Heartbreak
Cheeseburger
Postcard
Aterlife
Beachcomb
I never used them for the story I wanted to write, and tonight I had a dream, a most vivid one. I'll try to do it justice in words:
We were visiting my grandparents, I was tired of life in general and family most of all. I just suffered my first real heartbreak. The apple of my eye, sweet Lucy of the laughing eyes and rosy cheeks had told me that I was a no good for nothing idler, that I drank too much, that I cared more about my motorbike than I did for her. It most certainly was not true. The only reason I had been tinkering with my bike when she came over was that it had broken down, and if I did not show up for work in the cheeseburger joint next afternoon, I would loose my job. I stopped the moment I saw her, but obviously I should just have sat around waiting for her doing whatever she did before showing up.
Of course they all tried cheering me up, but their talk of many fish in the sea and puppy love did nothing to brighten my day.
I was in no mood for anything, but the bevel of small cousins forced me into joining them in a game of hide and seek.
During the fourth or so round I had the brainwave of hiding inside one of the big, old-fashioned trunks in the barn. They belonged to my grandparents' mysterious lodger. The cousins living there told of his mad experiments, sometimes resulting in things going ka-boom in the middle of the night. He was kind of creepy, muttering foreign words to himself, tinkering in the old barn, and generally shunning our company.
Well I hid inside his biggest trunk. Suddenly it was snapped shut from the outside, and I felt it being hauled across the uneven barn floor still with me inside. I kept still, afraid of being scolded, discovered, whatever. Strange noises followed. And suddenly I felt the universe shatter. This was the best explanation I could find, Everything went black, blacker even than inside the trunk, then burst into coloured shards and swirls. And the sounds, indescribable screams, roars and booms reverberated through my head. I lost consciousness.
When I came to, I was still stuck in the trunk. I hurt all over, my head throbbed with every beat of my heart, and I was cold, shivering cold. It had been a warm September day when I hid inside the trunk, but the temperature now felt freezing. I dozed off or maybe fainted again, and next time I woke, I could see light seeping through the cracks. Now I felt hot, burning hot. I had to get out. I braced arms, back, legs, all hurting, against the lid and bottom of the trunk and heaved mightily. I think I broke the lock, but the pains washed over me and I fainted again.
The following period was a haze, I drifted, I soared, I was shivering with cold, then burning hot. Finally I returned to a semblance of normalcy and asked the old woman sitting beside my bed where I was.
"Shh!" she said, "Don't talk too much. You've been very ill for a long time. It's almost spring now. You're still in Riisbye."
I recognized the name of my grandparents' hamlet, even though there was something strange about her pronunciation of it. In fact all of her Danish sounded strange to my ears.
For some days still I was uninterested in the goings on of the world around me, I drank the soup given to me at regular interval, later augmented by small snippets of black bread, salty meat and wrinkly apples. But youth is a wonderful thing. One day I woke and felt more alive, I asked the old woman for the date. Her answer had my head spinning almost as bad as ever: "Today is Candlemass, February 2nd in the year of the Lord 1802."
1802! But I was born in 2002. She had to be a bit crazy. I asked her for a 'phone, and as she stared blankly at me I asked for a newspaper.
"We have not a new one," she said, "but the one from a week ago was given to the master yesterday. I'm sure he'll let you see it later on. Or I can get you the older one from the kitchen."
I told her that the older one would do just fine, and she returned with a slim volume in unevenly printed Blackletter. I fought my way through the strange letters. The paper had a pompous and very long name, which apart from the first part "Elsinoers royal ..." was beyond comprehension. It was from January 19th. And tThe breaking news on the front page was something about a fleet commander now on his way to the West Indies and about armies aboard Dutch frigates. I tried reading on, but I fell asleep very soon.
When I woke up again it was bright daylight, and I began to notice my surroundings. Doonas made of coarse and striped fabric, in a bed of rough-hewn boards hung with curtains. Next to the bed a table, also made of coarse and well-worn timbers, a stool next to it and the cupboard against the opposite wall were matching. The window were tiny, the room small, and I would have to stoop to go through the door. I remembered seeing houses and furniture like this, in the open air museum I once visited with my old school.
Could I really have gone back in time?
... to be continued.
