MIA

            It was raining so hard that one could say the second Flood was about to come. The sky was grey, the buildings were grey, the road was grey, as well as her heart... It was one of those days at work: lots of papers to write; the boss was in a bad mood... and Clovis was still unheard of.

            Laura leaves the office building and hurries to her car. Quickly, take out the keys! The rain is cold and the wind starts to blow as well. Damn! Where are the keys? She starts to look in every pocket and, at last, she finds the keys in the inner pocket. She never leaves the keys there... how could they have been left there?! No time for answers - her hair is already wet and her clothes won't be dry for long either.

            The keys clanck as she unlocks the door, and in a matter of seconds the engine starts to roar. She turns on the heating.

            "Not even the salary! I couldn't retrieve my salary! Damn system bug! Damn credit cards!" She takes a look at the board and notices she's almost out of gasoline. "It's not 13, it's not Friday, I hadn't passed under a latter, no black cats crossed my way and I didn't break any mirrors! Why do these things keep happening to me?"

            At last she leaves the parking and drives towards home through that wet, dark, grey city. It even looked like the people were grey; even the trees seemed grey.

            With the engine running on gasoline vapors she parks the car in front of the tenement block and quickly gets out of the car, locks it and rushes inside.

            In the hall she stops to check the mail. Quite strange: three letters... she takes them out and starts to read: phone bill - "great! My account is blocked and I have to pay the bills too!", seasons greetings from Ben and Mary - "Many months late. Thanks to the great postal service we've got. Eh... better late than never."

            The last letter made her heart to stop beating:

            "Ministry of Defense - Public Relations Dpt. - Air Force"

            That was the envelope she wished would never arrive.

            Slowly she headed for the elevator, pressed the button and waited for it to descent. The doors opened and she stepped inside. Laura pressed the 5th button and then she watched herself in the elevator's mirror. Half wet, tired and cold, her figure expressed her darkest fears regarding that letter.

            The elevator decelerates and finally stops with the bell ringing as the silver doors open. No one on the hall way.

            Laura walks as if she wouldn't want to wake someone up. The doors pass by her: 51, 53, 55 on her left; 50, 52, 54 on her right. Finally number 57. The keys clanck once more as she unlocks the door and again inside when she locks it. She enters the living room, throws the two letters on the couch and the fatidic envelope on the glass table in the middle of the room.

            After ten minutes she is on the couch watching the letter on the table, too afraid to open it. She's now all dry and wearing some warm household clothes.

            "He may be dead... he may be captured... he may be injured.. he may be missing." These thoughts kept cycling through her mind.

            "Something similar happened to my grand-grandmother during the Great War. Her husband was a soldier, enlisted in a regiment that retreated through their village. That was the last time she ever saw him. Twenty kilometers away the regiment was ambushed by the enemy and completely decimated. They kept fighting to the end. The woman left her five children and ran to the battlefield to look for her man. She couldn't find him, though she searched the whole area. She looked at every dead body, at every ID metal card. There was no sign of him. Did he surrender? That couldn't have been possible, he showed her a medal for bravery he was awarded during the heavy fights in the mountains. Maybe he was wounded and the captured by the enemy. She waited for him to return all her life. All her life she believed him prisoner. She raised the five children al by her self thinking he would return some day. He never did. No one knows what happened to him.

            Will this be my story as well? It is about time to open that letter, I won't stand all my life looking at it. I have to face it... he might be dead."

            Laura stands up from the couch and heads for the bookcase - there had to be a cutter somewhere. As she looked for it she felt warmer and warmer and started to loose balance. Finally she finds it and returns to the couch with temperature and a terrible headache. She cuts the envelope and takes out the letter, she unfolds it and scans it: "...classified mission...dogfight...enemy fighters...possible shot down... lieutenant Clovis Carpath is declared to be Missing In Action." The letter falls to the ground as she understands the words she has just read.

            "He may still be alive... I mustn't loose hope... he's just missing... I want him to be alive..."

            Finally she realizes she caught a cold and slowly reaches for the phone. Laura's fingers dial a phone number and now she waits for someone to answer.

            "Hi, this is Anna, but I'm out right now, so please leave a message after the beep." The voice seemed to be coming from another world.

            "Anna, this is Laura... please come, I'm ill..." Laura manages to hang up and then falls into a hallucinating dream. The illness reached her mind.