The Ring — Short Story.

He stepped inside the room, a wooden table facing him, a shiny object on top of it.

There was no light on the room, it was twilight and the sun was opposite to the door, some photons reaching surfaces almost randomly just to be able to reach his eyes.

Looking at the shiny object on top, trying to figure out what it was, his brain processing information, adjusting, pulling levers and throwing carbon into the fire in order to accelerate the engines. Not enough information, not enough information, start filling the gaps, was the automatic response, a response created through millions of years of evolution.

As he e walked closer he saw a metallic lamp, one with an impossible shine due to the lack of light, the deemed room could not allow such a shine to exist, but there it was nonetheless.

He continued walking towards it, not knowing what to expect, or if to expect anything at all, he was just a man, in a dark room, looking at a shiny thing in a table.

The thing morphed into something else, a ring. Was it a ring? How could a lamp suddenly be a ring? What was all this?

It was gold, aluminum, iron, silver, it was everything and nothing. An alchemist desire, a dream made true to dreamers.

As he took it with his hands, not believing what his eyes were seeing, naturally giving his trust to the sense of touch rather than sight as he picked it up.

It was light, it was heavy, it didn’t seemed right, it didn’t feel it. It wasn’t right.

He felt dizzy, not prepared to encounter opposites of the same spectrum facing each other, playing like little boys, bullying his senses and giving him a headache.

“Shiny object, what are you” He heard himself saying, realizing that his mouth didn’t move, but listening to the miserable echoes the shadowy room gave back.

He tried to put the ring on his right hand, unable to do it, not because the ring was too small, it seemed as a perfect fit, but more because his hand refused to obeyed him, trying to avoid that miraculous  object.

He changed hands, ring in right hand, the circumference now touching slowly the bare skin of the so called ring finger, which this time, seemed to not refuse his own calling.

It felt as if he had been naked all his life, discovering clothing just now. Felling that sense of fullness for the first time in his life, even though he never felt empty. He was one.

He left the house, no smile in his face, no emotion in his eyes, as he felt a deep peace, a peace he could not describe, the muscles of his face not knowing how to represent such joy.

As he stepped outside the door, he discovered he was in a dessert, just a baobab in sight, tall enough to be seen from anywhere in such dessert.

How did he get here in the first place?

As he tried to remember, it seemed as if someone had erased the trail of memory that should be there, pointing out the journey through that dessert in order to end up in the peculiar room.

The headache came back, stronger than he thought possible, everything started to move, to melt in a whirl of sandy brown around him, he felt himself falling to his knees, hands in his ears, as if trying to avoid an imminent explosion.

He opened his eyes, screaming.

The white roof welcomed him. The softness of the bed, under him. His hands holding the sheets as strongly as his muscles let them. Sweat pouring through his forehead as a waterfall.

It was a dream. It was all a dream. A nightmare? How could someone wake up screaming from something else but a nightmare. The memories of such dream fading away quicker than he was able to restore, to rescue them.

Taking his hands up to his face, to rub them against his eyes, to make sure this was all real, he felt coldness that shouldn’t be there.

Putting his hands in front of him, as to examine them, he saw it. Melting metal, moving, flowing, living. Gold, silver, iron, everything and nothing. It was there.

The ring.