#107

"Sun Through the Drapes"

By Henley McKegg

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It was morning. The woman on the bed stretched then opened her eyes, blinking a few times. She was still wearing last night's clothes. "Must have been a good party," she muttered to herself, "because I can't remember any of it."


Leaning forward, she pushed herself off her bed, and stumbled through to her impossibly small kitchen, where she characteristically kept her coffee ready on the bench at all times. As the percolator bubbled, she sat in the olive green armchair in her lounge looking at the TV without bothering to turn it on, trying to wake up.

After a few minutes she stumbled back to the kitchen. Brushing her ash-blonde hair out of her eyes, she poured the hot coffee and blew on it in a futile attempt to make it cool quicker. She looked at her watch, which said 7:15. "Too early" she said with a sigh, and looked at the sun peeking through the drapes in her bedroom. She poured a little coffee into the sink and topped it up with tap water. As she took a tentative sip, she glanced at the window next to her fridge, with its blinds drawn tightly. Frowning, she looked back at the bedroom. Normally, she thought slowly, the sun is in the kitchen in the morning. Looking back across the lounge at her bedroom, she could see that the slit of sunlight had crawled further into the apartment. She looked at her watch again, to see if it had stopped.
7:17


Had she slept the whole day? No, it was too late at this time of year for the sun to still be out. She placed her coffee on the brown-tiled bench-top and walked slowly to the blinds. Reaching up cautiously, she pulled them to with a start. In the place of her neighbours' wall was a rather pleasant garden, about two stories below, with two brightly dressed elderly people sitting in the sunlight shining over the building.

She turned around and walked quickly to her bedroom on the opposite side of the apartment, not noticing that she knocked her coffee off the bench on the way. Her bedroom window had a lookout over a small paved path, then a short drop to a beach at an extremely low tide. She turned with a small cry of disbelief and ran to the front door, flinging it open. A narrow cobblestone road ran down on a slope, presumably to the beach. A low wall was on the other side of the road, with climbing roses entwined across its surface. A wrought iron park bench squatted below the wall, and upon it sat a middle-aged man wearing a dark jacket with white piping on the collar and lapel. He looked up quickly as she opened the door. He didn't look surprised, more like he had been waiting. Her mouth an 'o' of horror, she slammed the door shut and sank to a crouching position, leaning against it. Silently at first, she started to sob, and when a knock came at the door she shrieked.
"Open the door, I need to ask you some questions!"
She shook her head, crying, not aware that the man could not see her.
"Come on!"
"Who are you?" she cried.
"I am... Number 6. Who are you?"
She wiped away some tears, "Number 6?"
"Yes, that is my name now. What is yours?"
"Where is this place?"
"The Village. Beyond that much I hoped you could help, whoever you are."
"Why am I here?"
"I was going to ask you the same question" came the reply.
She looked straight ahead, barely taking in the apartment that was hers, yet not hers. "Are you keeping me here?"
"No, not I. I am a prisoner here like yourself."
She did not know whether or not she could trust this man, but she got up and opened the door anyway. The man was quite tall, and stood a few steps away from the door. She leaned her head against the frame and said, "ask me your questions, but nothing about who I am, or where I come from."
"Why not?"
She looked at him, straight in his eyes. "I really don't know if I can trust you. You could be the person who brought me here for all I know."
"You could be dreaming for all you know, yet you trust yourself implicitly."
She looked down, and saw the alien 'welcome' mat between her feet. "How do you know that for a fact?" she asked, shaking her head slowly.
The man stood there watching her think. "I only need to know one thing: Are you here against your will?"
She looked him in the eyes again. "What sort of a question is that?"
"A very sensible one under the circumstances."
"What circumstances?"
"Mine."
She took a step back. "Well of course I'm here against my will!"
The man smiled slightly. "That's all I wanted to know," he said "Be seeing you." He gave her a strange salute, turned and walked off towards the beach.
She ran a few steps after him and then stopped. "How does that help me?"
The man stopped and looked up at the sun. "Immeasurably." he said, without turning, and continued walking.
She looked back inside the door at "her" apartment and shivered. She wheeled around and saw a prominent looking building with a green dome for a roof on the hill above her. Maybe somebody there knew what she was doing here. She gave a last look at the retreating man and started up the hill....

 

(c)Henley McKegg 1997

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