The main road

Frank got up that day, went through his personal routine - breakfast, grooming, appointments - and hurried out, not even suspecting that he would never return home. As he ate lunch, a sudden movement on the sensitive mobile phone screen triggered a call to his mother.

He didn't notice the call until he heard the voice come from under his napkin.

"Son, son, what a surprise! How nice to get this call!"

The joy in the woman's voice forced him to hold the involuntary call.

He put aside the cutlery and greeted his mother. After a few moments of conversation it occurred to him to tell her a white lie. He told her that he was always very busy, but that from now on he would call her more often. The mother on the other end of the phone was very excited. Frank said goodbye saying that he loved her.

After the call ended, the man stared at the phone. He was thirty years old, no longer a child. He had things to straighten out in his life. He experienced a surge of peace at that thought.

Then he felt the shock that blurred his vision.

When he regained consciousness he was sitting peacefully looking at a boat on a river of crystal clear water.

Frank had the sensation that he was looking down on himself from above, with a perspective he had never considered before. He was looking at himself and other people slowly approaching the river.

The view was astonishing, a softly coloured twilight tinged the clouds and reflected in the mirror of the river. No one spoke, a sweet silence covered everything.

Frank looked out over the calm stream, had the sensation of stepping into the water and running his thoughts along the riverbed. He followed it to the horizon marked by soft mounds peeking out from behind an almost violet haze.

A flash of memory compelled him to touch the place on his chest where he kept his mobile phone, then he noticed the absence of his clothes. Frank was neither naked nor dressed. Then he was certain that he was the victim of a dream.

Surely a sophisticated form of the dream that had haunted him since he was a teenager.

He saw himself dreaming that he was walking down the street, completely naked, but that no one was looking at him, only he was aware of his nakedness and the immense shame he felt. Remembering that dream, he began to see his whole life like a fast-moving film.

He looked, without astonishment, at his own birth, and watched himself searching his parents' eyes as he tried his first steps, then he saw the girl he was friends with at the age of seven, whom he never remembered until now. And he could observe himself amidst the laughter of friends, defying dangers, with the sensation of being continually observed.

Fleeing from the stares, he moved to another city and became the successful man everyone admired. He remembered in that moment his mother's eyes and the call before the impact... And now he was there, on a moving boat, dreaming that he was dreaming that he was dreaming...

Frank didn't notice when he got into the boat. He saw the movement and imagined himself on the main road, leading to the most important meeting of his life.

He experienced his new perspective from above. He was accompanied by people he knew nothing about, only that they shared, that day, a small boat going upstream.

The twilight time had stopped, the darkness did not come, and yet small lights appeared in everyone's hands, including his own.

Nor did he remember the disembarkation, nor how he started the walk from the port.

A procession preceded his group in the middle of the wide road.

On either side fantastic beings, in shapes and colours, glowed with beautiful iridescent tones of an almost metallic quality.