Once in my empty rented apartment, I threw the bag on the floor in the hallway, took off my dress and threw it over the bag. I took a bottle of whiskey from the refrigerator, filled a shot glass up to the brim, drank and then swallowed a sleeping pill.

Standing under the shower, in a hurry, rubbing my body with a soapy washcloth, strongly pressing it to the skin, I was imagining that I was washing away all the traces from unknown hands, of those strangers who touched me today. I was imagining that the beloved warm big palms were sliding over my clean bare skin… and some time later, when I was in bed, waiting for the effect of the sleeping pill I had taken, once again a cold feeling of anguish swept over me, striking a person who is falling asleep and waking up many times alone. There has always been somebody to fill up the leisure, but making away with loneliness is completely different.

“Everything will be fine,” whispered the quiet voice of my “invisible friend.”

The effect of the pill taken a few minutes ago was not long in coming, my body relaxed, and my thoughts began to fade. I suddenly fell into a common dream (I rarely had them under the pills), saw my mother holding a cup filled with berries on her lap, she was saying how she missed me, with the sad expression fixed on her face, and stroked the sharp knuckles of my fingers with her free hand. Her eyes were so sad that it seemed that tears would flow from them, and then she dissolved, together with the dream that was going away.

My bedroom was filled with darkness; I always deliberately closed the blinds tightly so that the morning light would not wake me up with bright rays of the rising sun. Being only half-awake, I did not realize at once the sensation of the palm, which was still holding my hand. Reflexively I pulled it over, but in response I felt a strong pressure on my hand. And next to me someone was laying – kind of a man, my whole body could sense his presence.

I was paralyzed with horror, holding down my movements. Again I fell into a dream where I clearly understood that everything happening was just a dream, and in order to wake up, you must open your eyes, but my attempts did not bring the proper result. I heard the stranger, breathing intermittently very close in pitch darkness. He squeezed my hand hard, making it impossible to take it back. Fear was replaced by heartache, overflown with despair. This pain was tearing me from the inside, it was impossible to escape from it and it was impossible to stop it. I understood that it was his pain, of that somebody who was present, existing in another world.

Time after time I tried to wake up, but he did not let me go, trying to show me something in a kind of dream. Obviously, I did not understand anything, I was only scared to death. I screamed in a desperate attempt, and it helped me to wake up. I returned to reality.

The shock of the dream vision that I’ve seen made me restless for a long time. Even when I was sitting at the kitchen table and smoking the second cigarette in a row, my fingers holding it were trembling convulsively.