The bridge crossed the gorge in all its
extension. The father stopped the car at one end and head out. He inhaled the
fresh air and walked near the railing of the bridge. There was a big net like
structure to prevent people from falling but the view was just outstanding.
There was a small river below but mainly trees, a big green mat of big and
small trees that covered the valley below. The mother joined him with two small
kids, which seemed to have just woken up. They held their mother’s hands and
were rubbing their eyes with their free hands.
The family stood there for several minutes,
without saying a word. Even the children were silent. Then, a burst of light
and smoke appeared far away, clearly visible from the bridge. The father
inhaled and exhaled without saying anything, only tightening his hand in his
pocket. Then he went back to the car. Mother and children followed. The engine
started and they crossed the bridge fast into the highway beyond. They
travelled without making a single stop. None of them complained or said
anything. They were a family but it really didn’t seem like they were. The kids
kept to themselves, not even playing with one another and just looking through
the window or looking straight, apparently distracted with the flying dust or
the sounds of the car.
Night arrived and the car finally stopped by a
roadside hotel. They paid for one room with twin beds, one for the children and
the other one for the adults. But none of them really slept. They seemed to be
on alert, waiting for something to happen. Every time a car drove into the
hotel parking lot and the lights lit their room, they moved, opening their eyes
again and shaking softly. That was
during the night and during breakfast and a nearby diner things weren’t less
strange. A perky waitress tried to cheer up the kids, given them pancakes with
faces on it, but the kids seemed not impressed and even worried. After they
left, she told everyone that would listen about the weird family that had come
in early, with a lot of money.
Because the waitress had seen the father’s
wallet and the several bills inside it. He even gave her a big tip but all with
that weird face, between worry and boredom. The family kept on travelling by
road until they reached the border with another country. The father and mother
acted then, hugging and smiling as the immigration agents checked their
passports. The mother even bought the kids some chips and candy and the kids
laughed and ran. They all behave like a normal family until the immigration officer
let them pass. An hour later, the car was as silent as it had always been. The
terrain they were crossing at that point was desert with only a few plants to
see and even a couple of rocks every few kilometers.
That night, they didn’t stop driving. The
father didn’t seem to be tired at all, just going on and on, his legs moving
normally and just looking ahead, with a strange look in his face. They finally
reached a big city and parked inside a shopping mall. Going inside, they
suddenly separated. Each kid, mother and father took different directions and
explored the place. The father went to an electronics store and checked out
several computers, TV’s and sound systems. In spite of the money he had, he
only bought a tablet computer. The mother, meanwhile, was in a department store
trying out clothes and shoes. She made the saleswoman bring her so many pairs
of shoes but finally settled for one pair she had seen from the beginning. She
also bought a flowery dress and went out of the store already wearing it. The
little girl went playing to the arcade and his brother entered a pet store and
sat down in front of the many aquariums and fish bowls in one end of the store.
They reunited several hours later. None of
them had eaten anything but when meeting they went straight to the car and
restarted their journey which happened to be a short one. They paid a room for
each in a hotel and stayed there for a week until the secret service and other
agencies got to them. They were arrested and send back to the country they had
fled. There, a hearing was held to read the crimes they were being charged for
but none of them seemed to be interested in the matter. They accused them to
plan a terrorist attack and bomb a power plant that served millions of people
in a large region of the country. Days later, they were presented with a lawyer
and the father only told him to ask him about his story in front of the jury
and the media.
He did exactly that some weeks later and the
father started telling his story. According to him, they were all a family. He
knew it didn’t seem like it but it was true. He told everyone his family had
been living a quiet life in a ranch not far from the bridge they had crossed to
escape. They were happy and didn’t harm everyone. True, with no other relatives
nearby and believing in homeschooling, they hadn’t really made many
acquaintances. One night, he claims, their home was raided by men claiming to
be the military, saying they suspected the home was used as a laboratory to
make drugs. They apparently arrested them and took them to a military facility
were they were tortured. Not only the two adults, but also the children.
The father stopped his story there and asked
if his wife could tell the rest. The judge agreed and the woman stepped up to
her seat, not even looking at her husband as he grabbed a seat with their
lawyer. She told them they noticed the place was underground, as they never saw
any sunlight when being kept down there. She looked at the judge and told him
they began another round of tortures, much more medical and even scientific.
She had no idea how to explain it but she assured that they had been probed and
tested several times. It was then when they all began to feel detached, not a
family anymore.
The hearing was stopped them because of the
time and rescheduled for a later date, the week next to that one. During that
pose, something happened that made the media really pay attention to the case
and stop saying they were all acting because their adoration of terrorism had
made them insane. The children were held in a facility for abandoned youth.
They were being watched at all times but it was too late when, one night, the
cop that was in charge of them arrived in the room and realized the little boy,
maybe seven years of age, had committed suicide. His sister was three beds
away, asleep or so he thought. The boy had planned it all because he knew he
wasn’t going to be normal ever again.
When the trial resumed, the girl was put on
the stand. She didn’t cry when asked about her brother’s death. Actually, she
seemed no to feel anything. It was as if she was made of stone. She told the
jury she had been with her parents when they decided to escape the facility
they had been held in. Somehow, they were all faster, stronger and much more
intelligent than when they were abducted from their home. Something had been
done to them that had rendered them better but less of a family. They used
these abilities to kill several people and escape. In a matter of minutes, they
used the militaries weaponry to make a large bomb and they activated it with a
remote control. The facility happened to be beneath a power plant and they had
not known they had destroyed it too. They just wanted revenge.
But as the days passed, they realized revenge
served no one. Something else had been done to them, much worse than any of the
tortures. Somehow, in their minds, they didn’t feel any love or care for any of
their relatives. It was, they described it, as looking at someone they had
never seen in their life but no one else was there to help them so they united. It didn't mattered who they were as long as they weren't doing mean things to them. They felt there was something,
but not enough to make them a family again. The father stated they had stayed
in that hotel for a wheel in order for the police and others to finally catch
them. Escaping was not their plan all along.
People were divided on their opinions about
the case. The owners of the power plant demanded justice to be done for the
deaths of several of its workers and the military were rumored to release a statement
soon. But none of those things were necessary not mattered. One morning, all
remaining suspects, about to be convicted for the death penalty, were dead. The
father had cut his throat with a cutter he stole from one of the guards. The
mother took several pills she grabbed from the purse of a woman in the court
room and the girl drowned herself in a tub.
No one ever knew anything about them. Where
they had come from or what had really happened to them, nor where they had gotten all the money the police had found with them in the hotel.But it wasn’t
important. They had been killed by guilt, by pain, because they realized their
lives would never be the same without their family united.
