Five o'clock

Mat emerged from his deep lethargy as if hit by the reverberations of giant shock waves and, simultaneously, a colossal pain pervaded his spine.

“Where am I?” he managed to utter after a few, long seconds.

            His eyelids’ dysfunction had as a knock-on-effect his vision to be blurred for the first moments but he finally combated this impediment and became able to scrutinize the environment surrounding him.

And there goes nothing.

            The room, in which he was, seemed like it had gone through desertification and the shortage of any clues had bad ramifications as far as his psychological state was concerned.

            Instinctively, he ran towards the door in a desperate try to find an exit.

An exit from this hell.

            But before he could reach the door, his mind gave up on controlling his body. Every move felt like a delayed reaction. Eventually he fell down on the floor without being able to control his own body. His desperation turned into grief and his grief transformed into resignation. His hopes were malnourished.

            Suddenly, he begun hallucinating, being a viewer to visions he had never seem before, or . . . so he thought.

            A dying man pointing with his toe on Mat. “You are going to suffer”, he whispered and a faint smile appeared on his face. Then he turned his head and took a glance at the clock. It was five sharp.

            Mat was brought back to reality from the sudden intrusion of a woman in the empty room. “You have to follow me! Quick! Hurry!”

            Mat was trying to regain consciousness and was surprised by the unexpected appearance of the woman. When he opened his eyes, he saw a tall, blond woman creeping up towards him and felt a substantial amount of hope.

“What time is it?” he asked her, apparently swayed by the visions he had seen. The woman seemed to be taken aback but she deemed that the man she had before her, had lost his sense of time. She checked her wrist watch and answered, her voice soft like the sound of the halcyon sea. “It’s quarter to five”, she said, “I know you are confused but you have to follow me. My name is Joy and I am your only hope.”

            Mat could not come up with a better plan so he agreed with the implementation of that idea.

“My name is Mat”, he gasped.

“I know . . . I know”, she murmured.

            Joy helped him to stand on his feet and together they left the room in which, by that time, Mat had got accustomed to.

Cold air. Mat felt the sweet, cold air soaking through his lungs, refreshing his powers but as soon as he had exited the room, his senses geared towards the place where he was now. “What the hell am I doing in a forest?” he contemplated.

Encircled by a diversity of trees, bushes and flowers he kept on coping to keep up with Joy’s pace.

“What is going on?” he questioned her.

“To be honest, I do not know what exactly is happening either”, her tone depressing and concerning.

“Meaning?” he asked hesitantly.

“I was driving back home from work and suddenly a man appeared in the middle of the street nodding me to stop. I had no choice, so I did what he had told me. But while I was slowly driving toward him, I sensed that he was going to pull out a gun. I got scared and tried to drive away. The man got up on a motorcycle and chased me. Then I received a strange phone call from a man requesting me to help you. To be honest, I believed that you’d be able of helping me.

            Mat did not facilitate her by retorting. Instead he slowed down and eventually stopped running.

“Someone wants me dead”, he announced, “and I am heralding that he is going to succeed. At five o’clock I will be dead”, he added, lending credence to his notion.

“That is nonsense”, she said, “you are imagining thins because you have obviously undergone pernicious for your health incidents.”

“You’d better leave and save yourself! I am done!”

“I did not come here to hear that. I came here to rescue you and I am not giving uop that easily.”

“But you-“

            A penetrating sound from a gunfire accompanied by an excruciating pain stopped him from finishing. He fell on the ground writhing from pain and she leaned over him with indecisiveness in order to succor him.

“Just leave” he gasped.

            The bulled had hit his right leg and causing now his movement to be limited. She pressed the wound but the mass bleeding was inexorable and, in the end, unstoppable.

“Sorry”, she said, “there is nothing I can do.”

            She got on her feet in order to leave but before she stood up she had felt the warmness of a bare hand covering her neck and a gun next to her head. It’s over.

            The man fired again, this time aiming her and there was nothing she could do. She fell down next to Mat’s barely alive body, dying instantly.

            After she had fallen, Mat could distinct her watch which was ensuring the time. Five o’clock. Exactly.

            Mat woke up in a award of St. James Hospital, his leg killing him from pain. “What . . . what the hell?” he thought.

            A charm, young doctor entered after a few seconds obviously noticing her patient’s waking.

“It’s alright”, she said, “My name is Dr. Joy and I will be taking care of you.”

“What happened?”

“You had a terrible car accident. Fortunately you have injured only your leg but you were also bleeding from the head. It’s nothing serious. We have diagnosed you with retrograde amnesia. You will start recollecting your memories within a little amount of time.”

“I had some visions”, he informed her.

“It’s absolutely normal”, she said, “just try to ignore them and you will be fine. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go.”

“Thanks” Mat said”

She smiled and nodded.

            The thoughts that everything he had experienced was not true were hard to believe at first but after a while he willy-nilly accepted them.

It is true, he finally thought, that in dreams we catch glimpses of life larger than our own.