Iris Woke Up

8

Iris gasped for air, flashing her eyes open. Fingers ran through her hair. Eyes rambled. A sigh. The relief of recognising her bedroom.

"Only one way out."

Iris fled the house. She had to clear her thoughts. Her subconscious hinted a way to escape the horror every time she was dreaming. Was it the opposite of life?

She headed straight into the only Supermarket open on Sundays. Maybe cooking would help. Oven-baked pastitsio. Pasta on the bottom, minced meat in the middle, and on top, some kind of milk-flour mixture she could not remember the name of.

The last time she tried it was a failure. A hopeless attempt to impress Jacob by creating his favourite food.

She cracked her stiff neck. The pain followed her everywhere. She ambled to the corridor with the pasta. She grabbed the plastic package and tossed it into the red basket. Number ten. Why is pasta numbered?

A step backwards. Someone stood to her right. She turned her head and recognised her neighbor at once.

'Chloe!'

Chloe turned to look at her. Stout with ash black hair and pale skin, faintly beautiful. She did not move. Her dark eyes squinted and Iris raised her arm.

'Hey.'

'Hi.' Chloe seemed reserved.

'You okay?' Iris patted her on the shoulder.

Chloe took a couple of steps backwards. 'Is this a joke?' Her voice shaking.

'It's me, Iris.' A giggle.

'What?'

Iris raised her shoulders and laughed louder. 'What's the matter with you?'

'What's the matter with you?' Chloe emphasised the last word. She shook her head and pointed at the glass door fridges on the other side of the wall.

Iris followed her finger with her eyes. Her eyes narrowed as she dragged her feet to the refrigerators. Jacob's face stared back. She placed her index finger on her cheek. Jacob did the same.

She looked down at her body. She was Jacob.

'This cannot be possible,' she whispered. Iris lifted her eyes. Jacob's long face beamed back at her. 'I must be dreaming,' she realised. 'I'm dreaming,' she repeated, this time in a shrilling voice. She turned to a puzzled Chloe and laughed. 'Finally. I know I'm dreaming.'

She embraced her neighbour. 'I've almost solved it!'

Chloe pulled herself back at once. 'What the -?'

Iris twirled. 'How do I wake up now?'

Without any warning, a sharp demand to apologise pierced her chest. She faced her neighbour whispering, 'I'm so sorry.' Iris stared at her, not knowing why she was sorry.

Chloe stood still with a bewildered look on her face. Everyone in the supermarket froze, Iris noticed.

'Mom,' said a child, 'that boy doesn't have a face.'

She fixed her eyes on the glass before her. Jacob did not have a face, indeed.

Several steps later, she turned around and fled the market at once.

The doors automatically closed behind her. She rushed to her car. People stood by the market's entrance, gawking.

Within minutes she was driving in the narrow streets of Syros. How could she have missed this detail? Right foot pushed the accelerator.

'Wake up,' she muttered to herself. 'Wake up.'

Straight ahead, full speed.

Iris focused on Jacob's face. No other feature came to mind. None other than his tanned skin.

'Aaaaargh.' Her scream reverberated inside the car. Foot pressed on the accelerator a little further.

Iris had been trapped in her dreams for a while. So long she could no longer remember Jacob's face.

What was Jacob like? He doubtlessly had a marvellous tan. Iris tried to remember the very first day she met him. When she turned to the "Yia sou" he said.

She sat on the front porch steps of the building, expecting her delivery. The young boy stood right behind her. He greeted her then said something she did not recognise.

A warm August morning, sometime between 9:00 and 11:00, according to her shipping email. The sun was burning her pale skin. It shone over the front metallic part of a red Volvo on the opposite side of the road, causing a spark to fall into Iris' eyes. It forced her to wear sunglasses as she scrutinised a fantasy book.

She could hear the waves from where she was sitting. Blue waves were stroking the magmatic rocks on the coast forming a white froth. Every single detail of that day was etched in her mind vividly.

Focus! Jacob's face, the moment he introduced himself - it was plain. There was no face. Ever.

Iris tensely opened her window. The road lay flat and straight. She drove alone on a highway. The sky dark. The wind swirled through the window messing with her black curls. Without any warning, she burst into tears.

She had met Jacob three summers back. The hair at the back of her neck rose at the thought she had only been dreaming about meeting Jacob.

Iris pushed the accelerator harder. The front lights of the car, the only lights on the road. The blast captured Iris' sobs. A right turn exiting the highway and entering a town she had never visited.

'WAKE U-HUP,' she yelled, but she could hardly hear herself over the whoosh of the wind. She hit the steering wheel with her left fist. 'Wake up!'

A wall appeared at the end of the road. She instinctively prepared for a left turn but changed her mind. Maybe this was her only way out.

Death. The opposite of life.

Iris turned on the radio as loud as her eardrums bore.

'I had a feeling I could be someone...'

Wheel in her fists, arms fiercely stretched before her. She discerned the salt in her tears as they rivered down her eyes, her right foot rigid on the accelerator.

'Be someone, be someone...'

Iris crashed her car onto the wall at maximum speed. In a split second, glass shattered. The metal was deforming before her eyes as if it was made of rubber. At that point it hit her. She never left home. She never moved to Santorini. Pain instantly spread under her skin as thousands of pieces of glass entered her body before her temple hit the steering wheel.

'You got a fast car, but is it fast enough so you can fly away...'

Iris stopped breathing. Her empty eyes fixed on the lake of blood around the car. It seemed black under the moonlight. Smoke came from the car. The scent of burning flesh.

'You gotta make a decision, leave tonight or live and die this way.'