after awhile, i was in a hospital, this i remember clearly. about what happened first, i have no idea.

there were people sitting down on benches in the courtyards of the hospital, under trees that had brownish and red dead leaves, when they actually had leaves left.
the few people in my vision field were wearing old clothes, of the same red brown color as dry blood, yet, it wasn’t blood, it couldn’t be blood, of course.
it smelled death, nothing tangible, just a feeling i had.
something is rotten, i thought

i was inside, looking at the courtyard from the other side of a huge dirty bay-window. the hall where we were standing was dirty and abandonned, but not in the way it would be if it had been deserted for years, it was the kind of desolation that would happen after some catastrophe. and that’s what had happened, actually. it was undefined, frightening, threatening like an empty space that no laughter could ever fill or enlighten, something stranger to us, estranged from our humanity, and yet, something we had to bear on our hearts like an unevitable reality.

– look, there are still people, i said to the ones behind me, desperately hoping that i was right, but paradoxally willing to be wrong.
we had gathered there, just like we were the few survivors of some dreadful event, which we were, in fact, but we weren’t sure about that fact, like refusing to believe some uncanny truth.
– they’re dead. the answer came to me as an echo of my own thoughts and fears.
– no, look, the ones sitting outside, there are still people here, i argued.
yet, i knew that even if they were alive, we had to avoid them, they weren’t part of “us”.
– take a look at their head, someone said, they’re about to fall from their bodies.
so i stared more carefully, and i saw rotten heads in the faded green, almost grey grass, and i noticed that the heads of the two persons sitting on the bench had been severed from their bodies but still in place, like even they didn’t notice it.
just like that. the scene that had appeared to me as “alive” was a grotesque mascarade of life, something that seemed normal at first sight, but was actually dead.

i stopped staring and turned back.
– ok, you’re right.
there was a silence. we felt relatively safe in our closed room, despite how big it was. we still had to decide what to do, and as i was coming from the “outside” for some reason, they were waiting for me to say something.
but i couldn’t. i was thinking about the empty gray hallways i’d seen in the hospital earlier, i was remembering the dead bodies waiting for us in the rooms, i was wondering what the hell could have done that. it was admitted that something was in the hospital, and still, even if we were sure that it was some “thing” that had done that, i had the feeling we also had to be careful about contagion, we had to stay away from every body we’d find. we still had no idea how it was proceeding and if we could escape it.
so we were waiting.

suddenly, there was something open in the ceiling, and a black net of some thick rubber came down the hole incredibly fast, still attached to something we couldn’t see that was hiding up there, and it tied itself around the head and shoulders of a woman sitting on a table, before starting to pull her over, with the obvious intention to take her with it.
i jumped and caught the net with one hand, and was pulled up, too, until the net released the woman and grabbed my arm instead with such a strength that it hurt like hell. but at this moment, i remember that all i wanted was to be taken up to its den, to see what it was, to face it, face my fear. but it was the woman’s turn to save me and before i could reach the hole, she’d seized my legs, pulling me down. the net released me, too, and i fell down on the floor.
and no matter how much i’d wanted to go up there a second before, i knew that i was alive instead of being dead, i felt my blood thumping in my veins, i had a sour and metallic taste in my mouth, and i knew, dammit, that i was more alive than i’d ever been.

that’s when i woke up and promised myself to quit watching the alien trilogy late at night, and to avoid buying the dvd of “twenty-eight days later” that i really want. doesn’t seem like the right time.
yet i knew, dammit, that i was more alive than i’d ever been