I’m walking in the countryside with my dad, through stone roads and
picturesque cottages. We can hear a bird trilling from a cage in someone’s yard, Dad remarks out loud about how annoying that is. The owner of the bird hears this and comes outside, angry at us: I wait for Dad to walk away, then take her hands in mine (they are small and stubby) and whisper an apology.

“I’m a good person, I’ve never beat anyone in my life!” the woman tells me, pouting.

“I wish I could say the same about my dad,” I reply, and walk away.

We leave the road and pass a wooden gate into a muddy path, and along the way I take cute pictures of pigeons. At the end of the path, in the middle of a clearing in the trees, there’s a small wooden house. A tiny old man greets us at the door, he looks vaguely familiar and Dad introduces him as a distant relative. He invites us inside.

The man’s wife shakes my hand: she is younger and portly, gives me an impression of energy and determination. I discover she is the leader of a political resistance and is trying to unionize a group of factory workers.

I’m now in the factory, I see the workers have received a secret message from their rebel leader. They gather in a room looking for something, they peep from a hole in the wall. Outside the room, their supervisor is growing suspicious: he’s a gaunt young man, he starts asking me too many questions. I’m standing next to a child, my little brother, and we both lie to him, tell him the secrete message was just someone calling a wrong number.

The workers emerge from the room, kidnap their supervisor and rape him with a rusty iron pole. I watch the whole thing, and while I believe the supervisor was enjoying himself, I still feel incredibly scared and guilty. I run back to the small wooden house and when my dad finds me, I lie and say I was there all day and never left.

I feel so guilty that, back home, I frantically try to erase my GPS history, I’m convinced I’m gonna be arrested. It’s hot outside, summer, my cousin G. wants to get me out of the house and have fun. She gives me an olive shirt and suggests I keep the buttons open with a small magnet, to show off my chest. Don’t I want to meet cute boys?! I say I don’t want to meet any boys and refuse to leave the house.

It’s New Year’s Eve. We all gather around the dinner table, a little bit dumbfounded. How can it be 2021 already, where did time go? I don’t have a journal for the new year, I don’t have any stickers, I don’t have a calendar. Then it downs on me: it’s still June, and we’ve been tricked. Is it the police? I check the online forums for traces I might have left behind. Then I wake up and I am very relieved to realize I’m not about to be arrested after all.