I couldn"t see the old woman talking to me, but from her voice, I could understand that she was having some difficulty talking. She wanted to say something a few times, then stopped."Is there something wrong?" I asked. Maybe I shouldn"t have asked this, because without any specifics, the answer was obvious in this h.e.l.lish environment.
"After all of it, I..." she started her sentence, then paused for another long period. "I hate to admit, I have failed."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"That"s why I wanted to talk in private." she said. "After everything she lived, my dear daughter shouldn"t have to know about this."
"I can"t understand you."
"The truth is..." It was apparent that she was paying no attention to my words. "I wanted to do something good for all of us. All of you. And I thought... I thought WE did."
I chose to keep silent and just listen to her.
"Our souls have been united for the common goal of protecting new generations. Until now... Until we finally had the chance to project our power, that was what I believed in. I was deceived!"
"Hundreds of souls..."
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"I"m afraid I"m losing control." Her voice was getting worse. She was genuinely frightened. "Now that we have the power, they are l.u.s.ting for revenge instead of compa.s.sion."
I was now scared as well. Not only for my life, but for others" lives as well... Because, to a degree, I was guilty of allowing such power to surface. If this was a mistake -obviously it was- I had to take some responsability.
"What is going to happen?" I asked.
"I don"t have much time. Those of us who are loyal to our path of compa.s.sion are outnumbered. I shall now try to suppress the burning fire of revenge and return to the darkness we emerged from." she said. "I need to contain our power before that burning fire of revenge starts controlling me."
"What will happen to us?" I asked.
"Making good use of my last minutes here, I will erase people"s memories." she said.
"It won"t be any use when the school is such a mess." I said.
"I won"t erase some of yours." she said. "You deserve it. Rest of the cleaning, however, is up to you. After I"m gone, time will continue as normal, and you will no longer have an infinite night."
"We had an infinite night!?"
"And remember, in the morning, no one will ever remember anything about today." she said. "Farewell."
"Hey, wait!" I yelled, but she was already gone.
I looked around myself. The cafeteria was still empty, as expected. It looked like I was the only person in the building. Now, after all those events... I had to clean everything up and continue like nothing ever happened this night. It was going to be some really hard work, but at least the intense thunderstorm could be blamed for some of the mess.
That was the longest night of my life. Not only metaphorically, but also literally.
As soon as I was finished, I went to the main enterance, which was now open. I ran away from the building, thinking about seeing a psychologist soon enough (and, of course, buying a new cell phone). But since I was the only one who knew anything about that night, I had no real excuse to not go to the school tomorrow, so I had to keep my thoughts to myself.
- - -
The next morning, having slept only for a couple of hours, I had managed to appear at the usual time I used to come to school everyday. I tried to relax myself and entered the teachers" room, listening to people around me. I exchanged a few greetings, but I was concentrated on other teachers" conversations. I had to make sure I knew what they knew about yesterday.
Teacher 1: "Were there any club activities yesterday?"
Teacher 2: "Why did you ask?"
Teacher 1: "Didn"t you see the hallways? What a mess! Those kids don"t know how to clean up after themselves..."
Teacher 2: "Geez, go easy on them, they are still children."
Teacher 1: "They are not babies, though, and they have to learn manners!"
I couldn"t hold myself and joined the dialogue.
"Maybe it was the thunderstorm." I said. "Maybe we were not careful and someone could have left the windows open at night."
Both teachers turned to me with odd expressions.
"What?" I asked with a questioning tone. What was so weird with me, or whatever I have just said?
"What storm?" One of the teachers asked me. d.a.m.n it! I had stepped on a landmine. Despite carefully choosing my words, I had made a mistake by genuinely thinking the storm was real. I didn"t have much time to think of a reply now, and there was no real way to revert this mistake anyway.
"It... it was a metaphor!" I said and tried to fake a laugh. Not only this didn"t work, but it made the situation even more awkward. Now, all the people in the teachers" room were looking at me. I was feeling like a little mischievous kid. With everyone"s eyes on me, I retreated to my locker and buried my face in my papers until the attention was diverted away from me. With such embarra.s.sment, I could just stand there and cry for the rest of the day.
The bell rang. Someone touched my shoulder.
"Come on, Kenan; your cla.s.s is on the opposite corner of the building. Get going already." a math teacher said.
That was interesting. I was almost sure my cla.s.sroom wasn"t "on the opposite corner of the building" at the first lesson of the day. I went to take a look at my program.
Fascinating... He was right. Perhaps my memory was getting blunt.
"Wait." I said. Inspecting the whole program, I noticed a lot of inconsistencies between my memory and the printed-out chemistry lessons program. They were entirely different.
"When did the program change?" I asked. "Why did no one tell me!?"
"The program is the same." The math teacher I had seen just now replied to me. "What"s wrong with you today, did you not get enough sleep, Kenan?"
I couldn"t believe it. Upon further inspection, I noticed that Yasin"s name was missing in the list. That was right; his "non-existance" had to be compensated somehow.