I hear a distant clatter followed by the chirping of birds. It's something that distracts me, it brings back memories of when I stayed to sleep in the country house and stayed up late.
Then the morning sounds would wake me up the next day. The sounds get louder and louder. I finally open my eyes and blink a few times to try to discern if what I saw in the first place was true or not. Fortunately or unfortunately it is.
As I open my eyes, the only thing I can make out is a desk and a wooden chair. They have bloody finger and hand marks. I feel confused, my head hurts, I have a slight dizziness and as if this were not enough; I'm still a little sleepy.
It takes time for me to focus on the ground right in front of my eyes to realize that I am in the same position I "lay down" in yesterday, exactly the same. I support both hands on the ground to get up, as I force my legs I notice a discomfort in the area where I was injured yesterday. I sit on the ground to acknowledge the state of my injuries and try to make the best decision based on what I saw.
The pants were torn in the middle of the thigh, there were marks of dried blood and a scab ran through the hole in the fabric. But there was no sign of the horrible deep wound I sustained yesterday.
I feel the scabs and notice only discomfort, no pain, much less the excruciating pain of last night; that prevented me from even sitting in the desk chair.
With the little light that comes from the corridor and with which it enters through the, even uncovered, window, I look at my hands. They have dried blood trapped between the wrinkles on the palm and nails.
One thing that strikes me is that I don't have the scar from when I fell off my bike when I was little. Why? And why did my wounds heal overnight? As far as I know; It should take at least two to three days for the person with the highest healing factor to close a shallow cut and about a week for a deep cut like the ones I "obtained" yesterday; but not one night, or rather a few hours.
Now I have more unanswered questions to add to the pile. I stand up and try to throw my backpack over my shoulder.
The sweatshirt bothers me to take the backpack. As soon as I reach down to grasp the backpack by the handle, the sleeve of the sweatshirt hangs until it completely covers my hand, it is so large that it even rubs the backpack when I extend my arm.
I don't remember it being that big, in fact, except for the pants; It was tight, the rest of my clothes were my size.
Have I shrunk or have the garments been enlarged? It must be the first option, because I have never seen a garment get bigger; shrink yes but not enlarge.
I roll up my sleeve so my hand can come out the other side and I can finish the task of reaching for the backpack.
I pick up the backpack and open it again to check its contents. Everything seems to be in order, I even have the mobile charger and the spare battery.
I don't know where I could charge it again so it will be better to save battery.
My mouth feels dry, I'm thirsty. I look at my cell phone, it's 4:18 in the morning; although if you look out the window one could say that it is nine or ten in the morning.
I lower the screen brightness to a minimum and disable all connectivity options.
Since they are of no use to me, at least the battery of my only still functional device lasts. I would have to find out what time is where I am to synchronize my watch and at least not keep time confusingly.
Anyone who was sleeping gets up and looks at the clock, if it says less than nine o'clock they go back to sleep.
I feel like getting out of this room and exploring the rest of the house but I think I should at least spend some time inspecting this room before trying to walk out the door.
I look around, the wall of the room is lined with wallpaper with a strange but beautiful motif.
On the wall just in front of the desk there is something framed, it looks like some kind of document or accreditation. I get closer to see it better, it is a university degree; that nostalgia, with what it cost me to achieve mine ...
On the opposite wall are three frames with what look like photos.
One of them is a family photo, a woman, a man in the background and two more children in front along with a girl who seems to be between the two children and the man and the woman.
The woman wears a dress with various ornaments, very pompous.
The man wears dress pants with a striped shirt along with a quilted vest, the children wear shorts and shirts that you can see that someone tried to put them inside the pants for the photo, in vain, since they wear half of those little things out of the pants.
I smile at such a familiar and nostalgic scene.
The girl is wearing a police or military uniform, I don't recognize the pattern or the stripes; I don't know what body it belongs to.
One thing that strikes me is that the image in the photo is not very sharp and is in black and white.
I go to the next frame; this time it is about what I suppose would be the man's friends, since I can recognize him in the group photo but this time he is a younger version than the previous one.
The last photo is of the girl at an earlier age and the woman, both are holding a baby in their arms; They must be the children in the family photo but shortly after birth.
The girl this time wears a dress made of a very pale fabric and the woman a more ornate version of the same dress, I suppose they would like to be together.
The wall opposite the window had a pair of chest drawers with several drawers, the one by the window a table similar in height to the desk with a round mirror on top and three shelves full of books. I don't have time to check everything, or rather I don't feel like doing it now.
Finishing the inspection of the current room, I open the door; with the door open I wait a few seconds. I don't know what to expect, it's an empty house.
I stick my head up and down the hall.
To the right the corridor continues to advance to a door adorned with flower engravings in the frame, to the other side there are two other doors, one almost opposite the other, the frame of one of them is painted white and the other is painted white. light blue, at the end of the corridor there is a diagonal drop so I must understand that there are stairs to access the lower floor.
I have to understand that the rooms are those of the girl, the boys and the marriage, but I'm really not sure.
About the structure of the lower part of the house I cannot make any inference or forecast.
It is then that I resign myself to exploring the environment, if I cannot try to elucidate something then I will have to discover it for myself.
Fearful of what might be out there I go out the door of the room, the lighting in the corridor is dim because the only light sources come from the rooms and do not seem to be enough to fully illuminate the room.
Before going downstairs, I decide to explore the room with the flowers engraved on the frame, which I think belongs to the marriage, it is better to explore from the inside out; it is the standard procedure for clearing dungeons.
I don't know if it will work in real life, we'll see. If the method does not work, another will have to be applied or tried.
The flower-engraved frame door is a darker wood than the one in the room I just left. Its handle is also different, with a floral motif; as is the frame on which it is mounted.
The door is already ajar, so there was poor lighting in the hallway, I pushed the door until it was wide open.
Right in front of the threshold is a huge double bed, indeed this was the couple's room.
The bed was adorned with a fabric canopy and the wooden frame appears to be made of the same wood as the door.
On one side there was a very large chest of drawers with five huge drawers and on the opposite side there was a table with a huge jewelry box and a mirror hanging on the wall, right next to it there is a huge window with access to the balcony whose entrance I rejected last night to make my entrance.
I think I've seen enough, and I'm also more curious to see the other two rooms and the bottom part than this room. I turn around and leave the room, I don't close the door, I want the corridor better lit, since I don't know where the light switches are. I enter the room with a light blue painted frame.
It is a clearly youthful room, there is a strange flag hanging on the wall; whose origin I can't get right. In the room there is a wardrobe, a light wood chest and a double bunk.
This must be the two children's room. The floor is made of wood as in the rest of the house, however here it is different; It's worn.
Finally I proceed to access the room that, by default, must belong to the girl.
The girl's room contains a single bed right in the center of the room, with a bedside table and the window right next to it, under the window there are drawers of considerable size.
On the opposite side from the bed there is a desk table and just above it a shelf hanging from the wall with several books.
To the right of the table there is a wooden wardrobe with a tone between that of the children's chest and the door and double bed, while to the left there is a chest of drawers the size of the drawers under the window but with enough height as reaching chest height for most adults, on it were several square-framed photographs.
The floor in this room was as pristine as in the couple's room.
After checking all the rooms, I only had to inspect the lower part. I start to go down the stairs, after a few steps the staircase turns to the right and continues down, until I reach the main hall of the house, now I can see the other side of the huge entrance door.
I remember there was another access door, it must be in the kitchen or the pantry; if this house has one.
On the left hand side in the hall there is a wide arcade that leads to a spacious living room with sofas, armchairs and a brick fireplace that is as red as the exterior façade walls.
The floor is partially covered with a carpet.
There is also a tea table on it right in the center of the room.
Following the wall of the door there is a very wide window through which the light came in from outside, as I remember this window, as well as all the ones on this floor, are protected by a grill of what looked like wrought iron.
On the other exterior wall there is also another window to get sunlight.
In the only complete interior wall there is a wooden door, it is closed.
I proceed to open it, the knob is hard and cold.
After a brief struggle I manage to turn it, I begin to push the door when I discover that it opens outwards. What a fool I must be in this situation, thank goodness I'm alone.
I pull the door and with a creak it opens halfway through, it does not seem that it can be opened further because it is stuck and has granted the precious wooden floor so I am sorry to try to open it more at the cost of destroying the brilliant parquet floor.
It was a kind of warehouse, there were shelves of all kinds with tables and chests, and if it weren't because there was hardly anything left, I'd say that this was the big warehouse of the house.
I could see a couple of potatoes, scrawny and with a stem so grown that it had climbed into an opening through which a few rays of sunlight were entering.
There were also what looked like petrified carrots and herbs that must have been spices but were little more fossil now.
After seeing the state of this warehouse, I am a little scared trying to find out what might have been left in the still closed chests.
The shelves of the shelves that once must have held the household food were now covered in a thick layer of grayish dust.
I leave the warehouse and return to the comfort of the main living room, then I go to the hall and turn left to follow the corridor, the logical thing would be for the warehouse to have a door to the kitchen instead of the living room, but in this case it was not.
Just below the stairs was a room lined with bookshelves full of books and a couple of solid wood tables, the house library.
At the end of the corridor that led to the hall was the kitchen, with open access; like the living room.
The kitchen was huge compared to the rest of the house, it goes without saying that there was a small room just in front of the back door that must have been used to store some junk.
The kitchen was well equipped, however for some reason I could not find the boiler or gas access since the stove did not seem electric.
There was no dishwasher either, but only a few houses actually have one.
So the room next to the door must have been the laundry room. I guess the clothes would hang out in the sun and wind in the backyard.
The kitchen still had crockery and cutlery, the knives and cutlery had lost their luster but at least they were still there. I only had one door to open in the whole house; the laundry.
Considering the size of the house and the size of the walls of this room in here, it could barely fit a washing machine and a laundry bucket.
I open the door with the same difficulty that I had to open the warehouse.
However, it seems to open inwards.
It does not make sense, the door itself would take a lot of space from the already small room.
As soon as I managed to fully open the door I understood why. It was a wooden staircase leading to what must have been a basement.
It was dark and, still not knowing where the light was on, it would be difficult to see anything down there so I closed the door. Home explored, now that I notice it; I'm hungry.
I take the sandwich out of the backpack and start to eat, I also take out the bottle of water to accompany this unusual breakfast.
What should i do now? Where should I start? Should I look for food, information about my whereabouts, or try to understand what happened?
I must establish priorities, I will look for some information in the library with my mobile I can manage time well, if in two hours I have not been able to find anything useful I will go to the rooms to find some clothes to keep warm and look for food in any of the other buildings although you should also go down to the basement to see if there is anything useful. I started with the reading session, looking for books that were titled as history of "our" land or something like that, anything that could give me some clue of where I am.
After the most boring two hours of my life, reading huge and soporific tomes of ancient history I was able to find out that I am somewhere in the north in Germany, but only because in several chapters of the geography and history books the Holy Germanic Empire is mentioned, because there is no direct mention of the name of the country and it is already weird.
With difficulty I stand up, after sitting for so long my legs are numb and my eyes dry.
I rub my eyes and put each book back in its place, it is not difficult, the library is perfectly categorized; in fact, when I realize how complicated the library is organized, there is no room for doubt; this is germany.
Nobody would be as complicated in the organization as a German.
I look at the screen of my mobile, with the airplane mode activated it hardly uses the battery and it is still at eighty-nine percent.
I go to the kitchen, grab a knife, and turn on the flashlight on the back of my device.
Then I'm going down the dark basement stairs.
I go down the stairs little by little while I illuminate the path with the beam of white light. With every step I take the stairs creak under my feet.
I try to go little by little and in stealth but thanks to the thunderous noise made by the steps that is impossible, that's when I start to go down at a normal pace.
When I get down I see a black mass that extends from the opposite walls to almost my feet, on the opposite wall there is a hopper that comes from a small opening now bricked up to the black mass, this must be a coal bunker, but here there is coal so there must be a boiler too.
After inspecting the place well with the light of my mobile I see that there is a small boiler with an ingenious system of hoppers to feed on coal without human action, I did not see it because it is behind some shelves just under the stairs by which downstairs there is a shelf with small boxes and a long box on one of the shelves, I open it with curiosity.
It is empty, but from the shape of the brackets this box clearly contained a weapon, some kind of hunting shotgun or rifle.
In the small boxes there could be ammunition but seeing that the weapon is not probably the ammunition boxes are also empty.
I open all the boxes, in effect there is nothing of use, except in one that is what is left of a weapon cleaning kit.
Disappointed, I go back upstairs, sit down on one of the sofas and stare into space before remembering my priority list.
I get up again but then I go back to the warehouse, if I have also explored the basement; why not also check the contents of the chests?
If I find something that I don't like, I will close it and the problem would be fixed.
There are three rectangular chests, I open the first one and find what must be jerky now but there will be at most for an aperitif, in the next there is something that must have been organic a long time ago; a terrible smell makes me close the chest immediately.
I open the last one just to try, it is almost empty but there are still three cans of something; I don't know what; I'll find out tonight Now you have to go outside and "loot", what should you take?
Anything that looks edible.
I go up to the couple's room and look for warm clothes, honestly, they didn't leave much but I find a long coat, only that when I put the coat on, it reaches my ankles instead of my knees.
Now seriously, I have to find out if I've shrunk. It would be another of the things to point in the list of strange things that have happened to me lately.
Then, satisfied with the new coat, I go down the stairs to the living room, I empty my backpack except for the water bottle and go to the front door.
Now that I think about it, it's probably locked; I don't have a key. Shit.
I take off my coat and put it on the stair railing and begin searching the drawers and shelves near the door for a duplicate in the house.
After what was almost three hours, according to the cell phone, I managed to find a large, heavy key on the basement shelves.
Before putting my coat back on, I insert the key into the lock, it fits. Good. Now I turn it… Shit, it doesn't turn.
How am I supposed to get in and out of the house? Think think; Where can this key be from? Sure, I have to try the other door.
Then I go to the kitchen, right in front of the basement door and insert the key in the lock, turn the key and with a metallic sound the wrought iron latches slide inwards but not enough, I give another turn of the key and the locks are completely hidden behind the door; then I open the door with one hand and try to open and close the door from the other side.
The door is heavy but it opens without problems, with the door still open and the cold entering through the opening to the outside, I performed the experiments.
Success, the door opens and closes well from both sides. I go to the living room and take my backpack, then I pick up my coat and put it on, I leave the house and close the door, then I insert the key and make a single turn.
Then I put the key in my pocket and start exploring the outside.
It's cold, not as cold as last night but it does seem to be very low degrees out here. I can feel the cold on my face, with the coat it is fine but without it I could not have left.
The streets and roads are wild, or rather they are care neglected.
To know when they do not receive any care. On both sides of the streets there are collapsed or half-demolished buildings.
There are hardly any buildings that could be considered "intact".
Walking I come to a circular square with two shops, or so they seem to me, whose buildings seem to be in good condition.
I go into the first one, it has no sign and the main wall is blackened, as if it had been burned by something or somehow.
The building's front door was blown out and burned, so there was no need to find any other way to enter. I entered the building fearful, as is becoming customary, that I would not fall as soon as I crossed the threshold of the door.
A few seconds I was waiting under the frame of the battered door, as nothing happened I proceeded to inspect the interior. It was a shoe store, there were still some on the shelves and on the shelves hanging from the walls.
Now that I know what the selling point of this establishment was, I look for boots, spacious but comfortable ones; with a high cane to be able to walk through the rubble of my new city without fear of hurting my ankles. It took me almost two hours to find a shoe that looked suitable.
I put together up to four pairs to test which one fit me best or which one best met my expectations.
After putting on my new boots I proceeded to the other establishment with a building almost intact. I followed the same procedure to access this store as in the shoe store.
This store was of various supplies, although the shelves were almost empty you could see some glass jars with corned beef or vegetables in brine.
Not that they were to my liking but they were better than starving.
I took them all, the backpack was overflowing; with every step I took the flasks in it clinked as they struck each other because of the oscillation produced by my strides.
I opened the back door of the house and entered the house, then I put down all the "food" that I had managed to obtain and went back out of the house with an empty backpack, there would be time when the sun went down to examine the loot obtained.
Now I am taking a completely opposite direction to the one I took before, I hope to find other things more interesting and probably useful.
In the opposite direction the street extends no more than a couple of destroyed blocks and ends in a field, a green field.
However, there are details that indicate a more than evident warlike conflict of some kind.
There are machine gun nests on both sides of the road and what remains of artillery pieces in fortifications dug into the ground. There is also what appears to be a truck. I recognize the model, which is not good as I don't have much idea about pre-WWII wars.
I don't know why this town is abandoned, to begin with, I don't even know where I am, I just know that it is somewhere in northern Germany and now thanks to this example of a three-ton truck I know that the conflict is framed in the Second World War , or at least the very same time.
I approach the machine gun nests with burning curiosity; I have only seen firearms in military parades or in museums.
There are hundreds of empty shells on the ground, there are also ammo boxes.
I take the first box, it is empty; but it is a good container, it is also resistant.
I take another box, this one does contain some bullets, twelve or thirteen, no more; but it is already more than in the previous one.
I try my luck with all the boxes I find and pour the possible bullets into the first box I found ammo in. Now I would just need something to shoot them with to make them really useful. I sigh.
I will also need to practice, I have never taken a gun and; of course; I haven't shot any before either.
There is no sign of weapons, well, it's normal; if someone left a position, they would only leave that which was useless or that they could not transport.
I reach the nearest destroyed artillery piece.
It's a FLAK 36, in an anti-aircraft gun.
If I was here, it's because they were expecting bombers, which is not good for me, since they might come back one day. Something that strikes me is a kind of piece of armor abandoned in a trench that starts from the position of the FLAK.
It is a leg armor, it has a length of just over a meter and is square in shape; besides, it is made of steel. The shape is familiar to me but I don't know why. It also strikes me that I don't remember armor pieces being used at this time.
And if so, why abandon it? It should still be useful, it is a piece of armor that should be more or less capable of stopping shrapnel and some bullets.
I pick it up to examine it, it is heavy, so much so that when I try to lift it off the ground it just slips from my hands and falls to the ground.
I examine the shape; It has rollers at the back, just where the twin would be housed. At one end there is an armored boot and at the other a hole.
When I look into the hole I see that the depth is up to knee height, which is "represented" by a simple geared hinge.
I think I already know what it is and why they abandoned it.
It is a leg prosthesis, I have no idea how it can work but it must have broken down and due to its enormous weight I assume it was simply abandoned here when they evacuated the area.
I do not know such a technological level in the medicine of that time, but who knows.
Anyway, the sun is starting to fall, it's time to go home ...
How I miss my home ...
Now I have another house "temporarily".
I go home, agreeing, of course through the back door.
I put the ammo boxes I found earlier on the kitchen table. Both the one that contains bullets and those that are empty, some of the jars and cans fit in the boxes; which is great because it allows me to move them more "properly" when I leave this house one day.
I close and lock the door using the huge key and leave it inside the lock.
That's when my guts ring out, I'm hungry and it's no wonder; today I have done a lot of physical activity searching the town and surroundings in search of material.
I take a simple chair from the living room and bring it to the kitchen, take off my long coat and bring the food I left in the living room.
Then with the help of a knife I open one of the cans to reveal its contents. It is something similar to fish, which one? I could not tell.
I take one of the forks from the tarnished cutlery and rub it with a cloth that I took from a drawer and that should be clean.
Then I skewer one of the fillets of the strange canned fish and bring it to my nose, after coming to the conclusion that it is not "bad" I put it in my mouth.
It's surprisingly good, I finish the can and open another, it contains what looks like vegetables of some kind; probably the sauerkraut that Germans love so much.
I put it in my mouth and, in a few minutes, I finish with the contents of the can.
I just feel satiated.
I push the empty cans aside on the huge counter and go to the girl's room, as it contains the only bed of a size that could be considered normal; since invading the couple's bed seems disrespectful to me.
I undress, set the mobile alarm in eight hours, calculating with the time it marks now, I turn off the device and get into bed, covering myself with sheets and a blanket.