Coma. Federico Betti
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myself here alone, in the middle of a homogenous black of this room, with a steering wheel in front of me, my only certainty. That’s all I could see, the steering wheel.
I don’t understand what happened to the rest of the car. Because I am inside a car, right?
“Hey guys! I know that you are somewhere. Am I in a car? Can someone confirm it?”
No one is answering. Where is everyone gone?
They’re hiding, that’s the truth. They don’t want to be seen. They’re pranking me. A really bad prank.
I touch the darkness with a hand, but without feeling anything; I can’t feel the air moving, I don’t feel hot or cold…
I keep not understanding where I am, but I’m sure I’m alone. Who brought me here, left, or hid somewhere close.
“Come on, show up! I know you’re here”
Nothing, I got no answer.
What place is this? A basement? It doesn’t give me the idea of being a corridor. It rather seems like a closed space, a room.
At least that is my impression, it’s what I can guess from the elements I have at hand. If I had some more information, maybe I could have more certainty on my situation. I don’t even know if I’m in danger, I don’t know what to expect in the immediate future. Deep down, I still don’t know anything that could be helpful to understand.
How much time spent since I got here?
I realize that any of the questions I asked myself is having an answer; I don’t like it, I’m a person that based on certainty every moment of his life, and losing them could, long-term speaking, bother me.
Is it possible that there’s no one whom I could ask for help? Any kind of help…
I also gave headache, so I wouldn’t mind taking a painkiller, bit I don’t know who I could ask it.
“Is there anyone?”, I shouted, but as an answer I only get silence.
“I need something that makes this headache go away! Please, if someone is hiding there, it’s time to come out!”
I can’t see anything, the place seems empty, besides the car I’m in.
I already saw this scene somewhere: me, on my own, on this vehicle.
Darkness reigns all around, where is everybody?
Someone besides me exists in this World, or not?
Oh my God, in my head is making its way a quite worrying thought, or at least it is for me: what if, by any chance, I’m in another World? In a parallel word to the one where usually humans are?
Have I been kidnapped by the aliens?
I hope I will have an answer about all the question marks that are growing inside of me. And I hope I will have it soon, or I could take the risk of going crazy.
If there’s some kind soul somewhere around that would know something more about the few things I know, I’d like that he would show up and explain the situation to me.
No one is showing up. No one come out, they’re all cowards, sissies here because they know they’re wrong and because they know that I could kick them for what they’re doing to me.
“Show up, have the guts for your actions!”
Nothing changes. No one answers.
I have nothing to do but wait, but I hope that soon someone explains to me what’s going on here, because soon I will lose my patience, and when I lose my patience… every man for himself.
IX
Every now and then, thinking about what he went through with his younger brother and seeing the current health conditions, Mario Mazza got tears in his eyes.
He looked after him since they were children and has always been next to him during the following years; they lived many happy moments.
They had similar characters, other reason that made them get on well, and they felt really good when they were together.
The image of a smiley, playful Luigi came to his mind and he remembered only a few sad moments, since his brother, like him, was positive and optimistic for nature.
Although the discrete age difference and the belonging, as a matter of fact, to two different generations, Luigi and Mario together were a good pair: they compensate one another and between them there was an almost indescribable understanding.
It was like they were best friends: the one considered himself the perfect half of the other, at lest under certain points of view, and this situation became stronger and stronger as time passed by, especially after Mario was widowed.
Luigi felt in his debt for all that the older brother did for him: “some things you can’t forget”, he told him the day his wife died, “I’ll always be next to you, always”
And Luigi kept his promise.
Not even a day passed by without them seeing each other, or, for the worst, talking to each other on the phone, usually they always knew the other’s appointments, when they felt the need they asked and gave each other advices.
It was a long time that they both were single and, even if they mutually agreed to live in different flats, they still felt together, the one next to the other.
Sometimes they had like the impression that, in the long term, they developed some sort of telepathy between them, and that developed it with time. They understood each other right away, it was like they transmitted their thoughts with a gaze, and often they didn’t even have the need to talk to decide certain things.
I never thought that all of this could be broken in a few seconds, thought Mario while he found himself before his brother’s body, lying motionless in a comatose status.
Luigi’s conditions kept getting better day by day, or that at least was a good news, but seeing him always there, in the same position, put Mario in an uncomfortable situation: he felt a knot in his throat that would hardly be dissolved before his awakening.
All the days passed by like that since the accident: they all were alike, like photocopies.
And even that day the night came without that Mario Mazza realized, so immersed in his thoughts he was.
When he was awakened from a servant’s voice that invited him to leave the hospital because the time to visit the patients was over, the man walked towards the exit, went down the stairs and, with the coat well closed, he prepared to face the bad weather: outside it started to snow.
X
I’m driving, I don’t know where to. I’m here alone, for a few days now, with a migraine that pulses in my temples at a variable intensity and no one that could help me let it go. Sometimes I feel like dazed, stunned by the pain.
I try not to think about it, but that is pointless because the headache persists anyway.
I’m still sitting on the only seat of this car, I see the steering wheel before me, but now I decide to take my hands off and stretch them along my hips: I could never drive with such a strong headache.
The darkness around me endures and from time to time I touch it lightly with my fingers, as to find a solution to all my problems.
Despite my attempts to understand where I am, I haven’t understood anything yet and that is starting to get on my nerves: when I am missing assurance, it feels like I am suspended in air.
I can’t see anyone here, I can’t hear any noise around, maybe I am isolated from the rest of the world, rolled up in darkness, under a soundproofed glass bell.
Turning at my left, I feel like seeing a shadow, but it stays quite vague at my sight. That, though, gives me hope, I start to think that there’s someone like me here, even though this “someone” wants to stay anonymous, he doesn’t want to be recognized,