A g*****a

PUZZLE

ANDREE:

It seemed like a Deja vu. I was in my old room, the room that I stayed in for the entirety of my childhood as far as I could remember.

I was just at the center of the room; I felt the surroundings spinning. I was able to grab the study desk and tried to maintain my equilibrium as much as possible or else I would have collapsed. I closed my eyes thinking that I would be able to stop seeing the wall spinning, but instead, I started seeing images and all sorts of scenes or video clips. They were all around me, regardless of how many times I blinked, I could still see them.

One scene that caught my attention was the one where I saw someone writing “Noir” on something. Again, that name was personal for me, plus the hand that was writing down the name was not mine. I had my left hand still grabbing the desk tight and the other hand tried reaching out for a certain scene or whatever it was that I saw, due to curiosity. It was like I was reaching out for the touch-screen-TV.

As soon as I touched the certain scene that caught my interest, I saw myself sitting in front of my study desk and there was the notebook that I had seen when I was in the resort garden, but this time it somehow looked like a hard bound book that was lying in front of me. I tried to look around me while still sitting on the chair in front of my desk. Images and scenes were not any more visible. I saw my room as what it was back during high school, no changes at all. I happened to look in the direction of the mirror inside the room, what I saw left me confounded.

I saw my reflection; it was the high school male version of me that I saw in the mirror. I slapped its face; I pinched its arm and leg, and I felt all that, one thing was certain, that it was indeed me, but the "other me", still me.

I tried to wake up thinking that it was another one of my dreams. I paused for a moment. At that time, I knew I was in a dream, a dream that was triggered by what happened in the garden. The last thing I remember in the real world was that I had my clothes for laundry service and I took a solo hotel room to have a rest with no one to disturb me.

I was optimistic that I could pull myself out of that dream anytime, but it seemed like waking up did not happen.

I suddenly remembered the lady in the dress in the garden. To my anger, I called her names. At the back of my mind, I had a suspicion that she was responsible for what was happening to me, but on the other hand, I refused to believe it.

“I knew it, she would cause trouble.” I uttered, sighing deeply.

I had a lot of things on my mind that time, was I drugged? Was this caused by a party pill, like what they call it?

I then had a recollection of the kiss. The kiss might be the reason I was at this confusing moment, it might have caused me to have these hallucinations, of the things that I knew and things that are unknown to me.

“Note to myself, never kiss a stranger at a party!” I said in a loud voice.

Annoyed, I clinched both my hands, then I felt a pen in my right hand. I stared at it for a while and thought of something. I turned my gaze at the table and saw that the notebook was still there. I picked it up, and opened it, then checked the pages. I noticed it still had some blank pages on it. I closed the notebook and I tried to stand up, but something strange happened.

“Darn it! Here we go again! Enough please, I'm getting dizzy”, I said in a loud voice. I thought things spinning arround will happen anytime soon.

Images and scenes were back again. Fortunately, this time they were not circling around me, but they were now only getting closer and closer towards me. Then suddenly - I was like in the movie the jumper, I kept on popping in from one place to another.

It started in my childhood room, then at school- high school; it was in the classroom, sitting at my classroom desk, then at the library. Next was the canteen, I also found myself in the park, I was even walking together with my high school friends like we used to.

Suddenly I saw myself, I was about to get a bite of my favorite ice cream, "mamang sorbetero", then at a blink of an eye, I found myself again sitting in front of my study desk at home, so there goes my ice cream, gone.

I have had enough, gladly, that was the last place that I would pop-in. While sitting in front of my study desk and still feeling sad about the ice cream, I had a vision. I saw myself writing in a notebook. There was a lot of writing. There were scripts for our stage plays at school for graded stage performance that I wrote, but those were not written in notebooks but on bond papers.

Everything seemed to be real, I got lost in it, I almost forgot my hunch that it was just a dream.

It just confirmed that I was just dreaming when I saw the ring around my finger again. I started to have hope, because I knew that I did not have the said ring with me anymore.

I have the ability that when dreaming, this kind of vivid dream, I can control some scenes, I can move, walk, run, swim, roll over, just as I can do those things when awake with no slow-motion effect or any constraints, I can even fly without any difficulty.

Given what I could do, I thought maybe I could find anything on my desk that might give me some other details. Again, I was in a puzzle game.

I looked for the notebook that I had seen earlier that held the answer to all the questions I had in mind. It was gone, but there were other notebooks on the pile of notebooks on the top of the desk. I tend to scan each notebook one by one. All that was written was all about editorials and articles. I was already on the 4rth notebook when I realized that all those 3 notebooks I had scanned all had the name "EN" written on them.

An idea came up which was to look for anything written under the pen name “Noir” I checked the 5th and the 6th notebooks and, to my dismay, all of them were written under the pen name “EN”. I was about to give up, but I saw that there were still 2 notebooks left, so I grabbed the chance to read them. I was still being hopeful and all, so I took my chances. I picked up the 2nd to the last notebook and scanned the pages. I saw one paragraph written by Noir, and it says,

“Maybe I’ll just dream of you tonight and if in my dream you’ll come and touch me once again, I’ll keep on dreaming until my heartache ends.” - Noir

“This line is familiar. It is from a song written by Vehnee Saturno and sung by Ella May Saison.” I blurted out and smiled, feeling nostalgic.

I grabbed the chance to scan as much as I could. I happened to come across a page, my eyes widened with gladness because of what I saw.