Continued…
After leaving the apartment complex, I just kept walking. In my mind, my concern was to distance myself from the scene as far as possible. Just in case the authorities got involved. I didn’t know where I was headed or where I could go. All I knew was to keep moving along.
Along the streets, people would notice me approach and would quickly get out of the way. It was different to how the people of Peetsurg were before. Before they were open and smiling to me. Now, they cowered back, avoiding any sort of contact with me. Did they all know what happened? Did the locals know that an outsider had an incident with one of their own? Why did they all stare at me like that? All I wanted was to hurry along and avoid all the attention.
But where could I go?
The next thing I knew, something strange ahead caught my eye. A jeweled tower, decorated in all sorts of riches. The type you’d imagine in a fairytale. It looked like my magical salvation upon the now darkening sky. And it was just that.
The tower, now seemingly smaller the closer I drew, was just that peculiar mailbox. The hotel’s mailbox. The hotel! Just where I needed to be.
The streets seemed empty now as I approached the front door. The same doormen opened the way in their same welcoming manner. It truly felt like a safe haven after all that had just happened.
As I crossed the lobby to make my way upstairs, a sudden hand appeared before me.
“Good Sir! Are you alright?” It was the hotel manager.
“I’m fine. Thank you.” I tried to hurry along.
“You seem quite troubled.” He was concerned. “You’re walking a storm with your gait. As if you were doing your best to escape death. What has happened?” The manager placed both hands on my shoulders to calm me. But as he touched me, his hands jerked back for a moment, as if they’d just touched hot iron. But soon he held me still. The gesture and what he said brought me to a calm. Was I in that much of a frenzy? Maybe that’s why all the civilians grew scared of me.
“Corporal?” the manager gave me concerned eyes. He was still holding me down by the shoulders. Wait! What did he say?
“How did…”
“The guardian of a safe haven has his ways to know who he houses. You are safe here” he assured me. “But what could have gotten a man such as yourself so unsettled?”
There was no hiding that something had troubled me, especially from such a character like the hotel manager. There was a dignified safety the man made you feel. As if he were a well decorated war commander of sorts. I mean, he did convince me to stay at the hotel in the first place, didn’t he.
“A woman” I glanced down. I hoped that was enough. I didn’t want to get into much detail.
Still holding my shoulders, I could feel the manager observing me. Analyzing me. He was quiet for a while, but soon let go of me.
“I can tell you haven’t eaten.” His tone eased back to his usual welcome. “Go upstairs and freshen up. Then come down to the mess. We’ll look after you.”
I gave him a salute. I wasn’t supposed to. I couldn’t help it. There was such a graceful authority about the hotel manager. A true presence about him.
He gave me a nod and I felt that was my queue to leave.
Coming to Peetsurg and Bzalnia had been such a strange experience. Lately, I had always walked about sure of everything. I’d get bored and disappointed, as if nothing ever satisfied me anymore. But here, while all quite frightening, everything felt like a new experience. A learning experience. All the big life experiences I had gone through in the past could never have prepared me for all of these encounters, and all of these characters. I was still a beginner at life. The city of Peetsurg reawoken me to that fact.
The question was, ‘What was truly a new experience’?
After a shower, I had a chance to reconnect my grandmother’s wedding ring to my tag chain. Hanging on my chain was exactly where it had been for the past 5 years. The slight weight of it was comfortable. A recent comfort I remembered clearly. A comfort I couldn’t have mistaken. That’s how I knew! Amidst all the confusion and uncertainties, that was how I knew.
The sight of the ring on Julie’s finger wrung and twisted my insides, as if a hole of darkness tried to pull and tear my soul away from my body. It felt almost like when Belle told me her news. When she told me she had found someone new. The inner essence of me couldn’t accept what reality was trying to show me. And so, all I could feel was wrongness. The sacred ring in the hands of another… Wrongness. Down to my soul. Julie was just not supposed to have the ring.
And yet she had a photo of proof. It didn’t make sense.
Julie knew who I was. She spoke a collection of specific details, like she truly knew me. All even though I couldn’t remember. Was ‘remember’ the right word? It didn’t make sense.
Was that the first time I had met her, or did we truly know each other like she claimed. But the photo… I couldn’t deny there was something comforting about being near her. Was it a true connection we shared? Was it the powerful charms of feminine nature disarming my guard? Or was it that pitiful emptiness within me, suddenly painting anything as heavenly in the midst of desperation?
Confusion and uncertainty.
If I truly knew Julie, then why could I just not remember her? She had a photo. She said Cheston took that photo of us. My dear comrade most definitely bought a camera there in Tykliss. And he did often photograph me and the unit. Did he really take photos of me and Julie at the…
Wait! I remembered.
There was something wrong about that photo. There was most definately something wrong about Julie’s photo.
I clearly remembered how the photo looked the first time I saw it. Julie and I, both our arms around each other, both of us starting deep into each other’s eyes, smiling at the mere sight of one another. That was the photo I clearly remembered. The shock of seeing me and her together, young and in love, ingrained a strange feeling. It was like facing evidence that my entirety didn’t want to accept. But there it was laid before me. I made sure to analyze ever detail to make sure it wasn’t a fake. I know what I saw in the photo.
And yet, still in my hand, while Julie revealed she held my precious ring, the photo was different. The photo changed. Julie and I appeared different. In the photo, she had one arm held out, displaying the ring. She and I were both clearly looking at the ring on her hand. I would have believed it to be a completely different photo. But it sat in the very picture frame still in my hand. The same old wooden picture frame that I did not let go of. How could the picture have changed? Did I imagine what I first saw? Something was wrong. Everything was wrong. Everything about Julie scrambled everything in my mind.
I was involved in an attack that affected my memory, Julie said. Did that truly happen? Why had nobody ever talked to me about that? Why was it not a detail mentioned in my service leave? Why did I not have any paperwork of this? This all could have been a believable tale, I had to admit. But there were just too many holes in the story I couldn’t miss. One major hole… The ring.
I had only ever proposed to one person with my grandmother’s ring. I had only ever proposed to one person ever. To Belle. And Belle wore that very ring for a good 10 years while we were together. All before she returned it to me that day she left. That day that tore my heart and soul to pieces. That was not something I would ever forget. I was not going to start believing that Julie had had the ring that whole time. I was not going to imagine that my whole life together with my ex-wife was make-believe. My memory was not broken. No!
I quickly searched through my pack. I had one thing to assure me that I wasn’t insane. Evidence of a true past.
There it was. A letter. And inside the letter, a photo. It was the letter Belle wrote me on the day of our wedding.
I knew that whenever it was too hard for Belle to truly express her feelings, sometimes it was easier for her to write down what she wanted to say. It was a more quiet way of speaking. It allowed her to get out all she had in mind. And, of course, on our wedding day, she couldn’t help but write me some of her overwhelming emotions. The most precious piece of writing I’d ever had the pleasure to read.
I kept a photo of Belle and I on our wedding day inside her letter. This was all a reminder for me that somebody, once, truly loved me. That I was possible to love. And now it was evidence of a past I could be certain of.
I carefully looked at the wedding photo. Belle was wearing the ring. A complete relief. A heavenly sight. Something felt ungodly about Julie’s photo. I felt a horrible dread soak all over me at the thought of it. I then felt a terror at the thought of Julie with the ring. Wrongness. Just like I said before. Complete wrongness.
It made sense. I had fallen asleep. That’s when she must have taken the ring from me. How dare she. I first only saw Julie as a kind and confused girl. But the more the uncertainties cleared up, the more vile the thought of Julie became.
I felt the power of her female nature, dulling me, and swaying me. Manipulating me. And that mere thought horrified me to the core. I was almost completely at her whim. Julie almost had complete control. What if I had believed her tales? What if I had believed her photo…
Her photo…
What in the world could explain that? I didn’t want to think any more on the matter. My soul was too tired by then.
I was safe in the hotel. Rest was best while I was safe.
To be continued…
Diaries of the Moonlight Hours 
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