Side effects
After the first month, the real horror began.
I began to wake up with thoughts that were not mine.
I’m lying in bed, and the first thing that crosses my mind is:
“I have to check the lab results of yesterday, otherwise the neural bridge experiment will fail.”
Except I don’t work in a lab. I never am.
I go to the kitchen and take a breath on the way – and suddenly there is a smell of expensive French perfume in my nose. I can recognize the notes: jasmine, orange blood, musk. I’ve never worn one in my life.
Sometimes my hands curl up like they were playing the piano. I knew how the fingers were stacked, how to press a key, how the tree vibrated under the wrists. And I don’t have a single piano lesson.
It was more terrible.
When Julian took me to Sofia for examinations or meetings, strangers sometimes stopped me on the street.
“My God…” a woman with white hair and a refined scarf whispered once. Her eyes filled with tears. “That can’t be…”
“I’m sorry, do we know each other?” I asked.
“No… sorry…” he turned and almost ran away.
Such moments were becoming more and more. Strange glances, trembling lips, smiles that stop in the middle.
They looked at me like they were seeing a ghost.
