30 Days

By Ines Galiano

"It was cold and raining on the day he jumped". Thus begins this tale of suspense and anguish which unfolds against a financial backdrop...

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Jan 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9781633394452

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Inés Galiano

Translated by Rachel Christina Hopkinson 

30 Days

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Written By Ines Galiano

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Copyright © 2014 Inés Galiano

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All rights reserved

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http://inesgaliano.com/

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Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.

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www.babelcube.com

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Translated by Rachel Christina Hopkinson

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Cover Design © 2014 Inés Galiano

Silhouette by Freepik.com

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Babelcube Books and Babelcube are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.

DAY 30

It was cold and raining on the day he jumped. Midway through December, approaching Christmas, it was as if it were a story straight out of a Dickensian novel. The one difference being that this was not a story; it was not a work of fiction, and it did not have a happy ending.

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He had often been tormented with this very issue during his time here. But not anymore. What was the point? There was no going back, and if even there was, wouldn’t he have just done exactly the same thing, step by step, proving the theory that some people just never learn from their mistakes? Most likely yes. He had continued to do the same thing time and time again, because from the start he already knew what could, and would definitely happen and still, he had carried on ahead, like an idiot, because it was impossible not to.

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He looked out of the window, towards the trees at the back of the garden. The snow had settled on them gently, as if it were afraid of breaking the branches, and upsetting the equilibrium. Never before had he seen so much snow, and the resulting landscape was like something from a story, simultaneously precious and surreal. The entire garden was beautiful; the hedges, the pond, the pathway... but the wooded area was his favourite part. During his morning walks, he would always gravitate towards the same place: a bench beneath the shade of the last cypress. It was a silent and peaceful place, with the occasional ray of sunlight that, every now and then, would be filtered down through the leaves. All of these things served to accentuate the beauty of the place, but they weren’t what made it unique: it was unique because it was the only point from which you could not see the bars. The bars on the entryway promised a service of protection, but were, in reality, carrying out a very different function. They were the bars marking out the confines of his prison.

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He had never liked to feel trapped, and yet over the course of his life, confinement was all he had ever known. He had progressed straight from within the confines of school to the confines of society with the characteristic ease of one accustomed to peaceful compliance with the norms. But he had always had some kind of refuge within any of these prisons; and at the moment, it was the bench beneath the last cypress. In school, it had been the most hidden away corner on the playground, next to the lemon tree. In a way, it was quite a special place, because it received the sun’s first rays in the morning, and continued to be a suntrap throughout the entire half hour during break time; which similarly made it the most pleasant place during the winter. But above all, it was the most remote, and therefore the least frequented place: far from the noise and boisterous bustle of the other children at play. He had always been a solitary child, afraid that the older children on the playground would take advantage of him.

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He did have moments of lucidity, but this was not one of them. He tossed and turned in bed, worrying. He was fed up. He could not stare at these white walls a minute longer. It was night-time, judging by the insipid light coming in from between the slats of the blind. Where was he? He was feeling confused, he didn’t know what had happened, nor why he was there. He tried to sit up, but he immediately felt something stopping him. There was a tube inserted into his arm. Was he in a hospital? He did not remember having had an accident, or an illness. He did not like it, he felt trapped. He looked at his surroundings, and in the semi-darkness he could make out a figure. Trapped. He continued to toss and turn, unable to calm himself down. He did not like being there. It was too hot; he needed to open a window. He sat up straight, more carefully this time so as not to pull on the drip, and with some effort he got up. Grabbing on to it with one hand and wheeling it along, he made his way around the bed with difficulty, until he approached the figure lying in the armchair. It was a girl, but he didn’t recognise her. Who was she, and what was she doing there? Trapped. He began struggling to breathe; he needed more air. He carried on making his way to the window, and raised the blind. The moon shone down to illuminate a beautiful, snow-covered garden that was completely unfamiliar to him. He stayed there for a few minutes, enchanted by the view, and little by little he calmed down. He noticed that there was a lock on the window, the sort that required a key to open it, so he leaned up against it in order to get a better look, but it gave a sudden crack, making him jump. It seemed strange to him that an apparently new window would crack like that, and so he inspected the hinges, to try to find the origin of the noise. It was at that point that he discovered that the wood around them was broken and splintered, as if someone had purposely tried to break them, almost working them off completely.  The window was barely attached to the wall. One good push and it would fall in its entirety, propelled by its own weight onto the garden snow. He looked down to the ground and calculated the distance. He was probably up around the fifth floor, so it would be a decent fall. Dangerous, he thought, but strangely enough, the discovery had done nothing more than to help him calm down: he no longer felt trapped.

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The girl had spent almost the entire day sitting there. She had arrived very early, and had tried conversing with him, without any success. He hadn’t recognised her. Although she seemed strangely familiar to him, he did not know who she was, which had only served to increase his nervous state, inducing an anxiety attack, and resulting in a fresh dosage of medication and sedatives. It had been a strange day; he had got out of bed, as if in a dream; the sort in which you do not know what you are doing or why, but do not attempt to make sense of it and simply carry on regardless. After the morning’s sedatives had taken effect he had felt somewhat fuzzyheaded, but peaceful. However, this feeling had been progressively changing as the hours passed by, and the anxiety began to grow within him every time he saw her, sleeping in that armchair. He knew that her being there had some sort of implication; something that he ought to remember, but had no possible hope of being able to; something that his mind was blocking out. Mistrustful, and looking at her out of the corner of his eye, he had ended up falling asleep too... until now. He tossed and turned in the bed, unable to sleep at all.

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The girl. He needed to find out who she was. He wanted to remember. Remember what? Something was telling him that this was not a good idea, and for a while he felt afraid: afraid of facing up to reality. He was much happier in ignorance, but he felt caged within these four white walls, about which he knew nothing. Little by little, he started losing consciousness again, entering once more into the world of dreams.

The relief was, however, short-lived. After a few hours, the dreams gave way to the nightmares, and he began to remember. Over and over again, he dreamt about what had happened, and how he had ended up here, a prisoner. For the first time all day, he was seeing things exactly as they were, which left him in a state of terror. He wanted to shout out loud, but he did not dare, for fear of waking her up. He wanted to get out of here. Grabbing hold of the pillow with some force, he noticed something hard inside it that should not have been there. It was then that he woke up, completely conscious, as if somebody had slapped him right across the face.

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He made an attempt to breathe deeply, and calm himself down, but this time it was impossible. He grabbed the pillow again, and with his hands he felt it over. In the darkness, he searched for an opening in the fabric, some kind of zip or button, until he could fit his hand inside and get to the object. It was cold and sharp. Suddenly, he remembered everything.

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Over the course of the seeming eternity of the next few minutes, his mind played out, as if from a film reel, the series of events. He wanted to scream. He got up quickly this time, and pulled the IV tube out of his arm. He heard the blood rushing through his ears, and he lost his balance, but, by supporting himself on the bed, he could manage to make it to the window. He needed to do it, and he needed to do it now. He had been putting it off for too long. He watched as his hands worked away, without being fully conscious of actually moving them. After a sharp, definitive blow, the window hurtled away into the emptiness, followed by the crash as it hit the ground. The snow muffled it somewhat, but the immediate sound of breaking glass woke the girl. But it was to late; he had