LITMIR.BIZ

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same."

      "... does it seem?"

      "At ninety-nine point nine percent! That stuff is very similar to the one found in meteorite impact zones."

      "You mean that stuff comes from space?"

      "From deep space, to be precise."

      "And do you think the cause of the mummification of their bodies is the dust?"

      "If I have to guess, I think there is a high chance it is so, in its composition there are also highly corrosive elements," replied Larry. It came to her mind the image of her finger trying to remove it from Harry's bike and the very painful twinge she felt when she touched it with the part of her fingertip causing the small wound. "Oh my God," she thought, fearing that she could die like the two corpses, then repeated herself it couldn't be true. Larry must have been wrong. "And how did that stuff get to this point, from deep space?"

      "Honestly, I haven't an idea yet," Larry confessed, fantasizing about some kind of investigation, and imagining an increase of his reputation that would have been a real stroke of luck for his profession. "What do you think about it?"

      "That it was not necessary this thing!" She said, cooling all his enthusiasm.

      "Ah," He murmured, disappointed.

      "Don't get me wrong, of course we'll go all the way and you'll help us, because you deserve it and because I owe you," Helen assured him. "But right now I'm really exhausted because in the last few nights I didn't sleep at all and so many things have happened today, I absolutely need to rest," she added.

      "I see ..." mourned Larry frustrated.

      "I'll call you as soon as possible, okay?" Helen proposed, realizing she had been rude. "I will keep you updated and I will surely still need your help," she added, rewarding at least morally his efforts.

      "As you wish, my favorite Sheriff," Larry replied with a hint of dissatisfaction in his voice.

      "Well, then have a good night," said Helen. "Cosmic fine dust ..." she repeated, scanning the sky through the half-closed slats of the rolling shutter, then she looked at her finger and thought about mummies and Harry's bicycle. "I have to warn James, if Harry has been in contact with this stuff he is really in danger." She took the phone to call him, then she considered it was late, and bothering him at that time would only serve to give him an extra worry. In any case, James had spent the whole day with his son, if he had any problem he would certainly have noticed. She set the device down, turned on the table lamp to examine her finger meticulously and verified how much that infection had progressed in just twenty-four hours. "I have to call the doctor so that he prescribes me a drug," she thought troubled, taking the cordless phone again. "And what do I tell him, that I have an allergy to space dust?" She replied then, shaking her head and putting the device back on the table. "Cosmic fine dust, it doesn't make any sense. Moreover, I started talking to myself, I am going crazy," she concluded, falling heavily on her cot. She lay down and began to brood over what had happened, and at that point, she was sure that was going to be her third consecutive, completely blank night.

      Eve and James had finished their dinner in silence and had sat down in front of the TV without actually looking at anything, everyone was chasing their thoughts waiting for Harry to calm down. The boy showed up after a couple of hours, but contrary to what they expected, he walked by ignoring them and went straight to the kitchen where he ate something, cleared the dish, as he used to do when he was upset, and walked the path backwards to go back upstairs in his room, a clear sign that he was still angry for the loss of the dog. At that point, Eve considered that the day was over, so she went to put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and then went upstairs. James watched the TV, zapping in an attempt to find something interesting, but after a few minutes, he switched it off and went upstairs too. He slept a few hours during those difficult days, therefore judged that sleeping a little more than usual could only be better for his health. Thinking about it, he concluded that remaining locked up at home would have been good neither for him nor for his son, so he decided that the day after he would accompany him to the Scout Camp and then he would go to work, trying to get back to their daily lives. By the time Eve came out of the bathroom James was almost completely dozing off, she lay down beside him and he heard her invading his half of the bed and as usual, he moved towards the edge, to avoid misunderstandings. But instead, she moved closer and he felt the contact with her body warmer than usual, he stretched an arm to push her back, but she grabbed his hand and brought it to her naked breast.

      James raised his head surprised, she turned and pulled him towards her. It was a fleeting and silent moment, in the dark as always, it lasted barely enough time to count to ten, without exchanging a kiss or a caress, nor a single word. Immediately afterward, Eve fell asleep and he stayed awake to wonder why the weirdness just seemed not to want to end. First, she suggested a vacation all together and then they had sex, and that could be the prelude to a new beginning. But he did not dare to really believe it. Deep down inside him, he thought that he didn't even know anymore if that was what he really wanted.

      While waiting for the unpleasant meeting that awaited him, the President had begun his usual relaxing chess game against the PC, and slowly he filled in his mind with reflections. "Benjamin Hope ... sometimes life really enjoys playing with people's names. How can a man, with a profile similar to that of a vulture and with a zombielike complexion, have such a name? Not to mention the few times we met was just to tell me the bad news ... how can a man so similar to a scavenger be called Benjamin Hope?" He was wondering, when the sudden "bip" of the intercom startled him. He checked the time on the PC application bar and snorted in resignation, the time for the dreaded appointment had arrived.

      "The people you were waiting for arrived," the secretary informed him via intercom.

      "Thanks, Elisabeth. Please let them sit in the anteroom, I will receive them in two minutes," he replied.

      "As you wish, Mr. President."

      The President saved the game and closed the computer, finally sorted out the desk and placed two large files on it, as to make a good impression. He tidied up his shirt and walked to greet his guests. Walking along the short stretch that separated him from the door, he passed in front of the United States flag, placed between a philodendron and a pachira plant, and stopped to look at her perplex. How in a lightning movie trailer he relived the path that, starting from so far away, had brought him there, and for a moment he wondered if all the efforts and sacrifices he made to be in front of that flag in that precise moment were really worth it. Aware that there was only further delay in his torment, he shook his head and decided to go and open the door.

      Helen was lying on a metal table and two voices kept telling in her head she had nothing to fear. She could not remember how she ended there, she only knew that the contact of her naked skin against the cold steel was horrible and that she wanted to escape, but her body did not respond to her commands; she felt like a piece of iron resting on a magnetic surface.

      She opened her eyes and looked around, but what she saw let her wish to have never done it. She was in a laboratory, strange machines were hanging from the ceiling next to a lamp, it was so powerful as to blind her and some metal tentacles were threateningly leaning towards her. Shining surgical instruments were arranged in order of size on the top shelf of a trolley on her left, and on a metal shelf, just a little further back, there was a collection of crystal jars containing human fetuses. Helen suddenly felt completely lost and a sensation she had never had before, a completely resigned terror. One of the two silent figures in white coats grasped an instrument and stretched his arm towards her belly, meanwhile, he mentally kept repeating to her to stay calm. She felt a kind of tickling and when she finally managed to figure out what they were going to do she tried again to rebel but she couldn't, everything seemed muffled and she felt helpless, the only thing she was able to do was crying. She closed her eyes, so as not to see what they were doing, and tried to gather all her energy, tried to scream as hard as she could, and her own voice woke her as she fell from the cot. Not even the time to touch the ground and she was already on her feet, she turned the light on and ran towards the bathroom because she almost shitted herself. Going out of the bathroom, she stopped in front of the mirror in the anteroom and rinsed

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