Powder [phan]

XII

I entered the hotel and immediately felt queasy. For a moment I looked around, saw only a few people wandering around, drinking something, talking. I walked quickly to the elevator and started up to find Dan's room.

I knocked impatiently on the door, quickly and hard, in the same rhythm as my heart beat.

But nothing.

After making sure there was no one around, I put my ear to the dark brown door and listened.

I held my breath to hear the slightest sound, but it was dead silent. Nobody seemed to be here and not even the noise from the streets penetrated into the hallway.

If Dan didn't open it, I would be forced to report it as an emergency and have the door opened by the staff.

But it was clear to me that I wouldn't do that, because there were definitely illegal substances in this room, which he couldn't be in possession of. But that would be the less bad alternative, to be honest, if I thought that maybe he might need help right now and for some reason he couldn't make it to the door.

Or maybe he didn't want to let me in.

I knocked again vigorously, but the strength left me quickly, so that my fist stopped in the air and suddenly everything that had accumulated in the past few weeks, no months, was unloading in me. I could hardly stand it from one second to the next.

I didn't consider for a second that he could have checked out of this room long ago, because at that moment I felt his presence through the wooden door.

He was there. He was there and he was alive.

My fist opened and my fingers stroke over the cold wood between us that I wanted to break because it seemed to be so insurmountable that it separated us. Maybe it was the only thing that prevented us from finally getting together again.

I put my forehead on the door in despair and concentrated on what I was feeling.

I have to get him out of there. I jerked myself away from the door to try again.

"Dan?" I yelled and immediately realized that I shouldn't be that loud. "Dan, I'm begging you to open the door."

Dan's POV

Even if I had previously believed everyone who had told me that I had long been dead, I was at least mentally more than alive from the moment I heard his voice.

Was he really here? Or maybe I just imagined it? He couldn't have known I was here.

Was Phil's voice just an illusion, an idea in my madness, that the drugs caused?

Do I wish so much that it came from my brain now projecting it into my imagination and making me believe that he had actually come?

It was actually impossible.

"Dan, please." I heard him again.

My eyes started to burn and the pain, which I had previously numbed at least as much as possible, spread through my whole already paralyzed body.

When will that finally stop? Why was I tormented even more by thinking that he is really here?

The hand that was still close to my heart clawed into the fabric of my shirt so that I could even feel my fingernails through it on my chest.

"I'm here to help you, Dan."

My eyes opened suddenly and the ceiling light immediately caught the sensitive skin of my eyes, blinded me painfully. But I left it open, resisting the urge to close it and sink again into the dark.