1 Between Nightmare and Reality

This nightmare again. Almost every week the same nightmare haunts me. I'm barely 10 years old when I see it. My mother opens the door to a mature, bearded man, a thick but well trimmed beard comes to draw a face marked by many scars. As for his outfit, it is that of a hunter. A wolf skin on his shoulder serves as a poncho as for his beige pants, he reveals a knife attached to his thigh.

This knife will soon do its job. I still do not understand what's going on. I play quietly with my wooden soldier, a kind of mechanical samurai. But soon my mother's questioning disappears and when I turn to her, it is with fear that I see him turn his blade in my mother's womb while he prevents her from shouting at the other one.

So I instinctively rush under the coffee table in the living room. And I remain motionless, strangling my mouth with my two hands so as not to let go of my screams. As for the man, he slowly lays the inanimate body on the floor and closes his eyes. Then he removes the knife which he wipes in a cloth, then he puts it back in his sheath. I can't read anything on his face apart from total calm but also as sadness. He continues his way down the corridor and quietly walks up the stairs to the first floor.

But what does he want? Why has he done this? Without asking myself any more questions, I run to my mother... But she is already dead, I hold her in my arms but nothing helps. She doesn't want to live anymore, her heart doesn't beat anymore, I don't see the pretty smile she used to give me every time I came home from school when I greeted her, or when I managed to cook alone and showed her my cakes or sweets that I used to make... Nothing more.

Father! My father is upstairs, I have to warn him. Just as I yell: Dad!

A shot rang out in the house. The silence is deafening, I barely had time to run up the stairs screaming that a shot stopped me dead in my tracks. But it wasn't me who was being shot. The shot came from further away, from the office where my father worked. I can no longer move, not even the slightest murmur comes out of my mouth; and that's when I see him, facing me. This monster with a gray beard is looking at me, his right hand still clutching a still smoking revolver. No matter what I try to do or think, I don't react anymore and neither does he. He shouldn't expect to find me there. For maybe ten seconds we both stare at each other. Then he raises his arm and I stop looking, I decide to close my eyes or maybe it's my cowardice that prevents me from keeping them open. However, I hear nothing, and what brings me back to life is not a gunshot but his hand resting on my head.

"Sorry kid, but it's for our own good. "These words ring in my head and slowly make me open my eyelids. He's there in front of me, kneeling with his hand on my head, then he gets up and walks away.

How is this possible? He has just killed my mother before my eyes and he spares me. I turn around slowly and he goes down the stairs one by one without hurrying as I

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just stand there and do nothing. It's only when he finishes coming down that I realize that my father may be hurt.

As I run, I pray that nothing has happened to him or that he is just hurt. But for pity's sake, let him live! When I get to the corner of his office, I see his notes on the floor in the hallway. I walk slowly when I see him sitting in his chair, his head backwards and his arms in the void. Blood runs down his left shoulder to his wrist. As I move forward I also notice the Capernaum he has left. Most of the papers and books he had on his desk are on the floor and his cupboard where he stored his collector's watches are gone.

Except for one that is on the floor and which stopped, 4:55 pm on April 23, 1565, these numbers are engraved in me. It was not long before the police arrived. As for me, I waited on the steps of my house while they searched it and took out my mother and then my father on a hearse.

Officer Bullock took care of me, he was a rather strong man in his thirties and despite the atrocious situation I was living through, he managed to alleviate my grief somewhat. He even arranged for me to be adopted into a good family and not into the Nurdy family who used to beat up their only daughter. I was lucky that he took me under his wing. I owe him a lot because in the end, it was he who adopted me.

Indeed, here in G-Shokunin it is very badly seen to adopt because it means that the husband is not able to have children with his wife and this makes him a second-rate man. But this did not discourage him because he had had a first son with his wife who was almost my age. On the other hand, he wasn't interested in what people thought of him and he taught me that at a very early age.

"Only those you love should have a judgement about you that you owe it to yourself to listen to. For the rest, just ignore those whom life has not spoiled with love. »