The Decipherment

  * * *

  Isabelle Aimery opened her eyes with a jolt. She could not see properly. Everything was blurry. Her eye-sight was not weak. She blinked a few times, but it was the same blurred vision. It wasn’t the vision that she felt most troubling; it was the incredibly intense pain in her body. Her legs hurt as if she had just run a marathon, her neck hurt even as she blinked, and her head – it felt as if it was going to explode from pain any minute now. She felt a weakness like she had never experienced before. It was as if she had done a lot of work without any intake of energy. She hadn’t felt like this for years. She had always been physically strong fit and healthy.

  She found herself sitting in a large, brown leather chair.

  My study.

  There was a little book in her lap which read The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. Isabelle couldn’t remember when she had been reading it the last time. She saw an empty coffee mug sitting on the side-table beside her.

  When did I last drink coffee?

  She always kept her house clean. Leaving behind things like that was not usual about her. As she took the book from her lap and was about to keep on the desk, her heart skipped a beat at what she saw.

  My hands!

  She found her hands had become thin, the skin on them aged. The veins were etched clearly against the pale of her skin. She traced the skin along the length of her arm and to her extreme horror; it looked nothing but an old woman’s arm.

  What happened to me?

  She touched her face. It also felt like the skin there was drooping, like in old age. She looked down at her toes, which had also aged, the veins on them clearly visible under the ghastly white skin. Standing up on weak legs, she went to the mirror that hung on a wall nearby. The image that she saw went her spiraling backwards. She felt the air from her weak lungs escape in a flash. The face that looked back from the mirror was that of a woman with gray hair and a face that possessed every single bit of old age upon it: the skin around the eyes was loose, deep creases edged everywhere and the veins around the forehead were visible. Isabelle Aimery had grown old.

  How did I get old so quickly? How could I get so old like this?

  I was young only yesterday! What happened to me?

  Did someone cast a spell on me or something?

  And suddenly, the images that came before her eyes in a quick flash left her dumb-founded.

  My memories . . .

  Thoughts . . .

  Dreams . . .

  The code . . .

  My subconscious . . .

  Everything had been destroyed! It all fell apart.

  And then realization, the bitter realization of what had happened, came crashing to her like a heavy blow.

  Isabelle Aimery had just stepped out from limbo.