Rooms

   As soon as I opened my eyes, I was in fear. I couldn’t see a single thing, as everything surrounding me was pitch black. I could fear the air moving around me and I thought, for a moment, that I had heard some voices. But aside from that, I was there, in the dark, waiting for something. I did not know if I was standing up or lying down. I did not know if I was inside a building or outside. I felt cold, so maybe I was outside. But why was it pitch black? It made no sense at all, or so I thought.

 For a moment, I tried really hard to remember what had happened before. It was obvious that, as a living person, I would have been somewhere before. Or maybe… Maybe I was dead. Maybe this was death and I had just discovered what millions of people had wanted to know for millennia. Maybe death was just staying put for something that may or may not come. At least there was no pain. But that fear, that sense of dread, the one that makes you want to run away from a certain place… Is that death too?

 Then I noticed I had felt the wind earlier. Dead people are not supposed to feel, so maybe I wasn’t dead after all. Maybe someone had condemned me to a prison of darkness, maybe I was just incarcerated in the most horrible jail and I would live the rest of my days in the dark. That thought in my mind made me want to move but I couldn’t. I hadn’t realized it but my body was completely unable to move around. I could move my eyes but that was useless in such a dark environment. There was nothing to do, but wait.

 Of course, that’s easier said that done. It seemed easy to just be there, somewhere, and wait. But one can grow tired of waiting and waiting, without anything coming to you. Besides, darkness is inherently inhuman. As creative beings, we have learned to combat the dark, as we see in it everything that we fear about in the world. We see monsters that are here to kill and eat us, and we see our past failures and shortcomings being displayed over and over, in order to torture with everything that we are.

 I maybe shed a tear or two, I don’t really remember. Trying to think seems to be almost impossible in such a dark space. You don’t even know what you’re doing and when you can’t even see your nose or move around your wrists, it makes it even more surreal and horrible. I wanted to use my voice, to see if someone would come and help me. Maybe there would be no one to do that but at least tell me why I was there, where was I and how had I gotten to such a place. I just wanted to interact with someone else, even if that meant torture or the silent treatment. Anything was better than that.

 Suddenly, I felt myself move. At first, I thought it was something around me or under me, but then I realized it was I. It was me who was moving but I couldn’t really it was me making the orders. I was scared, but I didn’t try to fight it off. My body seemed to glide in the dark, probably looking for something. Then, I heard voices again. The same one I had heard the moment my eyes opened. They seemed distant but I knew they were coming from people or at least from something that could talk.

 Then, light started to flood the place I was in. An aperture had opened in front of me, horizontal in shape. White light was rushing in, as if the gates of a dam had been opened. I covered my eyes, trying to avoid being blinded by such a bright flow of light. I walked slowly, one foot after the other, trying to breathe as calmly as I could. I didn’t want to rush. I was afraid to die at any moment, as everything had been too much for me, just too much. I finally got closer to the light and I realized, I was in control of my own body again.

 I stopped covering my eyes and decided to check myself, my hands, my legs, my feet. Everything seemed just as I remembered it. The only strange thing was that I wasn’t wearing any clothes. Of course, I knew that was uncommon but, for some reason, I did not care at all. I had survived the darkness, the obscurity of who knows how much time. I had felt myself dying or already dead, so who cared about having no clothes on? Maybe there was a reason for that and I had to know what that was.

 So I decided to walk into the light and find out. Every single part of my body was engulfed in white and, for a while, I couldn’t see anything that wasn’t that color. It was so powerful that I couldn’t keep my eyes open. So I closed them tight and tried to navigate, walking like an idiot but knowing I hadn’t seen any objects in front of me before closing my eyes. I have no idea how much time I spent walking like that, but I eventually felt the wind on my skin again, so I decided to open my eyes.

 The light room had been left behind and now I was in something else. It looked like a forest, complete with the tallest trees I had ever seen and the sound of small animals and birds all around me. I even heard a stream passing nearby, and dead leaves being stepped on by several types of creatures. However, something told me that I wasn’t really there or at least not completely. I just knew that forest was just another room, after the one with darkness and the one with blinding light. It made no sense for me to just appear in the forest out of the blue. Nothing made sense.

 However, there was no coming back. I couldn’t see the light room anywhere, I couldn’t see which way I had come through. It was just the forest and I. So I started walking, feeling with my toes the moistness of the ground and the harshness of the rotten tree bark. Walking felt better than being in that dark room trapped inside some sort of prison. At least in that forest, even if it really wasn’t a forest, I could feel a little bit of freedom. When a bird landed near me, I started crying for no apparent reason.

 Watching such a delicate creature made me crumble, so much so that my knees failed and I knelt in the middle of that place, almost by force. I couldn’t stop feeling what I was feeling, I couldn’t stop blaming myself for a bunch of things and excusing myself for others. So many things were going trough my head that it made me feel sick for a moment. And just after a couple of minutes, it all ended in nothing more than a sob. I felt weak and stupid, but I stood up and kept walking towards the stream.

 It was just a small brook coming down from some mountain. The water in it was cold but filled with life. There were fish swimming upstream and plants moving around with no will of their own. It was beautiful too but I knew that I needed to keep moving. It made no sense for me to stay there forever, to just give up on knowing who I really was and why had I been dropped in such a horrible place. For a moment, I thought I would cry once again. But I didn’t because I had grown tired of not being in control.

 It was then, when that thought happened to cross my mind, when a door, a simple wooden door, appeared out of thin air. It stood there, by a tree, as if it had been waiting for me to get to the conclusion that I had gotten to. Fearing no more, I got closer and opened it. A big breath and I was in. I found myself to be in another room, much smaller than the ones before. There was no detail on the floor or the ceiling, only an armchair at the center, with someone sitting on it. I walked around the armchair and swallowed hard.

 It was I. The person sitting in the armchair was me. I had some sort of goggles on and gloves that attached me to the chair. My head was tilted to the right, as if I had fallen asleep. I tried to touch my shoulder, his shoulder, but noticed my hand went through his skin, as if he was made of nothing.

 No. I have to correct myself. It wasn’t him who wasn’t real. It was me. I was the one that had been living a lie and he was the one outside, somewhere else, the actual me trying to do something. But what was that? I would never know. Right then my body started to fade and everything returned to the dark.

Strength

   The pipe had been there all along. It was make of some metal, maybe lead or something similar. I’m not an expert on things like that. I just grabbed it when I had the chance and used it fast against my aggressors. The first one got the blow right in his face. Blood came running down his nose fast and I took advantage of that by hitting him again, this time on the top of his head. He crumbled to the floor, his face rolling backwards and now his head also bleeding profusely. All in a few seconds.

 As for the other guy, he had been somewhere else. After all, he thought his friend was going to have his way with me for a while, so he had gone out and probably smoke a cigarette or have something to eat. He wasn’t worried at all because he knew no one would ever go near that abandoned warehouse. It was a huge thing, with several floors and a lot of rats running around. No decent person would ever enter that place, so it was an obvious hideout for the kind of scum they were. It was their natural habitat.

 However, when he came back, I was waiting besides a hole where a door used to stand. I grabbed the pipe with both hands and struck him several times, until I destroyed his hands. Then, I moved on to his legs and I would have killed him if I hadn’t noticed he had lost consciousness a few moments before I stopped. I didn’t drop my weapon and I didn’t run out instantly. I was still in shock, without any pants on and my underwear tainted in a color I have never liked to see. I started trembling and then the tears came running down.

 I had no control over anything. The pipe finally fell out of my hands and made a tremendous noise but there was no one in the vicinity to notice it. I cried for a while but then realized I needed to get my shit together fast. I checked on the men and they were apparently only knocked out. That was good because if people ever learned about all that had happened there, I wouldn’t want any of them to think I had killed someone. They deserved it though. I wanted to grab that pipe and smash their heads many times.

 But I didn’t. I grabbed my pants and shoes. My socks were so wet from all the puddles on the concrete floor that I had to remove them and put them in one of my jacket’s pockets. I put on the pants, slowly, as it hurt more than I had imagined. I cried a little more, this time because of the pain, and then put on my shoes without tying the laces correctly. I walked towards the exit, coming out of the building into a large courtyard. There were weeds all over, even some bushes. It didn’t take me a long time to find the proper exit from that place. I was soon walking among other citizens, down a commercial street.

 I couldn’t go fast. There was a lot of pain and I was afraid that my pants had already been tainted with blood. So I decided to take off my jacket and put it around my waist. It was a very odd thing to do, because it was morning and it was very cold. But I had no choice. I’d rather freeze to death that let anyone wander what had happened to me. A cop actually crossed my path as I tried to pretend I was just taking a morning stroll. He looked at me, straight into my eyes, but he apparently didn’t see anything of interest.

 I checked my pockets several times but I couldn’t find my wallet, my cellphone or anything that had been there the night before. It was then when I realized that I had no recollection of the events of the preceding night. I probably went out for a drink or something but couldn’t really remember a thing. That neighborhood didn’t look familiar at all and it wasn’t the kind to be close to the place I had recently rented. I mean, my neighborhood was awful but this one was… the opposite.

 There were nice stores and old little ladies buying bread for breakfast. There were happy families walking around and old men having a walk with their dogs. It was all very peaceful and even beautiful in a way. I have to say it scared me even more to be in such a place than in a district as dangerous and filled with scum than mine. And it was weird that those men had taken me near such a place. Maybe they thought no one would think to check on old factories near posh neighborhoods. That could be it.

 I finally found a bus stop that had a small city map on the side. It was very helpful to make me understand that I was practically on the opposite side of the city. No wonder I had never known of such a place. In order to make it to my apartment though, I would have to take a bus or the train but I had no money for that. I saw several people waiting for the bus and the thought of robbing them crossed my mind. I had never been that kind of person but you change a little bit when awful things happen to you.

 It was then when a nice old lady talked to me. I hadn’t even seen her getting close. She asked me if I was feeling okay, because I had a “paper look”, as she said. I assured her I was doing great and that I only needed my bus card but had lost it somewhere. I pretended to check my pockets, which was apparently everything the old lady needed. She told me she could lend me her card and pay for the trip. She said she liked helping people, because so many people used to help her everyday, especially when she went to the supermarket for groceries. She wanted me to be her good action of the day.

 Of course, I didn’t complain. I got in the bus with her, not even knowing if the route would take me anywhere near my home. I forced myself to talk to her all along the ride, even if I had no real interest in doing so. She was very nice but the pain I felt was increasing. For some reason, I felt worse that I had a few moments ago. Maybe those men had done something else to me, something that wasn’t as obvious as what I had noticed from the start. Maybe there was something else that was making me feel ill.

 The lady finally got to her stop and I made myself help her down the bus, only to get back into it. She waved to me as the bus pulled away and I did the same. I was surprised to see such a kind person the very same day I had almost killed two people for doing something awful to me. The world felt insane and I was in the middle of all of it. I was going to sit down in the same seat when I noticed the place I had been was tainted with blood. It wasn’t a lot but it was visible enough. I touched the jacket and it was wet.

 I rang for the bus to stop. Luckily, the next stop was very near and I had to wait only for a moment, which seemed to last forever. When the doors open, I almost burst out of there. I was so fast though, that I tripped in the last step and fell hands first into the ground. Every single person on the bus and around the stop looked at me. It was exactly the thing I had no need for. I stood up as fast as I could and ran away as many people tried to ask how I was feeling and as some were wandering what was all that blood about.

 I walked away as fast as I could, finally stopping in front of a large supermarket. There was a breeze there that made me feel a little bit better. I had no idea where I was but there was no point in staying on that bus with my body leaking blood like crazy. It had finally taken its toll on me, as my body felt completely tired. Using my arms and legs was painful and even thinking about all that was happening was tiring. I tried to move from the railing I was leaning against, but I couldn’t.

 Everything went black in a moment. I had glimpses to people gathering around me and voices saying things I didn’t understand. My body did not respond to me. My brain was working but everything else was going away. Darkness came and it lasted for a while, until I had another glimpse, in a hospital.

 A doctor was pointing at me with a flashlight but I didn’t react to it, as I should. I was too tired to do so. The face on that man looked scared, even a bit surprised. But I wasn’t able to ask why he looked like that. I fell back into the darkness and wouldn’t come out of it for quite a while.

Survival

   Fire blurred my vision every single time I leaned over my right leg to run. It hurt like nothing else had ever hurt me, but I had no choice. Running required me to be agile, not minding what was happening with the rest of my body. Those legs that had carried me around all my life had to work at the top of their game, never minding anything else. I felt the taste of iron in my mouth and my mind seemed to leave my body for a couple of moments, but somehow I moved on through the night, like a wraith between rocks and chopped trees.

 When light finally broke the darkness of the night, there was not much to look at anyway. The fields had been almost carbonized and smoke filled every single corner of the once green and lush environment. I stopped and tried to hear the world around me. My ears were buzzing and my head was turning like crazy but I tried anyway but I couldn’t hear a thing. It was then when I noticed that my leg was in a horrible state, a large part opened and spilling blood all over. However, the pain was not as bad as it was supposed to be.

 I tasted iron again and realized I had bitten my tongue while running. There was blood on my head too but I didn’t touch myself to know where it was coming from. It was urgent to find a place to get the proper help I need because, after all that had happened, I was still alive. They had sent troops after me, I had been strapped to a torture table for days and yet there I was, in the middle of a field that they had apparently abandoned. I started walking once more, trying to find a proper exit to that horrible place.

 I might have wondered through the smoke for several hours. I knew it was still day because there was light but it was very hard to see where the Sun was exactly. I tried to identify it a couple of times but it was absolutely useless. So I moved on, walking through the scorched plains, hoping to find a place to rest for a while. I have to confess I never thought of anyone else during that time, I had only myself in mind. What would I be good for if I died? The only way to help others was if I made it alive to the other side.

 When light began to wane, I found the first untouched trees that I had seen in several days, maybe more. I had no idea how much time had passed since everything had started. But there they were, smelling like smoke, with the tips of their leaves burned, but alive nevertheless. I walked into the forest, with a frankly good mood. No one would enter the forest to only look for me. There was a lot more to do in the world than to go after one person that got away. Maybe they thought nature, or what remained of it, would finish the job and make my bones be food for the ground.

 In the dark, I eventually found something of use. It was a small village, made of about a dozen little houses. It looked like one of those places were people gather when they expect to be mining for something, one of those temporal towns that were built back in the day, when retrieving the remaining minerals was of outmost importance for the world. Now, all those miners and their families worked in the big factories in the cities. The old villages had been left to rot under the sun and the rain and everything else.

 Plants had overrun the place, flowers growing everywhere. The smoke around there was much less dense. I was able to breathe a little bit easier. I walked around and eventually found the little hut that had worked as the doctor’s office. Maybe they hadn’t been able to attract a proper doctor to that remote place, only a nurse or maybe someone that came once every two or three weeks to help as much as they could. As I expected, there wasn’t a lot to use around there but almost nothing was better than nothing at all.

 I cured my wounds with whatever there was around and I was lucky enough to discover a linen closet filled with clean sheets and other fabrics. I cut a large one in order to use as bandages for my wounds. My body felt a little better, especially when I lay down in a cot. There was only the light of the moon, which happened to be almost getting to its fullest state. The beautiful pearl color of its surface, visible past the sheet of smoke, made me think of the past, of simpler times that I had been lucky enough to live.

 I fell asleep, dreaming about things that I remembered but mostly about things I had no idea how to understand. It was obvious that I had begun to forget things. Their attempts to make me less of a human had actually worked, as I didn’t feel like my old self anymore. My dream did not make any sense and everyone in it, or most of them at least, felt as a fabrication of my mind or maybe even someone else’s. It was so disturbing, that I woke up very suddenly, sweating profusely and damning my humanity.

 I realized I had slept much more than I had thought. It was morning already and the sound of birds reached me. For a moment, it seemed very normal. But then I realized there was no way. The plain had been destroyed or at least most of it. It was improbable that wildlife would have found a way to survive the destruction of the war and all other things that had happened. I stood up and went running outside, realizing I was not dreaming at all. There was a bird singing somewhere close, and I wanted to see it. I wanted to remember what a bird looked like, one that was real.

 I walked, slowly, out of the smoky cloud that had covered me for hours, maybe even more time. I seemed to be walking on the edge of the forest. The bird was chirping away, probably flying away slowly. I eventually arrived to a place where the trees began to be shorter and there were more rocks and reddish soil. It was then when I saw the little bird making the noise. It was small, brown in color and a little bit puffy. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was happy and talented and free. That was the most important: free.

 I wanted to go closer, to touch him, at least for a moment. But another sound cut me off from desire. The bird seemed to notice it too because it suddenly stopped singing. It stayed on its branch, silently staring right into a group of trees. Then, suddenly and very fast, a bullet rushed through the air and blew up the bird into oblivion. I saw its feathers fall slowly to the ground. I saw beauty being destroyed just because it was there. I felt enraged but also very much confused. I really didn’t like that at all.

 A group of two men and a woman came from the trees. I had walked back a bit just before, hiding behind the thickest tree I had been able to find. I trembled when I realized who they were: Ravagers. They were mercenaries that captured rebels in order to surrender them in exchange for money or food. Sometimes even more ammo for their guns. They didn’t care at all for the rights of others to live or to think differently. That was all done a long time ago. They had sold their souls for a cheap price.

 The woman grabbed the bird from the ground and did something I only heard, because I couldn’t make myself watch any of it. I only heard the crackling of bones and then laughter. I knew of their sadistic ways, identical to those of the people in power. There was no real difference between them. They had all been complacent in what had happened in the country. In the world, even. I only waited for them to go and they eventually did, walking back into the trees, their voices unable to hurt my ears anymore.

 When I felt better, I decided to go back to the village and grab everything I could find that might be useful. I used an old rag to make a sort of bag and put everything I could inside. I put that ball of stuff almost at the end of a thick stick I had found in the forest, getting ready for my next move.

 That night, I decided to walk in the opposite direction of everything that I had seen the day before. They had been the ones to almost kill me. My legs and feet walked on, hoping to move away from everything that had happened. Nevertheless, deep down, I knew that wasn’t at all possible.