He woke up to a multitude of holes staring back at him, they were holes in a grey cement ceiling as he soon realized and he was lying down in a bed that he did not recognise as his own, dressed only in his undergarments. Neither did the room he was in bring about any feelings of familiarity, it looked sterile and impersonal, lacking any kind of character, not a place he could imagine anyone happily calling their home. A loud beeping sound coming from a big machine to his right seemed the predominant source of noise and also the centre of public attention. All eyes were on its black screen with the red zig zag that was moving across like a scared up rabbit that knew it needed to move quick but could not manage anything but a frantic choas of jumps. All except for his sister Marianne’s, they were fixed on him, her brows arched in a worrying but infinitely loving expression. Then the beeping was terminated by one loud beep and all hell broke loose. Quite literally. Marianne’s hand suddenly started drifting out of his and not just her hand but her whole body started slowly drifting upwards. “I’m sorry”, she said. She was not the only person in the room whose body lost touch with the ground and was slowly moving away from him. “What is happening? Where are you going? Don’t leave me here!”, he asked, terrified. Now Marianne was smiling when she said “Don’t you know silly, without you here, the Earth stops spinning and we are all getting catapulted into space.” She made a sweeping move with her hands, “woooo” and smiled. “But that’s not true, the Earth is spinning because of how it was formed billions of years ago.” “I don’t know”, Marianne shrugged. “This is your dream, not mine, you make the rules.”
written 09/03/20
photo by Shane Rounce via Unsplash