were about to kiss, but it turned out to be just a friendly gesture. We never gave each other a reason for intimacy, even though I always wanted something more.
“Don’t think about anything right now. Forget what depresses you. Go home and get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow we’ll meet and you’ll be ready for a new stage of your life. Believe me it isn’t gonna be the same as before.”
After giving me a peck on the cheek, she took a step back. I noticed how her eyes sparkled with a green light. Maybe I was dreaming. I was at sixes and sevens at the time. Nevertheless, Ema’s words had a calming effect on me: thoughts stopped getting confused in my head; anxiety receded. I suddenly felt sleepy, and I staggered home, not remembering how we said goodbye.
3. Secret
I had no idea how I ended up in my old house where I spent all my childhood and part of my youth. However, there was no doubt that I got there. I recognized the family estate by the interior. Paintings by numerous artists of various eras and trends decorated the walls of all rooms. They even hung along the hallway and stairs leading upstairs.
The floors, covered with Persian and Uzbek carpets of bright colors, resembled lawns and meadows in the height of summer. They were made by hand, so I was strictly forbidden to run around the house in shoes: only barefoot or in slippers.
Curtains made of delicate silk of different colors covered the window spaces from the ceiling to the floor, barely allowing sunlight to get inside.
In general, everything here suggested that the owners, who were well-off, did not know anything of “design” since the atmosphere seemed rich, but tasteless. At first I thought that half of the house seemed to be missing altogether. It was only later that I realized: I saw only what was most firmly fixed in my memory. In other words, I found myself in my memories, and not in reality, because the family hearth sank into oblivion along with my parents.
After their disappearance without a trace under strange and unexplained circumstances, the house burned to the ground along with property worth millions of litas. Intuition told me that I was not here by pure chance. Something or someone deliberately brought me here. I was responding to the call, it sounded both in my head and from the outside. They were not words, but a completely different, incomprehensible feeling that cannot be explained but only experienced.
From the wide hallway I entered the living room, filled with Chinese porcelain vases, statuettes made of silver and bronze, rare books, furnished so closely so the was no room to swing a mouse. While I was looking around, examining familiar objects, the doors leading to my father’s office opened by themselves, and two silhouettes appeared before my eyes, shrouded in the rays of the bright sun.
After I came into the room, I recognized them as my long missing parents. A childish feeling of immeasurable joy suddenly came over me at the sight of my loved ones. I rushed to meet my parents, founding out that I was in the body of not an adult, almost thirty-year-old man, but a twelve-year-old teenager. I returned to the age when I saw them for the last time.
Now my father and mother appeared in front of me and looked very alive, as if they had never disappeared anywhere. If it was a dream, I wish it had lasted forever. My father, as always, dressed in his favorite strict classic suit (as I remember him most of all), with his coal-black hair combed back and piercing eyes like a southern summer night. He was strict, reserved and outwardly showed little emotion. Although I knew that deep down he was very worried, just by his nature he did not know how to show his emotions.
That was the way he was raised, so he just shook my hand and gave me a little hug, patting me on the shoulder, as he liked to do. My mother, on the contrary, did not hide her feelings: she hugged, kissed, stroked me for a long time, hugging me tightly to her chest, and did not want to let me out of her warm and tender embrace. Tears, without ceasing, flowed from her big blue eyes, brown hair carelessly scattered over her shoulders, and expensive perfume intoxicated me with an unearthly fragrance. Finally, we reluctantly freed ourselves from the embrace and pulled back a little to get a better look at one another. For a while, my parents looked at me with looks filled with love and sadness, understanding all the suffering and deprivation that I had gone through, having lost them during the most difficult period of my life.
“We know what you’re thinking, son,” the father began first, “but please don’t blame us and don’t blame yourself for what had happened. You know what will be will be. What is destined to happen cannot be avoided.”
“I just want to know the truth”, I replied with a hint of teenage protest in my voice. “The truth about what happened to you. The truth about who or what I am becoming or have already become. Moreover, is that connected somehow with the family secret that you have not revealed to me?”
At that moment, I was not an adult. Becoming a teenager, I behaved like a teenager: overwhelmed with emotions and feelings of indignation and pain, barely restrained myself from bursting into tears.
“We are hereditary Bernauses”, said my mother, approaching and taking my hands in hers. It always had a calming