Andrea Lepri - The Last Christmas On Earth

"Don't move," he growled in her ear, then he raised his arm to hit her shoulder with the butt of his pistol just to show immediately who was in charge. At that point, the intruder, frightened and put in inferior conditions, would have told what was she doing in there without resisting and without inventing stories. As soon as he began to lower his arm, however, he stopped because a light bulb had suddenly lit up in his head: when he had approached the intruder's ear he had the feeling of knowing her. The vague hint of a familiar scent, though almost completely covered by the smell of her sweat, had awakened a sensation in him. Also, thinking back, he realized that when he had belted her from behind he had touched something soft, something very similar to a breast.

"James, stop for the love of God!" Shouted Helen, terrified.

"Helen? What are you doing here?" He said puzzled lowering his arm.

"Do you want to leave me now? You are hurting me!"

James loosened his grip and moved to her side, she stood up rubbing her aching wrists and looked at him badly.

"How could I know it was you?" He justified himself. "Luckily I recognized you at the last moment, otherwise I don't know what I would have done ... lately, too many strange things happened."

"Don't tell me!"

"Why, what happened to you?"

"It would be faster to tell you what hasn't happened yet."

"In the meantime, start by explaining why you came to rummage in my garage at this time of night," he asked her again.

"Didn't Harry tell you anything about his little escape yet?"

"Don't call it that, I still don't know what happened, but now I'm more than certain it wasn't an escape. And why do you ask me that anyway? What is so important about my son to push you here in the middle of the night?"

"Nothing ... maybe I'm just becoming paranoid and now it's very late ... it's better if we talk about it tomorrow morning at the office, right now I should be guarding the police station and you sleeping with your wife," she replied pretending to leave.

"Wait a moment! Eve has earplugs in her ears and will sleep for at least another four hours, and as for paranoia, it's the same thing I've been repeating myself since this morning."

"I have to go back to the Station," Helen insisted, shaking her head without much conviction, she was still undecided whether to tell him about the two corpses and the probable connection with Harry's bike. But on the other hand, she knew that if she didn't do it at that moment she would still have to say it in a few hours, in the office.

"Don't worry, what could happen at the Police Station? Nothing ever happens there."

"You say? And then you'll hear what happened today," she replied, then she told him everything and when she finished she noticed that James was looking at her as he was looking at a Martian. "Are you saying that there were two corpses in a car in the woods up here, just behind my house, and that with all the people who walked around in the bush looking for Harry nobody saw them? And besides, if I understand correctly, do you think there is a possibility that those corpses have something to do with the temporary disappearance of my child?"

Helen nodded confidently.

"I think you were right a while ago when you said you were becoming paranoid," James commented, noticing the signs of fatigue on her face.

"Then come and see," she offered, opened the shed and pointed to the bicycle.

"It's unbelievable ... I have to go and tell Eve everything, maybe this time she will admit I am right," said James, seeing the luminescence on the handlebar.

"No, don't do it!" Said Helen with an impetus that James judged to be excessive.

"What's the matter with you? Why shouldn't I tell my wife what's going on?"

"I don't know, but I think that for the moment it is better if we say nothing to anyone ... call it women's intuition" she justified herself to respond to his perplexities. James resumed examining the luminescent powder, hesitantly reached out a hand to touch it and she abruptly pulled his arm away. He frowned because now Helen was behaving in a really bizarre way, she sighed at his glare and took the bandage off her finger to show him the necrosis.

"The other night I tried to remove that powder with this finger," she explained.

"Damn, you have to show it to someone right away."

"The finger can wait, now I have more important things to think about," Helen replied with a shrug.

"I'm serious," James insisted, continuing to study her doubtfully, she got the impression that he was really worried about her mental balance.

"All right, I assure you I will do it as soon as possible," she promised to calm him. "In the meantime, think about making the bicycle disappear. Harry shouldn't approach it for now."

"You're right, I'll go right away and hide it in the woods and if he'll look for it I'll tell him someone stole it."

"Poor Harry ... first that terrible experience, then his bike ..." said Helen.

"... and finally Toby," he added.

"Why, what happened to the dog this time?" She asked curiously, and then it was James' turn to let her know what happened.

"It all seems so absurd ..." Helen commented at the end of her story.

"Yeah ..." James said wearing his thick gardener's gloves. He pushed the mountain bike out and walked up the path to the woods and she followed him right after.

"That's it, you can be sure no one will find it here," said James satisfied, taking off his gloves. "It's late, it's time to go to sleep," he added.

"Yes, I think you're right," agreed Helen, but neither of them moved.

"How much time we spent here, lying on the grass looking at the sky ..." he murmured, raising his head to contemplate the starry night.

"And how many pranks we did. Do you remember that time we stayed three days hidden in that barn? "

"If I remember it? Of course, I do, my parents did not let me out of the house for two weeks as a punishment!" He said, they laughed happily, and immediately afterward a slightly embarrassed silence fell.

"There was a time I believed we would always be together," Helen confessed.

"I often felt this too, sometimes I even believed that one day I would have married you," said James, looking at his shoes.

"Yes, but you never proposed to me!" She replied, pretending to be offended.

"Of course, when I finally made up my mind, you found The Incredible Hulk ," said James.

"It was just to make you jealous, and anyway you immediately took comfort with that fussy one."

"That grumpy one is my wife now, I won't let you talk about her in this manner!" He joked, and they laughed again.

"James, what's going on? Here it has always been all so peaceful and so ordinary..." she became sad afterward.

"God knows how much I'd like to know ..." he replied. The wind gave him her scent and he suddenly felt a slight sense of yearning. He wondered how their life would have been like if they were really married, but soon after he thought that surely he wouldn't have Harry and that certainty was enough to make him stop thinking immediately.

"Shall we take a look?"

"To what?"

"Don't pretend to fall from the clouds, I know very well that you're thinking about it too," said James, pointing to the top of the hill, but she hesitated.

"I promise we'll just take a look, and I'll also get Harry's fishing rod back. It will take just ten minutes cutting through the forest ... and then we have torches and guns, there is nothing we need to worry about."

"I do not know..."

"Come on, it's evident you're dying of curiosity too," insisted James.

Dr. Hope left the meeting and the President rested his elbows on the desk, propped his chin on the back of his hands and started brooding silently. From time to time he glanced at Ross and Kowalsky, who were visibly devoured by anxiety too, as if in their eyes he could find an answer. In a few minutes, he wondered, at least a million times, if was it really possible that starting from tomorrow there would be such a brutal event that could wipe out the entire humanity from the face of Earth in a flash. He could see it in their eyes too, that was the same question they were thinking about. The President also considered whether he should disclose that news or keep it classified; he was sure that Benjamin would not have done so because he was aware that revealing such news would only trigger a global panic, and this would produce easily predictable negative consequences. He, therefore, decided that he would not make it public, but also that he would not passively wait for events to unfold; he was a man who never gives up, because he had grown up on the streets and the first lesson he had received from his life was that if you want something you have to struggle to get it. Whatever it takes.