'Further Instructions'

One more contribution from the land of creativity. This time, an intriguing story of a man named Robert waking up with a breathless pace, the poor man. Check it out. It’s short it’s cool, its creative. Thank you Albano.

Further Instructions

With a breathless pace Robert woke up, his heart almost jumping from his chest. For a moment, he sat on the side of his bed trying to appease his out of control breath. This had happen many times before, waking up in the middle of the night with his chest pounding like he ran for miles, and for no apparent reason. He wondered as to why this happened; A dream perhaps? How cliché, he thought, but that wasn’t it.

Regaining his sense of balance, he slid himself slowly off the bed, trying not to wake Sam - even though she sleeps like a rock. The bedroom only had a faint light that came from a half full Moon. He could barely find his way through the room. As he walked around barefoot looking for his overpriced but incredibly rewarding slippers, he couldn’t help himself from forcing his iris to open and glance at his majestic minimalist wooden bed.

There she laid faced back, covered to her waist by a white sheet. The way her tight white tank pyjamas accentuated her back and shoulders in a dazzling contrast with her long hair and slightly tanned skin, made Robert feel every drop of blood flowing through his heart, in a way that almost made him smile.

The flickering of the kitchen lights as they turned on remembered Robert to cover his eyes. He immediately switched to a softer yellow light that bounced of the walls making it feel a whole lot warmer.

The kitchen itself was a big room Robert had made for his love of cooking. It had only two walls and an enormous glass window that made up as a third wall leading to the backyard.

He prepared himself a warm lemon balm tea with some butter cookies and sat by the kitchen’s centre counter in a black wooden stool.

What happened tonight was not unprecedented, and this was one too many for it to be an isolated event. He instinctively felt like a frog – if you put a frog in boiling water,it will immediately jump out of it, but if you put it in cold water instead and gradually heat it up, he will slowly boil to death…

Still, he couldn’t place it and decided to talk to Sam about it in morning.

Robert then finished his tea. It was time to go back to bed.

He switched off the lights and gave a glance at the kitchen engulfed in the pale moonlight. As he turned to climb the stairs, he thought he saw something in the backyard. His eyes were tired and it was misty that night, it was probably nothing. But as he got closer, the image was slowly taking the ghostly shape of a man.

As he drew near the glass he was standing in front a man wearing a black hood. He could barely see his face, not enough to see who he was. He didn’t think much of it. There was nothing around the house for several miles, probably someone that got lost.

But Robert suddenly felt that something was misplaced, apart from the stranger in his backyard. He stood there calmly in the mist, with the residual confidence of an empowered person. It was when Robert was admiring the precipitation on the edge of the hood that he followed a weightless drop of water fall, but before it hit the ground his eyes had focused on another thing. A tremendous rush of blood clashed in Robert’s heart. The man held beside his leg a gun.

Sensing Robert’s fear, the man put on his face a light smile. Slowly moving the gun up, he pointed it to Robert’s face, so that he could see the barrel. His smile grew bigger as he watched him take a step back in awe. He motioned for him to open the living room door. Taking a few trembling steps, he went for the door and opened it.

‘Hello Robert’, the man said in a soothing voice.

Recognizing the voice, Robert’s fear for the gun dimmed to nothing and a new one surfaced from a much deeper level.

written by Bano