I'm dead...

From one moment to the next, my heart started beating again.

At first, the pumping was slow and choppy, but after a few repetitions, the beat became steady and vigorous.

Gradually, I was waking up.

Keeping pace with my insistent heart, my lungs inflated and deflated like a pair of balloons.

My psyche and senses were recovering with every breath of air I took.

And, just as it started, my eyes snapped open.

It was like waking up after a long nap, with my mind still processing that I wasn't still under sleep.

As I was barely awake, I could only notice the faint darkness hovering over me and some distant buzzing sounds.

-Buzz, Buzz, Buzz!

As I rubbed my eyes, I slowly peeled my back and the back of my head from the hard, uncomfortable surfaces on which they rested. I sat up.

There wasn't much to note about the place; you could barely make out the various silhouettes of the objects that adorned the room. However...

While my vision was still wandering around the dimly lit place, a rectangular window forced me to stop dead in my tracks.

Actually, it wasn't the window itself that caused drowsiness to abruptly leave my body, but what I could see through it.

"Wait... What time is it?"

After several minutes of escaping Morpheus' realm, I became aware of the nocturnal atmosphere that flooded the outskirts and my own surroundings. An atmosphere characteristic of the early morning, when the sun was about to peek out.

Yes, I had witnessed it every morning for practically all my life. It was unmistakable to me although there were strange variations.

The alarm had failed and I had fallen asleep as a result? That was simply unacceptable.

Frowning, I erratically moved my head in search of my phone.

It should be on my nightstand to my right, but when I turned around, I couldn't find it. Not even the black cabinet was there, let alone the lamp that should be on it.

I quickly turned my head to the left and there I found a nightstand, although it was completely different from how I remembered it. It was light in color instead of dark and of large proportions instead of small.

My phone was not there either.

"Ah, that doesn't matter!"

I threw off the sheet covering me with a kick.

"unacceptable, unacceptable, unacceptable!"

Desperately, I approached the edge of the strange bed of colossal dimensions. I had to get down and find my laptop.

However, when I tried to touch the floor with my feet, it was as if there was nothing underneath.

I repeated the same procedure with the other edges, but the result remained the same.

The particularity of the situation was that when I bent down to analyze if there was indeed nothing there, I could glimpse a surface, but I could not reach out to touch it.

Still, I didn't go deep. If there was solid ground to walk on, then the rest didn't matter, because first of all I needed to know how much time I had left until our flight took off.

I had organized the whole day, from waking up at four in the morning to ten at night, bedtime, minute by minute. I had to impress him, so I had no time to waste.

Taking a small leap, I landed on the cold ground and my surroundings became so unique that it was virtually impossible to ignore.

The ceiling receded as if it were the sky and the floor was now so close that I seemed to be crouching down. The door to one side stretched abnormally and the bed frame behind me reached up to my neck.

"Huh?"

For the first time since I opened my eyes, I willed myself to contemplate my own body.

With my eyes downcast, I noticed how my pajamas had disappeared and in their place was a long gown that stretched down to my heels, leaving only my feet and arms exposed.

Bringing my hands up to my face, I scrutinized carefully feeling the muscles in my face tighten even more.

Thump-Thump

I squeezed, opened, shook and repeated, over and over.

Thump-Thump

My hands were like those of any other human being, with five fingers and a palm, but despite that, the more I looked at them, the more out of place they seemed to me.

A rather common saying went, "know something like the palm of my hand."

Well, this was the first time I had encountered these stubby little red palms.

Thump-Thump!

Thump-Thump!

Thump-Thump!

My heart went out of control, as if it wanted to burst out of my chest, it beat furiously.

Unconsciously, I clenched the area where the groans were coming from when, suddenly, my legs lost strength. I fell backwards.

I slowly watched as my eyes shifted from being focused on the wall to looking up at the ceiling.

My vision turned gray and then brightened as if I had lost consciousness, so memories came back to me.

It was a night like any other, having slept exactly eight hours. Although this time, I woke up two hours earlier than usual, at four in the morning to be exact.

A typical early morning in London, with the clouds covering the sky and the humidity giving the illusion that it would rain.

Despite the normality and typicality of the new day, today would trigger a long-awaited event: a business trip.

Although business trips were nothing extraordinary for my father or me, as he used to take me with him in my childhood, I was never part of the important talks on these trips.

As a child, I was always left in the care of someone else and, as a teenager, for some reason that I cannot now pinpoint, I was not even considered for the trip.

However, after hitting rock bottom and deservedly receiving my punishment, I was now a sort of secretary or clerk who would accompany for the first time on a business trip and be part of the important talk. That was what my father had told me.

A degrading position that corresponded to my blasphemy, but which, at least, had allowed me to sit at the "grown-ups' table".

In short, there was no place for stumbling. So, as I used to do whenever I was about to be part of something of great caliber, I discarded breakfast and devoted myself solely to preparing for what I would face.

I reviewed the reports and documents. I confirmed the take-off time, the room reservations and our places in a prestigious restaurant for after the meeting. Thus, two hours passed slowly.

At six o'clock in the morning, my normal schedule began, although breakfast would remain an impossibility. After all, on days like these, any kind of food would commonly jeopardize what was left of my reputation....

So, in "my" apathetic Mercedes Benz, I set off for my now gym. Establishment to which I had been attending during this last year, since after having broken the basic rules imposed by my father I was justly expelled from the mansion in London.

It was my punishment.

Then, I turned to the theater that my mother had founded and named after her, although I could not remember her name clearly.

I rehearsed on the instruments I had practically grown up with: the harp and the piano. They were solitary practices to keep my fingers agile and to avoid getting rusty.

Finally, at eight o'clock in the morning, I arrived at "my" office, one of the many cubicles where the "mules" performed their tasks. My father baptized them that way.

It was my punishment.

I went about my daily chores without any problems, although if someone were to look under my desk they would notice how I tapped the floor with my shoes.

I was really looking forward to this trip. It was my chance to take a big leap on my road to redemption. So the hours until takeoff, at noon, passed in the blink of an eye.

Even though the sky was still covered with gray clouds, the most that was expected was a couple of drops (the mighty would come tomorrow), so my excitement didn't wither.

I had timed it so that there would be no mishap, and there wouldn't be, it had to be.

"You've been doing well," my father said, as our plane sailed over the clouds.

"Really...? cough, I mean, I'll keep up the good work then!"

My father saw the world in black and white, without nuance. Something was being done right or something was being done wrong. There was no room for doubt or hesitation.

"Hmm, here."

Reaching out an arm to take the bottle of his favorite Italian wine from the table separating us, he poured me a glass.

"A satisfying result calls for a satisfying reward, don't you think?" he said to me, and leaned back in his white seat again.

The talk was not prolonged, but the intense beating of my heart told me that everything was going according to plan.

I smiled foolishly without thinking that soon not only would the sky below us be gray, but my vision would take on that color as well.

Now that I recapped the events that hit my confused head, my death was not as happy or satisfying as I thought it would be.

I did not die an old man who had run the family empire as it deserved. I didn't die having raised a family to carry on my legacy. I did not die surpassing my father's legacy or even that of my ancestors.

In fact, i had not really accomplished anything notable other than winning a few swimming competitions.

Despite now remembering, my mind was still in chaos. It was like a skyscraper in which many of the doors that should lead to a room were simply not there.

From my childhood I remember many rules and prohibitions, numerous trips abroad, visits to my mother's theater and, as I mentioned before, competitions. There were moments of happiness, yes. My father's figure appeared clearly in those memories cheering for me.

In my teenage years, the situation changed drastically. My father vanished from that stage like dust blown away by the wind. However, the competitions in the water remained firm and unshakable.

As a kid, I loved swimming; I enjoyed diving in and feeling the shock of the water. But during those years, that feeling of exhilaration disappeared.

Had the fun gone out of it?

For some reason, my performance worsened and the final blow was being left out of the Olympics. It was a disappointment for my country and, above all, for my father, who later suffered a heart attack.

I was a disappointment, a walking failure in my father's eyes.

Today, not only have I lost my life, but I have also failed to achieve my greatest goal: to make my dear father proud.

My tears escaped.

....