Groaning, Michael Travinsky recovers consciousness. With a flick of his hand, he brushes away the crow that has been pecking at his arm. There is a wretched smell. Michael looks around. He is lying in a sparsely furnished room. Water is dripping gently somewhere. Diffuse light penetrates through the nailed up windows. Birds are chirping in the distance. The only objects in the small room are a smelly straw mat, a crudely constructed stool and a bowl with obviously stale water. “Where am I?”, “what has happened”? Flashes of pictures streak through Michael’s mind like a film. He has a hazy memory of the road that wound itself in sharp curves up the mountain. “Snow”, murmurs Michael, “it was snowing!”.

And again a memory: Michael sees the thick driving snow in his mind’s eye; he remembers the cozy warmth and the soft humming of the car heating. Yet another image appears all of a sudden: a beautiful young woman. Michael asks himself who this person is that he perceives so clearly in his head? Abruptly, the pleasant appearance of the young lady turns into a picture image of horror that spreads in Michael’s head like a sinister scarf. Rays of light like thick, lurid fingers appear from the dark of the night. There is a muffled thud followed by a screech of metal that goes right through. Michael actually feels how his head bangs against something hard, how his bones break, how his blood flows from several wounds in his body. The last fragments that he remembers show an old man with a dirty baseball cap dragging a lifeless body from the crushed wreck of a car. After that, Michael only remembers darkness, gloom and cold. Horrible cold. And the light in the dark. A dazzling, glistening light. A bright spot in the dark that he was attracted to as if by magic. But why?

Moaning, Michael gets up and reaches for his forehead. “Odd”, he says to himself, “there is not even a bump on my head”. Michael examines his body for injuries carefully and discovers nothing. No scratches, no blood, no bruises, no broken bones – just his clothes look the worse for wear. Michael remembers the accident, but why is he not injured? “Strange”, thinks Michael to himself, only to discover with horror that he not only has no pain, but obviously feels absolutely nothing. Not even the warming touch of the sun’s rays penetrates through the cracks of the boards in the room. “What is happening here anyway?“ asks Michael and opens the door…

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