APOCANGELICA Wild Beasts

Chapter 10

Upon hearing the clock tower strike ten, Ada stood up. She left the patch of thick vegetation and started to walk alongside the wall fence. An hour from then Dr Von Hillkeneim would have received her for the usual daily session of psychotherapy. Ada was dragging her feet heavily. For the first time since being in Asylum she was not anxious to see the doctor and have that hour of therapy. It was as if something had been broken in the relationship between her and the doctor: Ada was convinced that, despite the reassuring words, he didn't really believe in her and in what was happening to her and so, consequently, she no longer believed in him! But what was she still doing there?! Was it not better to follow Eddy and make a new life for herself far from the greyness of the 'reality' (whatever that word meant now)?

She now understood clearly Dr Von Hillkeneims intentions; he wanted to repress and relegate her to pretend not to see the shadows around her. She had to pretend not to know how things really were. Pretend! The specialty of adults: they were all so good at telling lies and even end up lying to themselves. That's how they ended up becoming blind and deaf in front of the Truth of things.

She bumped into a hospital attendant and this tore her away from her reflections. His short and wavy hair, his blond fringe disheveled and his penetrating blue eyes made her land right into her nightmare.

"Hello," said simply Sam. "In the end we meet again, uh? As you humans say: 'Its a small world!'"

Ada took a few steps back, still in disbelief for the materialization of her fears of these last weeks; then she turned and ran off.

*

She walked slowly, gazing fearfully at the sky. "Eddy, where are you ?!" she asked herself in a low voice while stepping in the boundless stretch of lush emerald grass.

"You called me?"

Ada startled hearing the voice behind her and turned abruptly. "Are you crazy?" she said to him amicably. "Do you want to give me a heart attack?"

"You're young and strong: your heart can take many other things" said the boy.

"Look... Is the offer to come and pick me up from the Asylum and take me away still available?"

"Of course"

"And you just need to know where I am and what day it is over there, right?"

"Right."

"Ok. I'm at the clinic of Dr Von Hillkeneim near Zurich, Switzerland. And today is the thirty-first day of January of the year nineteensixtyeight... Now that you know, when you coming to get me?"

Eddy smiled at her: "As soon as possible, relax. With the first dimensional breach nearby. Once we are there, it will be only a matter of a few hours to get away from there."

"There's one thing you need to know."

"Yes ?!" encouraged the boy experiencing a note of concern in the girl's voice.

"This morning I came across one of nine that have been chasing me!"

"What? you mean they have found you here in the Upper Kingdom?!" he asked her while turning around and checking to the left and right.

"No. At the clinic: one of them was at the clinic... maybe more than one, I don't know; I only saw one. He was wearing an attendant uniform. I don't know how they found me but they are there... and I... I'm afraid."

"Don't worry: as I said they have rules to follow. We still have some time. I will get back as soon as possible; I will deal with the one that found you and also with the others in case there are any... but knowing them I'm certain that its only one. Then we'll go away together."

"Yes, then I'll wait for you. Maybe we can leave at night. All is quiet at night and no one will notice until morning... Eddy, I feel that soon I will disappear from here and awake in my world. I will wait for you. Be quick" and, grabbing him by the arm, she leaned over to kiss him on the cheek.

Eddy let her, feeling her grip on his arm slowly fade away while the figure of the young girl vanished like a puff of wind.