CRYPTOMNESIA

Wheel Of Fortune, please stop...the room seems to be spinning out of control and progressively I see things like a damaged, rusty piece of film; the walls are decaying. Everyone I see wants to pick my body and open me up like I´m being studied. The black cross burning in my chest again...

Then I heard something smash into hundreds of tiny pieces.

"Adrian, Adrian...are you alright? Please wake up, wake up..."

"WAKE UP, WAKE UP!!! YOU´RE GONNA BE LATE!"

That wasn´t Edith´s voice for sure. Oh, no wait, it was Damien. That was a big turn off. It appears she´s still not willing to talk to me after my misbehavior yesterday. He, on the other hand looked strangely refreshed, paying tribute to me wearing black from head to toe. Then he handed me something very hot...

"Where´s Edith? She didn´t even say goodbye?"

"No, I haven´t seen her all morning," he answered shyly.

"Can I be totally honest with you?" I asked after I dug into a very potent cup of expresso. " Do you think I overdid myself last night?"

"What, now you feel guilty? It must be some kind of emotional hangover..."

"Yeah, I mean, she´s really doesn´t deserve that treatment, I totally dissed her the whole time."

"Well, you can´t avoid being surrounded by superstars. You´ll have to ask yourself if she´s part of the equation."

"I don´t wanna make her leave me! Besides you didn´t see who bumped into me," I said I walked on to the bathroom. I looked very deeply into my tattoo; it had its original color, like the Black Rabbit of Inle. According to my book, Inle was jargon for "moon" and it made sense because the rabbit transitioned from white to black. Was it another horrible hallucination, was it gonna come back haunting me like a werewolf? The good thing was that I found Caroline, the real one.

"Say, Damien?"

"Yup?"

"This may say stupid but, would you like to part of The Thousand?"

"What´s that, a secret society?"

"Yes. It is, but even better than that, I´ll have to think of some symbol for it."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Come on, hurry up , dude!"

"What time is it anyway?" I asked a bit dozed off.

"Past eleven."

"Ah, goddamn eleven, my lucky number..."

(continued).