Mariana's diary

  Saturday June 17, 2006

  1:10 p.m.

  I barely had time to get ready. I fell asleep, so I had to quickly put all the things I could need into my bag. A pack of tissues, small umbrella (not for heavy showers, only for drizzling rain), wallet, pain medications, my driver's license, a make-up bag, brush (although it serves no purpose in my case), a bottle of water, a few bars of chocolate and a hand cream. I also added a sweater and spare socks to all that, just in case it gets cold. I put on jeans, sandals and a black tank top with a deep V-neckline. I can't resist to show a little cleavage. I guess there's nothing wrong with that. It's not like I'm doing it because of that musician, what was his name, Mickey. I just like to look good for myself. After all, I probably won't make it to their concert on time, and I might be too tired to drive there.

  This morning, my now repeating dream took new turn. Now I can clearly see that it says "Leave" on the wall, even though the words are written crookedly and in poor handwriting. The symbols seem to be taking shape, but I still can't make out what is here actually the message for me. Concentric circles and a straight line crossing them are clearly visible. There is a very clearly written cross in the upper left corner. Something like a human figure can be seen, a stick figure of a kind. I still don't understand.

  After a bit more thought I added a bottle of perfume to my bag. You never know, although I certainly won't be going to that concert. After all, I barely know the guy. And I am in relationship.

  9:20 p.m.

  The visit went well, a bit boring but nice. There was no one there close to my age except for two younger women who constantly talked about their children even though it was obvious that neither of them was listening to the other. I, on the other hand, found a great spot on a deckchair in the garden where I nested and swayed for a few hours, since the rain had finally stopped. Now, hours later, I'm sitting in the car waiting for someone I can ask for directions. Although I certainly didn't intend to, I decided to go to that concert because I'm very interested in how the guys play. And I haven't gone out for a long time, so this could be an ideal opportunity. When you're in a relationship with someone long enough, like I was with Marko, people start to see you as an item. When they invite one of us, that automatically includes the other one, there is no chance of me going anywhere alone without your pair, or if I do that anyways, as soon as I arrive alone without my significant other, they have to ask: "And where is Marko?" , as if I should no longer exist without him. It's as if we have become one special organism of "Mariana and Marko", which consists of two parts that can no longer live without each other. We became a couple. And the couple is singular. I can't go to any place or go out alone without taking him. If I do manage to get out alone, no one asks me how I am. They ask how my boyfriend is and how we get along. They ask how come he "let me go alone". It makes me want to scream. If anything can drive a person away from a long-term relationship, it's being forced by society to always be together with partner. I turned the car around and went to the pub that Mickey mentioned that his group will have gig in there.

  11:10 p.m.

  I am in the "Stella" tavern, which is located near small town and right next to small road. I had to park far away from the pub, because while parking near the entrance, I hit parked and, lucky for me, empty luxury silver jeep with my 20 year old car. That Jeep costs as much as I could earn in about ten years, provided I don't spend any money at all. Even though it seemed that I haven’t damaged that jeep, I was terrified that I would have to pay monstrously large compensation, or worse yet, be beaten by the owner, so I just drove away! I parked the car as far as I could from there in the hope that no one would even notice that jeep suffered a minor impact and if by chance they do, that they wouldn't be able to find the culprit, that’s me. Such luxury vehicles in Serbia are very often driven by people who, in such situations, first beat you up, and then sue you. Or kill you. In addition, when I headed for the pub, the engine kept dying as soon as I would slow down, so I discovered that I had been driving to find further parking spot with the handbrake on.

  I sat down at a table bit further from the stage, so that Mickey wouldn't see me and think that I came here only for him. The air is full of smoke, the noise is terrible, and since it's dark, I can barely write. The waiter ignored me for a while, so I passed the time by studying people around me. When the band "Omen" went on the miniature stage, and the keyboards player gave me a smile of recognition, I felt tingle of affection traveling up my spine. I don't know why because I should be happy in my long and stable relationship with my partner who is hardworking, stable and responsible. The problem is that this blonde guy from the band looks incredibly hot, especially since he's tall and I have a thing for tall men. At the request of the surprisingly urban audience, considering where we were located, they played a couple of great songs ex-Yugoslavia, mostly during 80s, and then some obviously their own songs, which were received with much less gusto. In the end, they settled on covers of local hits from the 80s, which wasn't bad at all.

  When they took their first break, Mickey headed straight for my desk. It didn't escape me that his band mates gave him a "go ahead!"- style thumbs up. On my invitation, he sat down at my table and called the waiter.

  “What can I get for you?” he asked me.

  "One cappuccino, please,"

  "Would you maybe like something stronger?" He asks me.

  "I have to drive all the way to Novi Sad from here." I'm a terrible driver anyway, and if I drink, I could become really dangerous. I'm not even sure I know exactly how to get back to town. I could get lost along the way.''

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  "We are also going to Novi Sad. You can wait until we finish the gig and come with us. If you want,"

  "If you're not the driver, you can keep me company in the car. I'm afraid to drive alone at night." I said. That was too fast. I don’t even know the guy. He could be a serial killer.

  "Sure, but only if you drive me to my house." he laughed "Or can we drop to your place for a coffee," he added. He is even faster than me. I can't tell him that I live with a man. I didn't even tell him that I was in a serious relationship.

  "We'd better go to your place," I suggested, but he got visibly upset. I don't think he's going to invite me to his apartment for coffee or anything like that. Maybe he also lives with his girlfriend. After all, how would I explain to Marko if I returned at dawn? I could tell him that I was lost, because he would surely believe me that. He would say that something like that could be expected from me. At the end, we agreed that he would ride in my car, as a passenger, and his friends in the van would drive in front of us. He got back on stage.

  01:45 a.m.

  Something terrible happened. I still can't stop shaking. The band members went to pack their instruments and store them in the van, and I went to fetch my car and bring it closer to the entrance. The jeep was gone and with a little luck, no one will even notice that I hit it. Of course, soon I realized I forgot where I parked the car. I wandered in the woods around the pub, and since there were no street lights here, I could hardly see anything. The road is surrounded by forest on both sides and somewhere between the trees, I parked my car. I wandered around the trees, trying to keep an eye on the road, so I wouldn't get lost, when I heard a car stopping on the road near me. I thought that were the band members looking for me in their van, but instead I only saw small white car, just line mine (except mine was red) parked on the side of the road. A person, who I couldn’t see well, came out of the car and went between the trees of the forest on the other side of the road. Then disappeared from my sight. I headed towards the white car, to ask for directions. And then I saw him. At first I thought the car was empty so I peeked inside through the front windows. No one was there. I went to the back of the car. The first thing I saw was someone watching me through back seat window and I screamed. My legs gave up on me. The passenger in the back seat wasn't human, and that thing was monstrous! It had some kind of large shell over its head and body, like a giant turtle or crab. But the face was human, or at least, human-ish. I have never seen anything so horrible. I can't stop shaking even though I'm sitting in my car now with Mickey next to me in the passenger seat trying to comfort me. He tells me that it was probably a man in a hoody, that he might have been covered with large blanked, because he was sleeping in a car or even in a costume from some party. But I know what I saw. There was no hoody, no blanker, no costume. The creature I saw had a real shell around its body and over its head, and it had a human head, slightly deformed, but still human. I even saw some kind of deformed legs and arms coming out of the shell. It was like the worst nightmare.

  It reminded me of an event from my childhood. I was maybe eight or nine years old at the time. My father was watching a movie, and I was just occasionally watching what was happening on the screen, since I didn’t understand anything anyway. We had a black and white TV back then. It looked like some kind of comedy, British maybe. At one point, the protagonist's pursuers were chasing him through corridors of a hospital. He ran into one patient room to hide and spoke to the patient in the room, a man lying in bed covered up to his chin with a rough blanket, moaning and shaking from a severe fever. The hero asked the sick man in a somewhat sarcastic manner not to tell on him, but patient showed no signs of understanding. When the pursuers were far enough, the hero, driven by curiosity or perhaps concern for the patient who seemed to be in a very serious condition, approached his bed. The patient was moaning, screaming, shaking and making quite inhuman noises. Or so I remember. And then it happened. The hero pulled the blanket of the sick man. First to see was something that looked like large paws, then a distorted, bloated, animal-like body with paws and dark shapeless spots all over the skin. I think the hero jumped out of the window in terror, and I screamed, ran away and hid in the kitchen under the table. After that, for a long time, I didn't dare to cover myself up to my chin during sleep, no matter how cold it was, probably in fear that I might wake up with the body of that deformed man. To this day, I don't know which movie it was, but I know that I had problems with that scene for a long time. Even though I've been a big fan of the horror genre for years and I've seen some really horrible scenes in movies and read some really tough and creepy novels, that scene remains unsurpassed. Maybe because it was so unexpected, because the film seemed like a comedy up until that moment, even to my dad (who was very sorry after that) and maybe because I was a child.

  In the end, I persuaded Mickey to find that white car to convince him that I had really seen the weird creature. However, when I finally found that place, from which I ran away screaming just a few minutes ago, car had disappeared. I wondered if the person who got out of the car and went down into the woods knew that the creepy creature was in their car. I wondered where the car had gone. Did the person who was driving the car know about the deformed passenger in their car? Despite it was dark and visibility was poor, I knew that the person who got out of the car was an ordinary human being, at least they had human for, unlike their back seat passenger.

  Problem is that I hardly know Mickey at all. I should be afraid of him, considering that we will be driving alone through these rather desolate regions at night. I was carried away by his compliments, and (if I may write that?) lust, so I immediately accepted his imposition. Now it seems to me that accepting him to ride with me was a very reckless move, even potentially dangerous. Even though he seems to be a nice guy and even though he came here for work, he could still be a maniac who will butcher me somewhere along the way and leave my corpse here where it will never be found since I shouldn't have driving this way in the first place. Uh, I hope he doesn't see what I wrote about him. He left for a moment to arrange something with his band. And what if all three of them are maniacs? What if they rape me and leave me alone in these woods? God, I better not think about it, especially not because it just goes to show what a fool I am for agreeing to this. Although, due to the encounter with that monster in the parked white car, it seems to me that it wasn’t such a bad idea to have someone strong by your side, someone who can defend you. Unless that someone is a true killer. Maybe I should start the car and drive off before Mickey gets back. Oh, there he is, coming back. I better finish this part of my diary.