Tales of Ghosts. Playing Another Reality. Edgar Allan Poe award

Finally, we came to the old and long-empty flat where Nikolas’ parents had once lived. We were greeted by an unbearable stuffiness, but Nikolas said it was better not to open the windows for ‘conspiracy’. What if the neighbors got frightened that someone had entered in through the window and would call the police…

“I’m so sleepy!” I said, yawning sweetly at the thought that tonight would be the first time Nikolas let me stay with him until the morning, instead of sending me home at midnight, and we would finally wake up in the same bed as husband and wife.

“Let’s at least have some tea, honey! I’ve bought your favourite cakes not for nothing! There’s no electric kettle, though, so we’ll have to wait a while…”

I nodded tired, closing my eyes. Nikolas went into the kitchen, and I followed him half-asleep. He stopped by the stove.

“Shit, it’s gas here, and I forgot where the matches are…”

“And I have an electric stove at home,” I mumbled, falling asleep on the go.

“Where are the matches, where are the matches…” Nikolas wondered, humming softly.

“To hell with tea! Let’s go to bed,” I whispered and hugged him, hanging on his neck helplessly.

…I woke up, looked at the clock on the bedside table, and got horrified! No way I could have slept that long! I quickly moved to the kitchen and found Nikolas standing at the window.

“Look, I’m sorry!” I exclaimed. “Why didn’t you wake me up? You said you had an early morning pick-up at…”

“And how did you sleep?” Nikolas suddenly interrupted me halfway through.

“At a new place, you mean?” I wondered, remembering the stupid saying about grooms dreaming only in places where girls fall asleep for the first time.

“Yeah,” he looked away, sighing. “Did you dream anything?”

“Something heavy… I was suffocating, flying in the void through a black tunnel… Why?”

“And there was a roar and rattle in your ears,” Nikolas added sadly.

“Yes, it seems so. How do you know? Did I scream in my sleep?”

“How do you feel now?” he asked, still standing by the window.

“Perfect! No, not even that! I’m the happiest woman in the world! To hell with Paris!” I smiled, came up to Nikolas and pressed my cheek to his cheek.

“Forgive me, Pauline,” he whispered in my ear.

“For what?!” I was surprised.

“I’ve never said I love you. I love you.”

“Something must have really happened if he said that to me!” it flashed through my head.

“No one will believe it but you,” Nikolas sighed somehow doomed, “although it doesn’t matter much now…”

“What’s happened?”

“I was always afraid of your dramatically leaving the Earth beforehand. And yesterday…”

“I love you too,” I tried to reassure Nikolas, thinking hard what he was getting at. “I’ll put the kettle on!”

Nikolas tried to stop me with a gesture, but I stopped only for a moment, asking myself ‘where are the matches?’, and came up to the stove when suddenly noticed that the burner was ALREADY on, but there was NO fire…

“Oh no!” I screamed at the thought that pierced me. “NO! NO! Not now, when everything is so good! Tell me it’s not true!!!”

“Yes, baby, yes,” he whispered, heartbroken. “Please forgive me, you know I didn’t do it on purpose…”

I instantly found myself at the door to the bedroom, but Nikolas blocked my way.

“No, Pauline, don’t go in there! It’s horrible…”

I slowly sank to the floor, Nikolas put his arms around me.

“It’s all over now,” he said trying to console me somehow. “Everything will be fine. You’ll calm down now, and we’ll go to Paris. We’ve never been there before together…”

    July 2002

7. Stuck Pluto

Pluto, the Lord of the Kingdom of the Dead, circling around in the Heavenly Dial of the Zodiacal Clock, froze at the Gate to his own Kingdom at 8 pm.

All the men I have fallen in love with in my life were under Pluto management, and one of them had at his birth as many as 5 planets between 8 and 9 pm on the Zodiacal Clock, or in the Kingdom of the Dead. Such an accent gives away serial killers and maniacs, mafia and financial tycoons, and also great and terrible magicians… and possibly ghosts…

The next day the Sun was going to bathe Pluto in its rays, to illuminate him and turn him on. A strange premonition of something all-encompassing, ready to crash down on me like an avalanche (or tsunami?), neither bad nor good, but shocking, didn’t allow me to fall asleep. In the morning, when my consciousness finally gave up, two people appeared, as if my guardians, one of them was a ghost, and the other…

The sound of a vibrating phone brought me back to reality.

“Michael is dead,” said the text message.

“We’re all going to die,” I calmly typed in reply to an unknown person.

The Sun greeted me through the blinds.

“Who made you so cynical, Barbara? MICHAEL DIED.”

“Which Michael?” continuing to understand little, I clarified just in case, suddenly realizing that one of the two men I had just dreamed of was named Michael.

“Yesterday I ran by chance into the guy who had assembled furniture for you. And he said that Michael, who had been in love with you, died.”

A terrible thought and, God forgive me, not at all about Michael, who had appeared to me in my dream – so sweet, kind, harmless, writing music and really loving me from afar, silently, realizing that there could be nothing but a working relationship between us, flashed through my mind, and I finally woke up, jumping out of bed.

I dreamt of both of them… Michael and…

“YOU?!?!?! Pluto!!!” I shouted at the whole Universe to an undefined number. “BUT HOW??!!! YOU ARE DEAD!!! SO MANY YEARS ALREADY!!!”

“I emailed you last year, you wondered the way a stranger had got your address. You didn’t recognize me. Maybe you weren’t ready.”

“But… how???”