Justine

by Adrien Briegel

Justine woke up with difficulty this morning scared and sweating. After the movie last night, she couldn’t close her eyes during the night. She made a promise, “never see The Exorcist again”. The movie was horrible.

Saturday morning began like all the other ones. She took a quick shower and thought about her day. First, she would go running in the Berkeley hills, after that she would eat something on Telegraph Avenue and finally go to the University to work. She was writing a thesis about the French philosophers who wrote during the Enlightenment. The prospect of the day was not particularly exciting but she liked what she did.

Justine was the kind of person that when you met her you instantly fell in love with her. She was as beautiful as an angel, but she was not like other girls: she worked all the time and enjoyed solitude. She didn’t have many friends, spending most of her nights listening music and watching movies. She was usually scared by the life outside her own world in her little house. That maybe explained why she was all alone this Saturday.

She looked outside; the weather was very bad. A heavy fog covered all Berkeley. She was a little scared and hesitated to go out on a run. She was not very heeded but she didn’t accept to have extra weight. Her phone rang twice and she finally answered,

“ Hello sister! Already up?

“ As you see…how are you?”

“ Pretty good. I really enjoying Paris, it is a beautiful, but my school is really hard!”

“ Yes but you didn’t choose easily when you took the decision to go to France for the School.”

“ Yes, I know, I know. You are like mommy when you say that!”

“ Ha-ha! I saw her last week; she said that you didn’t send her news. She felt really alone since we left so please; an e-mail that will not kill you. Do that for me.”

“ Ok, I will do it, and you how are you?”

“ Yeah, good too, I hesitated to go running”

“ Good idea, you must go out a little, don’t stay alone in the house. You’re having fun in Berkeley?”

“ Yeah sure…”

“ Ok I have something to do, I’ll call you Monday, I miss you”

“ Me too…”

Finally once the decision was made, she put on a little jacket and took her precious iPhone with all her music and went running. The air was humid and fresh, the perfect weather for a run but she couldn’t see more than 2 meters and it began to frighten her. Nobody was outside in this cold weather and a Saturday morning even less. When she arrived at the soccer field, she had a strange resentment. Justine felt as if she was being observed. She ran and took the little path that led to the top of the hill for a panoramic view, after a few minutes of difficult effort she stopped for a little rest. At that moment she heard a noise behind her and turned around abruptly;

“Is there somebody there? .... If this is a joke it is not funny, at all!”

She saw nothing and began to breath strongly, after the movie last night it was too much for her poor heart. After a long look around the neighborhood she found nothing. She thought that it was an animal and continued her run, constantly on guard. With the scare in her stomach she continued her difficult ascent, listening for slightest sound. The minutes passed in the same time that her scare, her iPhone played some soothing music. She thought that she was stupid, obviously her imagination played tricks and she should stop being paranoid. As she got higher, there was less fog and finally arrived at her first stop. There she could see approximately the entire bay, but this morning the fog was like a huge sea, which covered all the presence of human life on earth. She liked this feeling, being alone, really alone. At this moment she saw a man who walking down the hill and wore only black clothes.

“ Strange”, thought Justine, but she was captivated by the beautiful show that the wild gave her and didn’t pay attention to the man. After some time she retuned to her run. It was the last part; the last rise was the most difficult. Once on the top she couldn’t resist and sat on the bench, again admiring the gorgeous view.

She was quiet and the moment was perfect. But the strange feeling came back. She couldn’t explain why, she felt like there was a presence of someone. She turned around and saw nothing. The dissatisfaction grew, she didn’t run and gave effort for that the moment of happiness be wasted by her paranoia. She got up and looked all around, but this time she noticed something at approximately two meters behind the bench in bushes. Her heart stopped beating. A man was just lying in the brushes, the body was turned and she could only see a part of his head. He wore only a shirt and he had some tracks of blow on his arm. She made a backlash, at that moment she couldn’t hold on, her native language got the upper hand, “ Oh mon dieu! Nan… c’est pas possible… c’est pas possible…”

She put off and after some effort to stay up she felt not good and began to vomit. It was too much for her, she stayed fives minutes sitting in the grass crying and trying to have a sensible thought. It was impossible to make a decision; she was crying and crying again at slightest thought of the man was like snatch her poor heart. She finally arrived to move and approached the body, she should verify if the man was dead. Sobbing, she caught the hand of the corps, and took his pulse. She felt nothing, this man was really dead. She stayed some time near the corps and for the first time in her life she really wanted to be with someone. She took her iPhone and instinctively called 911.

“ Bip bip bip…. “

At that moment she hated AT&T, maybe the Verizon advertising was right. It is only when you needed to phone that there is no network. She should do something, she couldn’t phone, and there was none who had come up the hill. The conclusion was difficult; she decided to leave the body there and went searching for help at the first house that she would find.

She had never run like that, but her effort was in vain. There was nobody in the first four houses,

“ What did the people do at the Saturday morning? This is really not a good day…”

Finally at the fifth house she found people to helped her. The police were called and immediately came. She showed them where the body was, but when they arrived at the top of the hill the corpse had disappeared. The police searched the perimeter but they only found some vomit. Justine said that it was hers’ from when she saw the body. Nothing else was found; some tracks on the ground but it could be anyone and it couldn’t be considered as evidence of a body. They opened an investigation to see if someone had indicated a person missing, but again nothing was found. Finally, they abandoned the case, without a body and person missing they could do nothing. Some of the cops thought that Justine did it for researching some interest. They advised the Justine’s mother to make some appointments with a psychologist for her daughter. She refused. She trusted Justine and that created some problems between the two sisters. Marie thought that the cops were right and that Justine did it only for more attention.

A month passed and the tension in the family disappeared. Everything became like before this Saturday morning. Justine was alone one Monday night and was lazy to make something to eat. She called a pizzeria and ordered one margarita. Twenty minutes later the bell rang. She opens the door, searched her purse for money. She looked up released everything in a scream, and fainted. When she woke up, she had in front of her the man saw one month earlier, but alive. She was confused and began to cry. The man didn’t understand and asked her to explain.

After her explication of the entire story, the man began to laugh and explained his story. Indeed one month earlier him and his friend celebrated a birthday. The party had a lot of alcohol and he woke up in the hills without any memory of what had happened. Ashamed and still drunk, he vomited and went back to his house to take a rest shower. He thought that happened when she went in search of help.

“ But I took your pulse. You were dead.”

“ I slept on my arm and when I woke up, I couldn’t feel it. It had no blood; I think you took that arm to take my pulse…”

“ And why they didn’t find your vomit?”

“ You know is the same I think they didn’t verified which was the owner…”

After a long discussion he returned to his job and promised to come back to tell the story to her family. As she ate her pizza she thought about all the events and began to laugh…