The White Cylinder

No, she didn't hate her dad. She was rather... disgusted by him. Yes, the way he ate (everything he found in the kitchen), the way he talked nonsense and the way he never understood her. The way he didn't seem to care much, either (even if he did care after all). How he invented words all the time, but not words that others could understand, words only he knew, which always made her have to ask about what he was trying to convey in his own dialect. It bothered her. She was just tired of it all. Not that it was unbearable, she'd put up with everything all this time, but it was exhausting and she felt like this time had to be the last one. It had to end.

The others, her classmates at school, were alright. They were nice and all, but she had no special bonds with anyone and she went to school because she had to and she got bored if she didn't. But how she wished she didn't have to! She wished and daydreamed about doing what she pleased all day. It didn't actually matter that she didn't know what she really liked yet. She figured she would find out eventually, if only she had time to try things... So that was how, one night, she dreamed about it for the first time. She'd fallen asleep the second she'd gone to bed. It wasn't usually like that. Normally, she would start thinking and imagining things in the dark of her room. She would see herself in a submarine or on a horse or leaving home and starting to walk with no direction, just walking and walking, past a toy shop, past a fishmonger, past a jewelry shop... But that night she passed out immediately. And she had that dream for the first time. She saw herself... no, she felt herself standing with her legs next to each other and her arms tight to her body and she felt like she'd been wrapped in some kind of soft pillow, tightly enough that she couldn't move, but without it squeezing her. She felt in peace. When she woke up, she didn't know how long the dream had lasted, but she was a bit disappointed that it hadn't been real. However, in that month, she had the same dream four or five times and every time it felt like it lasted a little longer. She had never been that happy. But then, for some unknown reason, the dreams stopped and she never felt like that again until...

Ten years later, she was finishing her second year at college. “Just two more weeks”, she kept repeating to herself. She was so bored! Everything was quiet, the days succeeded each another without any changes in her life. She hadn't known it was going to be like this. All she wanted was to go away. She started to daydream in the bus, in class, at the dinner table... She imagined all the things she wanted to do that summer. Now that she was a grown-up, she could do whatever she felt like! Indeed, she had to work and no one really thought she was going to find a job, but she'd prove she was able to do that and a lot more and then she would...

The night before her birthday, she had that dream again and it felt more real than ever. She could smell the soft cloth mildly pressing her face, she could touch it with her fingertips. Suddenly, she realized that there was a part of her body that wasn't protected by the mushy pillow. Her toes were exposed to a cold gentle breeze. She slowly woke up and, with her eyes closed, she still felt perfectly wrapped in her favorite nook. There was no floor under her toes. She must be upside down. After a while, she was starting to feel cold –the soft wind hadn't stopped. She tried, but couldn't move, so she started playing with the only part of her body that was free. She was moving her toes, like a kid sitting on the edge of a swimming pool wondering whether to venture in the cold water. Eventually, she discovered something. If she moved her heel as if she wanted it to point to the ceiling enough times, her legs and her whole body slid out just a tiny bit. She kept doing so until she was able to bend her ankle enough to touch the edge of the pillow-structure she was in. She bent both ankles and, with the tips of her toes, she pushed. Combining both movements, she was able to slip outside the cylinder about enough to move her arms and push with her hands until she finally jumped to the floor. She looked at it. It was a big white cylinder in the middle of an otherwise empty room and it looked hard on the outside, but she'd found it to be just a little flexible, or else she wouldn't have been able to get out of it. Indeed, she wondered for some time what had happened and whether she was still dreaming, but the ache in her toes indicated that, probably, she wasn't. She finally crossed the room and opened the door in front of her. It led to a dark corridor. She could only see another door at the end of it, so she rushed to it too, rather scared. She stopped half a metre from it and paused for a minute. She gathered her strength and, when she felt ready, she opened it very slowly and took a step out. In front of her she discovered a beautiful green field and, at its end, a cute little town.

She wore her pajamas all day long. She was wearing them when she danced through the field. And when she first entered the town. She was wearing them when she spoke to a young man about her age who asked her name and when they met all his friends for lunch. Her new-found freedom, however, the feeling that took over her the instant she set foot on the green field, didn’t allow her to realise until nighttime, when they were all sitting by the fire and one of her new friends pointed it out to her by suggesting they could find her some other clothes if she wished to change. She answered: “I'm never taking them off again!” and everyone burst in laughter.