It was a hut, dull night in May, the air was heavy as a blanket and the moonless sky hung like a great snake’s head over the small mud hut. The silence woke him. Captivated on a chair and surrounded by the darkness he realized that he wasn’t alone. He heard the creaking of the door. The woman was back and this fact brought the fear back to him. He felt the cold wind from the outside on his neck. She took another chair and sat on it. Her face was exposed to the light from a lantern. She looked him squarely in the eyes and said “Checkmate”. The captivated man gave her the answer “Go to Hell!”
“Come with me. You can’t escape.”
“This is a dream, a nightmare. It isn’t real and because of this I will survive and go back home.”
“If you believe this is a dream you have the chance to escape, try it. And if you can’t wake up from this nightmare. Maybe you’re not asleep.” The man closed his eyes with the hope that he would wake up. He opened them again and stared at the mad woman. The fear became again a reality.
The man begged: “Please let me go home. I didn’t do anything to you.”
“Are you sure?”
“On my soul, I swear that I didn’t”
“Unfortunately you have. You don’t know me. Let me help you. You are the boss of an asylum, right?”
“Yes, how do you know this?” he asked frightened
“In this asylum are the people who are mad or have depression. But you don’t help them. You destroy them. And I don’t have to ask you if this is right, because I know it.” The man suddenly recognized the body of the woman, who was littered with scars, a living tapestry of torture. Horrified he said “You are dead. You can’t have survived. You can’t have escaped!”
“You broke the wrong parts of me. You broke my wings and forgot that I had claws. It took more courage to suffer than to die. And I’ve decided to survive. In the end, all I learned was how to be strong. Alone. My wish to escape was stronger than anything else. My heart is filled with rancor and every part of my body screams for revenge. Your dead will give me my life back.”
She took a dagger and stabbed it into his heart. She saw how life left his eyes and she felt like she had been reborn. When the first fingers of the sun-stroked the earth, river, and trees to light, the woman stood up and began the long walk back into her new life.