Small green man

   The only thing Serena could do was drive. The desert was an enormous place and she felt good entering it with the old car she had bought in the city. The idea was the cross the whole length of the desert, taking pictures and getting to know the few people that lived there. She had a fascination about that place and, although she had already visited the largest cities in the world, her mind was set know in getting to know the Earth’s most isolated places. She put on some music in the old radio and drove away from the city at first light of the morning. That day, she stopped several times to take pictures of the rock formations and of the animals of the area. It was dangerous, but she didn’t mind.

 The first night of her trip, she slept in the car. She just parked by the road and covered herself with a blanket. From that point of view, she could see the moon, which also fascinated her. It was its brightness and uneven terrain that made her wonder, for a long time, if people would ever be able to walk there permanently. She fell asleep fast just by looking out. Early next morning, a sandstorm woke her up and she had to wait inside her vehicle until it had moved on elsewhere. It was a violent situation but she had loved it because it was so unique. The storm indicated that the future held many secrets and interesting things and one of those happened just a few hours later.

 He was walking by the road, very slowly, visibly on the verge of collapsing due to the horrible heat one had to endure in the desert. When he saw the car, he tried to wave but was so tired he couldn’t and just collapsed by the road. That was the way Serena had to notice him. She stopped the car and ran outside. The man had fallen on his face and had hurt his forehead with a rock. She carried him inside and sat him on the copilot’s seat. She didn’t have much water but used some of it to wake him up. As he came to his senses, Serena notices that the man was not a common sight: he was rather short but with big bulgy eyes and greenish skin. He had normal hands and legs but his skin seemed “fake” somehow.

 When he woke up, he congratulated Serena and asked if she had any water. Whatever she had left, he drank it in haste. He was very thankful but then fell asleep very fast, after dropping Serena’s thermos to the ground. She picked it up, closed the copilot’s door and then got in the car and started driving again. The man was in no condition to keep walking and she couldn’t just leave him there so she decided to carry him to whatever place she found. She didn’t stop for the whole day, mainly because she was scared to be alone with such a strange man. She just wanted their shared journey to end as fast as possible. That night, she almost gave up but finally found a motel past midnight.

 The manager was a young man with his face covered in pimples. He was reading a science magazine when Serena opened the door and asked for two rooms. When he looked at her, the young man started looking for the keys but then realized there was a small strange man behind Serena. She almost screamed when she heard his weird voice, a bit squeaky. He thanked Serena for the ride and the water and told the young man that he wanted a room too. But he told them, as he looked suspiciously at the small man, that there was only one room available with two beds and another one with only one bed so should choose what to do. Serena thought about sleeping in the car again and letting the small man take the single room but her body hurt a lot from all the driving.

 It was the squeaky voice of the man and his stubby hands on the counter, who asked for the double room. He told Serena it would only be for one night and that way they could take care of each other. And then he winked at her, which she didn’t really know what it meant.

 The young gay gave them the keys and indicated the way to go: it was just across the parking lot. So Serena told the little guy to go there first. Meanwhile, she would park the car in front of the room. After she did so, she entered the room to see that the small man had taken off his shoes and socks and was lying there on the bed closest to the door. He had his eyes closed so she could stare at him longer than usual.

 It was not only his statue and the weird hue of his skin. Besides his eyes, his little hands and feet were also kind of puffy, as if they were filled with water or something. Maybe he had been walking too long or maybe he had an allergic reaction to something in the desert and that was why he looked like that. As she sat down on her bed and took of her shoes, she realized how strange it was for anyone on Earth to be walking alone through a desert. Or maybe he had been left there… The desert was a place of many strange events, where people saw lights in the sky and had encounters with life from other planets. Maybe her new friend was a little green man, of the other ones.

 She then asked him what his name was and he answered right away. “Gordon. Gordon Shumway.” Was it wrong that he had answered so fast? Maybe it was his real name but she was sure she had already heard that name before. Or maybe she was just tired and her mind was jumping to conclusions. He asked her name too and she only said “Serena”. They talked for a while about their love for the desert, which they discovered was mutual. They talked about certain species and plants and about the beautiful sunrise. And, slowly, they feel asleep at the same time.

   When she woke up the following morning, the first thing she felt was how hot the room was. The desert had to be burning up. She was glad to be inside a room, on a bed. She wondered if it was early and if she should start her journey of the day right away or maybe just ask for some breakfast and then take some pictures around the place. It could be interesting to talk a bit more to the young receptionist and to any other person working in the motel.

 Then, she recalled the earlier day and finally opened her eyes. Gordon, if that was his real name, wasn’t there. His bed sheets were all over the place so maybe he was still around or maybe he had just left… with her car. She sprung up the bed and ran outside. For a moment there, her heartbeats almost made her deaf. But there was no need for that:  the car was there and looking towards the reception, she saw Gordon waving at her and telling her to come. She raised her hand to indicate she had heard.

 After putting on her shoes, she walked to where Gordon was and realized here was a small dining room, with a few tables, by the reception. The lights must have been turned off the previous night because she hadn’t seen it. The pimples boy was there and it was him who served them as a waiter. They had orange juice and black coffee and lots of bread with butter and jam and also some scrambled eggs. The quality was not the one of a five star hotel but it certainly wasn’t bad at all for a desert motel.

 Serena and Gordon chatted all the way through breakfast, starting the conversation where they had left it the previous night. They talked about all the creatures they had seen and also about their journeys and what they were planning for life. Gordon confessed that he still wanted to roam the desert and showed Serena a bag the boy had gave Gordon as a gift. He only had two big bottles of water inside and an old map. Then, he asked Serena for a one last favor before parting ways.

 That afternoon, they both penetrated even more into the desert. Serena took, on Gordon’s suggestion, an alternate road, which went straight into a national park. The small man told her he had some business to do there, as if it was an office building or something of the sorts. Once they started seeing more hills and rock formations, they stopped the car. She got out and took some pictures as Gordon looked all around, mumbling. He finally choose to walk to a far away mountain, which he said would have a great view over the whole desert and he could do whatever he was he wanted to do.

They bid farewell with a very peculiar hug and a smile and then parted ways. As she went into the car, Serena saw the little man walking very fast towards the mountain he had chosen. Secretly, she admired him for his sense of adventure and because he seemed to know more about life than her.

 After an hour of driving, before she hit the main road, she stopped the car and looked up to the first few stars of the night. And then laughed. It was strange how funny she had thought Gordon was, considering she was the one who had arrived to this planet only a couple of years ago. She was the “new” girl in town. Maybe he looked like a small green man but she had seen some of the real ones and they much less pleasant and adventurous.

Forgotten

   When she looked at her face in the dirty mirror, she did not recognize her own self. She touched her face, clean it with the few drops of water that came out of the sink and just looked at her hideous face. Somehow, time had deformed it, changing from those times in which she had known proper food and a stable way of life. It hadn’t been like that for a very long time and she even doubted that all of the past she remembered had happened. Maybe she had invented all of it from TV, which now she loved to watch.

 The motel where she worked was the perfect place for her because there was no pressure in getting anything done. Her boss was a very fat man that couldn’t even go to the second floor of his own business, so she could spent all of the time she wanted up there and he would only yell at her once she came down, not having changed the sheets properly or without cleaning all the bathrooms of the very old building.

 She had chosen her name to be Carrie. One night, she had seen that very scary movie in her room and had loved it so much she had decided to be named like that. Her boss agreed to call her that as it was better than calling her “girl” all the time. She was thankful he was only a very stubborn man, as maybe her luck would have been pretty different if she had fallen into the hands of someone else. After all, Carrie was not her name as she did not remembered anything from her past accurately, only parts and feelings, like the ones that indicated her she had changed physically.

 Carrie had been working there for more than two years, and she was much more experienced now that she had been in the past, so just imagine how bad she was when she first started scrubbing floors and fixing small problems that people had in their rooms. Not that many people came to this part of the world. The world was normally empty, only some cars that wanted to take a more scenic rout would end up in the motel. The rest took the highway, which was better and much faster. But Mr. Ray, the fat man, never even thought of changing the location of his motel.

 Apparently, it had been a family estate. So when Mr. Ray’s parents died, the motel became instantly his and he had been managing it from the age of twenty. Carrie secretly admired him because the place could be much worse bur Mr. Ray kept it afloat; although how he did it was shrouded in mystery. Not many people came in and he only had two people to attend to the twenty rooms he had available. Carrie was in charge of all the chambermaid duties, Mr. Ray himself was the repairman (even if he did not know what he was doing most of the time) and there was also and old man called Timmy, who was the one protecting everyone and everything within the premises of the motel.

 So most days Carrie would only clean half of the rooms, as the other ones were rarely used, and she mused about what her life had been before. Mr. Ray had convinced her that looking for her past could not en up well for her and at first she thought that he only wanted to keep her there, almost like a slave, but that wasn’t the case. He let her go to the nearest town, where she told the police of her situation. At first, no one believed her. And when one young guy decided to listen to her, he couldn’t anything about a missing woman fitting her description. She asked him to check again and he even let her try but there was nothing in there.

 When she finally gave up, the people of the police were kind enough to give her a new identity, so Mr. Ray was able to actually pay her and keep her healthy in his motel. With Timmy, they worked as a strange family but every time things were going too good in the motel, she was reminded of that past she had no idea about and started crying: what if she had been married? What if her parents were alive and missing her? What if she had been a mother? That was enough to make her cry all night and not making her able to sleep.

 One day, a young couple arrived at the motel. They wore really strange clothes and barely talked. As there was no one else in the building, Carrie tried to be very nice in order to get to know them better. She even made coffee for them and gave them some cookies she kept for herself. The strangers accepted the gifts, but she wasn’t really able to speak to them or looking at what they had in their suitcases. They would only open the door enough to have a short talk and that was it.

 Every day, Carrie attempted to talk to them and to do her job, cleaning the room. But she was never able to do any of that because they wouldn’t come out of the bedroom for anything. She knocked on the door, asking them if they wanted new bed sheets, water, coffee, their bathroom cleaned, candles… But the answer was always no. Only at night she would see the man walking out and driving off to town, then coming back with what appeared to be food.

 Those times the woman was alone, she tied to talk to her but Carrie realized it was her who was the crazier or weirder one. She wouldn’t even open the door to say the few words that came out of her mouth and Carrie knew she didn’t even stand by the door to say these things. It was very annoying after a while and they ended up staying in the motel for almost a month. Even Mr. Ray tried to talk to them once, but they only answered by paying a whole week in advance, so he didn’t insisted on asking them who they were and why they were barricaded in his motel.

 The man, however, was nicer. Carrie had been taken out the trash one night and she saw him arrive from one of his trips to town. He carried two bags with him and when she saw some liquid soap fell out of one of the bags, she just helped him and had a short conversation. He smiled a lot and it did not seem fake, it seemed like he really wanted to be nice but just couldn’t be fully nice in that moment. Carrie talked to him many times at night and she would only get some words but enough to know his voice and that the couple living there were loaded.

 Since they had arrived, they had spent a lot of money in food and probably other supplies. Besides, they would pay every week in anticipation and the car seemed to always have a full tank of gas. After the first two weeks, Carrie concluded that those two were running away from or with something, She even imagined they had killed people and the police should really know what was happening. But she was scared and decided to consult Mr. Ray before doing anything. He agreed and she called the young officer that had helped her search for her past.

 They decided it was best if they did it in the morning, as the couple would always make sounds later in the day, avoiding to be seen before midday. So the young officer arrived at the motel at nine o’clock and knocked on their door, announcing the presence of the police. At first, there was no noise, but as he kept knocking the door, there was a sudden strange sound. The officer understood the noise as something he had to respond to, so he kicked down the door (to Mr. Ray’s dismay) and shot one of the people inside and pointed at the other with the gun.

 Carrie came closer and saw the woman bleeding on the ground and the man terrified, fully dressed, by the window. They didn’t seem to have been sleeping; the bed sheets were in the exact same place Carrie had left them several days ago. None of them talked and when the officer attempted to call reinforcements with his radio, the man moved, causing the young man to be scared, shooting him several times. Carrie screamed and fainted.

 When she came to her senses, she was in the hospital. She had been taken there and Mr. Ray was in the next bed. Apparently the entire situation had been too much for him and he had a heart attack on the spot. Carrie did not feel bad, so she attempted to walk out the room but a police officer stopped her. It was a woman and she made her go back to bed. Carrie asked what had happened with the couple and the officer just told her that they had found them to be some kind of stalkers but that she shouldn’t worry too much about it, as she would get her answers pretty soon. So she waited, trying to sleep but unsuccessfully.

 The next day, she learned the young officer that had come to their aid was now facing jail, as there was no real proof the couple, which were dead, were any kind of criminals. However, they did found that they never slept in the days they were there, instead writing pages after pages about Carrie. They had taken pictures of her every day and, the strangest thing was that they had pictures that seemed to be her from a very young age. When looking one of the pictures, she cried because she couldn’t see herself in there. She was lost once again.

Smoke and mirrors

   The sound was loud and insisted on staying. For a moment, it seemed they were really ringing at the door but it happened to be all in the dream. The sound was horrible, louder than anything he had heard in the past. He wanted to wake up but couldn’t until he forced his body to answer to his command. It hurt, like peeling of a Band-Aid. The sound then stopped and he felt he was back at his bed but the truth was his own brain had deceived him. Unable to get him out, it had just transported him elsewhere.

 First, he seemed to be sleeping in something similar to a bed but then the feeling fade away and he started falling and falling and falling through consecutive holes in a deep blackness of his subconscious mind. He felt the wind on his face and his ankles but did not worry. Somehow, he knew that he would land softly somewhere, eventually. The area kept changing color, sometimes being red and other times black again.

 Again, he felt he had woken up but this time he knew it wasn’t real. He hadn’t landed anywhere, instead having appeared in a grassy field with small hills and nothing else in sight. Then, the sky changed and it became nighttime and in the ground a forest had sprung up to life. He automatically entered the forest and hoped to find a proper exit to his dreams from there. Maybe there was a door or something special he had to do to end all of this nonsense.

 He felt trapped in a world similar to the one in Alice in Wonderland but the difference was that Alice’s world was at least funny and interesting. His dream world was seriously boring next to it. Having realized he wasn’t able to wake up by his own will, he tried to change the world he was in but all he could achieve was to make some flowers appear. As night had fallen just minutes ago, he could barely see them so he tried to change night back to day but al he could do was getting the sun stuck in the sky, casting an annoying twilight all around.

 Walking became harder as his eyes had to be covered because of the light. He walked as if he had become blind in a second, touching everything he could and doubting every step he walked. Then he reached a cliff and had to stop moving. But that didn’t change anything: he still slipped and fell, again falling through holes and for a long time.

 Then, he actually woke up for a moment and realized he was very warm beneath his blankets, so warm in fact that he had been sweating a lot. He removed his short in a moment and fell fast asleep once again. Surprisingly, he wasn’t wearing a shirt either in his dream. Apparently his subconscious liked the idea of being shirtless so much that it had put him in a tropical setting, which he appreciated.

 People he knew were all around: his family, some of his friends, even people he had never been very familiar with. They were all in the beach, playing volleyball or laughing or splashing water to others. It was a small paradise and the sun felt real on the skin, on his face. He wished the dream wouldn’t end but he knew that wasn’t possible, not even if he died in his sleep.

 He stood up and walked down the beach, smiling at his mother who was attending to a younger him and then watching how many of the guys he had dated were casually talking in a small group. They all smiled at him and waved their hands and he knew it was very strange but still waved his hand and smiled too.

 There was a pier he hadn’t noticed before, made of cement pillars and wood planks on the floor. He walked slowly on it, feeling the wood on his feet and the warmth of the sun on his cheeks. He really wanted this to be real, to be the world he lived in. Not only because of the beautiful setting but because he didn’t feel any worry, he didn’t feel he had to do anything. It was just perfect.

 At the end of the pier there was a man, taller than him and shirtless too, that looked at the ocean. All he could see of that person was his back, which didn’t look bad at all. And as he saw him, he realized he knew who he was and that he had to talk to him, to see his face and to hug and kiss him and share his life with him and cherish every single moment they were able to be together.

 But just when he was able to touch the man’s arm, the scene changed and the guy was behind him, with his arms around him. He had no idea why, but he wasn’t compelled anymore to see his face. Maybe deep down, in some other level of consciousness, he already knew who that person was or at least what he looked like. Maybe that’s why he didn’t mind turning around and stop watching the sunset beyond the perfect blue ocean. It was the first time in his life he finally felt at home.

 As it happens often, his body chose that exact moment to wake him up. He opened his eyes sad, frustrated to know all that had happened was a lie and that there weren’t any arms around him hugging him, making him feel alive and safe. He turned his head for a minute, realizing it hadn’t been his brain that had woke him up, it had been the rain in the window. It was very dark outside and he knew he had some more hours to sleep, after all it was Saturday the next day so he wasn’t precisely going to wake up early for anything.

 This time, it took him a while to fall asleep, as he kept analyzing what he had seen in the dream, trying to remember more about the man in the pier. But his mind finally let go of the thought of someone that didn’t existed and just surrendered to the few extra hours of sleep.

 This time, he ran through some destroyed street. There were bricks all around and graffiti on the wall and he felt he was in some serious thing because he couldn’t hear anything besides his feet stomping on the ground. He finally stopped running and went up some stairs, to the second floor of a typical movie motel. He had never seen one of those in actual life, but he had seen so many in movies and TV series that his brain must have design it from similar memories.

 He entered a door on the second floor and locked it. The room was all done in a clear ‘70s style, with the orange and brown curtains smelling of pot, silky sheets on the bed, furniture in gold and silver and a TV set with no remote control. Everything was on point and he knew, again thinking of himself as asleep, that he had seen some place like this one before. He was sure of it.

Suddenly, someone entered the room and he just had seconds to run to the window and jump towards it. Whoever was behind him had starting shooting and his only option had seemed to jump through a window. He landed on the pool below, which was rapidly tainted with his blood. He had no idea how but he managed to get out of the pool and run down the street again. His body was aching but he had no idea where it hurt exactly. He just ran, preventing more damage.

 Out of nowhere, a neighborhood of tall skyscrapers and perfect sidewalks appeared in front of him. He entered the closest door, which happened to be a department store. He went up one floor on the working escalator and sat down by all the men shoe section to check his body. Only one bullet had hit him, on the right thigh, but it didn’t really hurt. He cleaned the wound with a shirt he grabbed from a table and decided to look for supplies or at least something to eat.

 Common sense drove him to the lower level of the department store. The supermarket was there and he suddenly felt very young and happy. He grabbed a cart and started grabbing various things he had eaten throughout his life: cookies, beverages, fruit, vegetables, cooked meals that smelled delicious, water and even deodorant. He went around with his shopping cart, happy about life and all it had to offer.

 Then, the man from the pier stood in front of him. He knew it was him, even if he couldn’t see his face. The man had been the one firing at the motel and this time he wasn’t going to miss. He had him in his hands and one last horrible thought crossed his mind: “What if I really died here? What if I never wake up? What if this was all a trap?”

Forgotten

   I had always liked to stay at nice hotels and now I had the chance to do it often do to my job. I paraded around the globe trying to sell them these products and in exchange I got to stay in great cities and beautiful hotels every so often. Of course, there were not five star hotels and were rather aimed at pleasing businessmen and not film stars or something, but I really liked them.

 One time, for example, I was sent to a rather small town but they put me in a big hotel with all the amenities possible. It was five stories high, had a nice view of the airport and even had a pool. So the first thing I thought, even during my meetings with various people that day, was when and how to get into that pool. I had planned to get to the hotel by six in the afternoon and just run to the pool as it closed at seven o’clock.

However, when I was picking up my things n my room, a hotel towel and so on, I got a phone call. It was someone from work but I decided to pretend I was busy or a heavy sleeper and not answered. Actually, I deliberately left my phone in the room as I left it for the pool, which was amazing. The water’s temperature was perfect and I had all for myself. Possibly that was because the hotel was nowhere near top capacity but I didn’t really care. I just enjoyed the moment and swam across the pool multiple times until I decided it had being too much. Strangely, no one had come to tell me to get out of the pool and I was sure it was eight o’clock, at least.

 I went back to my room and the phone was ringing again. I decided to pick up and realized no one answered. The number that appeared on the screen was from one of my bosses but no one spoken when I answered. I hung up and just lay down in bed about to turn on the TV but somehow I got very sleepy in a second and I fell asleep right there. I had a dreamless night and when I woke up I was slightly startled. I thought I had overslept but it was still two hours until I had to wake up to leave for my flight back home. But I couldn’t get back to sleep so I decided to check on the news. Nothing interesting.

 I decided to shower and use all the little soaps and shampoos I could and those I couldn’t I would put them in my luggage. Again, the water was perfect and I spent more than enough time in the shower but because I suddenly felt sleepy again. I had to close the water and lean against the wall to recover. I grabbed a towel but when I did the world had started spinning and I just fell hard to the ground. I did not pass out instantly. My eyesight was blurry and I could feel a presence and some distorted sounds. Just before I feel into a deep slumber, again, I thought I saw something and smelled a very particular scent.

 When I woke up, I wasn’t in my hotel bedroom. I was in another hotel bedroom, more likely a motel. The walls had stains on them, there was a smell of rotten food or something and I realized it was pitch black outside. I concluded I had been kidnapped and, of course, I had missed my flight. People would already be looking for me, as they knew at what time I supposed to be home. I hoped they were looking because that place really felt off. Something was not right and then I smelled the same scent I smelled before I feel asleep naked on the ground of the hotel bathroom. I realized I was now wearing some kind of robe. I checked it and realized it had the emblem of the hotel I had been staying in. Then, the door of the room opened and that smell invaded the small space.

 The door was close and there he was. A tall man, wearing a black hat and a coat. I had never seen him before but he had this look, like what someone would look like after escaping a mental institution. I decided not to say a word and just wait for him to day or do something. But he stayed there, standing up by the door just looking at him. When I tried to move, I realized one of my wrists and one of my ankles, were tied tightly to the bed. I was tied to them with rope. And I was very week suddenly so I decided not to fight against anything. Was this a crazy guy that kidnapped people and killed them far away or was he going to torture me in some gruesome manner that I couldn’t even understand? The thought made me tremble.

 And it was then that he moved, towards me. I saw his eyes more clearly and they are very red, as if he had never been asleep in his life. He was older than I had thought at first and, to be honest; he didn’t seem as deranged as I had thought he was. Still, he didn’t say a word. However it was me who started asking for him to release. The time for waiting for him to act had passed and now I needed to make him understand that maybe I was the wrong target or maybe I could convince him not to kill me. But he didn’t seem to care about what I said. He just looked at me with those red eyes and it was uncomfortable and I just started to get very desperate. I was weak but I pulled and cried from impotence.

This seemed to work on him because he blinked a lot, as if he had been woken up from hypnosis or something. I took advantage of his apparent confusion and started to beg him. I asked him to release me and I swore I would never tell anyone what had happened in that room and what he looked like. I told him I didn’t know who he was or what he was trying to do but that I respected him and wanted him to know I wanted to be respectful of him. All of this came like a waterfall of ideas that just ran out of my mouth as I thought about them. I was desperate but said anything in a very controlled way in order not to seem as crazy as I thought he was. Then, he turned his head and walked towards a table I had not seen before.

 From the table, he took something and took his time doing something to it. I thought that he was going to start torturing me for sure but then he turned around and I realized he held a needle in his hand. Before I could even think anything, he jabbed it on my leg and, once again, I fell into a deep slumber and only felt him go away, maybe out of the room and the scent of rotten food fill the space in my mind. This time I did dream. It was about my childhood and the first boy I had ever kissed. My mind kept repeating the memory like a damaged DVD player or something. I felt anxious and then I woke up and I happened to be back but not in my hotel room but in my home. The first thing I did, after I realized I was still wearing the hotel robe, was to call the police.

 Sure enough, I had disappeared for a whole week. I almost fainted again when they told me. Apparently, I just remembered one day out of seven he had me in his custody. I told everything I could to the police, all bout the guy’s look, the smells, what I could remember about the motel and about the syringe he had jabbed in my leg. They made me go through several medical tests and so on in order to know more about he had injected in me. It apparently was a very strong liquid that made anyone go limp in a heartbeat. So they thought he might be a doctor of some kind, maybe even a veterinarian. But I had never met either, not close at least.

 My mind was just so full of things, of cut memories and of fear. Because I knew he could’ve done so much more to me than he did. He didn’t kill me, torture me and the rape tests came out negative. I had been kidnapped for some reason and the person responsible had done nothing to me. The police did their job, I can’t complain about that, and they found absolutely nothing. They just couldn’t get anywhere with what I knew and with the other few evidence they had. Not even security cameras had registered him into my room and no one anywhere had apparently seen such a man. I got fed up with it all when a psychologist insinuated that maybe I had imagined all of it. Never trusts shrinks, am I right?

 I decided to go back to my work, my home, my life. I was very scared to be alone at home so I bought a dog and a cat and just tried to get by, without ever thinking about what had happened that day. My trips are less frequent now and I just have fun the few times I leave for business. However, I never sleep well in hotels and I tend to spend a lot of time in the bar area. I drink so I can sleep faster and just make the night go more smoothly for me. Since what happened, I can’t stop thinking that maybe I knew him from something, maybe I had met him once and now I didn’t know. But a hypnotherapist didn’t help, as I thought. I’m just never going to know what exactly happened and why and maybe that’s the worst part of it.