The first nights
The first few nights, everything seemed like a stronger sedative.
The pill had a metallic taste, as if a mixture of sugar and rust. After ten minutes, the room slightly began to smudge along the edges. The lamp next to the bed glowed more yellow, the wallpaper was breathing, the shadows on the ceiling were reaching out.
After a few more minutes, I just… I was out.
Not like a normal dream. There were no dreams, there was no “I fall asleep, I wake up.”
There was “I’m here – I’m gone – I’m here again.”
In the morning I woke up with a terribly heavy head, and after a whole night of control in mathematics, which I do not remember a single task.
“You’ll get used to it,” Julian said as he saw I closed my eyes. “Your brain is working more than before.” That’s good.
I had made a deal with the devil. I had no right to complain, was I?
Side effects
After the first month, the real horror began.
I began to wake up with thoughts that were not mine.
I’m lying in bed, and the first thing that crosses my mind is:
“I have to check the lab results of yesterday, otherwise the neural bridge experiment will fail.”
Except I don’t work in a lab. I never am.
I go to the kitchen and take a breath on the way – and suddenly there is a smell of expensive French perfume in my nose. I can recognize the notes: jasmine, orange blood, musk. I’ve never worn one in my life.
Sometimes my hands curl up like they were playing the piano. I knew how the fingers were stacked, how to press a key, how the tree vibrated under the wrists. And I don’t have a single piano lesson.
It was more terrible.
When Julian took me to Sofia for examinations or meetings, strangers sometimes stopped me on the street.
“My God…” a woman with white hair and a refined scarf whispered once. Her eyes filled with tears. “That can’t be…”
“I’m sorry, do we know each other?” I asked.
“No… sorry…” he turned and almost ran away.
Such moments were becoming more and more. Strange glances, trembling lips, smiles that stop in the middle.
They looked at me like they were seeing a ghost.
