Cleaning up

   When he finished cleaning the place up, he lit up a cigarette and decided to take a nice deserved break. He did need to go and throw all that was still stained with blood, but he knew he had time to do it in a moment. After all, the crime was already solved and everyone involved had gotten some kind of closure after such a horrible event. So, he cleaned the murder scene and allowed the owners of the property to sell the house or at least attempt a sale. It was always difficult to pass such a property on to someone else, but it was feasible and people knew they had to try and do it in order to move on and close their wounds.

 Fred was the guy police hired to do the cleaning up. He was very well known for being the first one to offer a top-notch service, never denying a service, no matter how horrible the murder scene was. He was known to have cleaned a whole room splashed with brain and skull fragments after a bunch of people from a suicidal cult had decided to shoot themselves before the police could get them for selling child pornography. He did it all by himself, using many types of liquids and concoctions to properly remove the traces of blood and other body fluids, as well as the foul stench of death that could really linger for a long time.

 He was also known for working by himself. Many people always worried about him not been able to do it in the time they wanted him to do it, but he always did the work in the time they had agreed on and he even noticed construction or design flaws that other experts could fix on a house. Fred even saved some precious objects from destruction, by taking care of them, always thinking that every family would love to keep something from the person that had left them, if it had happened in their house. And if it hadn’t, he was always very good at finding evidence that could have been ignored at first sight.

 Besides all of that, the man was cheaper than the competition and his clients really loved that part of his business. Of course, his main employer was the police department, but even them had to use other services sometimes, in order not to look as if they had a preference for him of any kind. He understood that very well and just kept working on other crime scenes and also fixing houses that needed his attention, although he really liked working after something horrible had happened somewhere, because he felt he could help bringing that place into a better place, he could even make people feel better and less afraid.

 When he finished smoking, he pressed the cigarette against a plank of wood and then threw it into one of his garbage bags. He put in the piece of wood to and walked down the stairs to put it all in his car. The afternoon was almost over and he needed to get to the landfill before they closed. He could sell some of the things he had found in the room he had cleaned for good money, things that a family would not like to save but that he could take advantage of.

 He was able to get there just in time and, after selling some objects to the operator, Fred went back to his place: it was a tiny apartment above a pizzeria, near downtown. The place was old and rather unpleasant if one considers the smell of anchovies, but he got used to it. Besides, he didn’t really need that much room to live, as he lived by himself. The only other living being in his apartment was a cat called Pineapple. He was fat, had yellowish fur and the hairs on his head seemed to always be working independently from the rest of his body. So, the name had been chosen perfectly, the moment Fred had met him in a crime scene.

 He suspected he had been owned by a girl who had been killed with his parents by a burglar, but he didn’t know for sure. He asked the police if he could keep the cat and no one seem to mind. From that moment on, the cat was named Pineapple and it often sat by the window, looking at the fishery on the other side of the street. The funny thing was that he could actually go there and eat it if he wanted, but he never left the apartment. He was just one of those creatures that one never understands, no matter how long you try to make sense out of its existence. A very human animal, in that sense.

 Fred had never married and had never felt the urge of having children. He did like women and he did like children but all of that didn’t really fit with his work and his work was the one thing that actually made him feel good. He had discovered the job later in life, after been fired from his workplace and then wondering around for years, from one menial job to the other, lasting six months at most in each one of those assignments. His parents never approved of his lifestyle and they eventually stopped talking to him in a frequent basis, deciding to only contact him during the holidays or when they felt it was necessary.

 The last time he had talked to them was when his grandmother Libby had died from old age. Libby was one of those adorable older women, the kind who love to be pampered but also enjoy saving parts of their old lives all around their house. He was the one in charge of cleaning up her house, before it was put for sale in order for his parents and her other children to profit from it. He felt awful helping them doing that to her, but it wasn’t as if he had a choice. They didn’t listen, they just said things to him and he was expected to comply. He tried to rebel against that but decided not to try ever again, as it never led anywhere.

 He found Pineapple’s bowl there, as she had owned several cats herself but they had all died because she overfed them. He did find a couple of dead cats around the house, but they had died such a long time ago that the smell was not a problem. He also kept a nice picture of her and his grandfather and also a beautiful pair of shoes she had kept in a secret storage section of the house, that no one had ever noticed before he cleaned up the place. He also found some of her secret savings and a couple of jewelry items he could sell at any price.

 But he never did. He thought it was all too precious and selling it would devaluate everything. So, he kept the shoes and the jewelry in his closet and put all the money he found into a bank account that he promised himself only to use if his financial problems ever got as the ones in his past. But thanks to his cleaning business, that was almost impossible. It wasn’t that he was rich or anything of the sort, but he had always been very careful with money, despite being horribly unlucky when trying to find employment. He was one of those people that really only need money to live but they find no actual joy in having any.

 His flat was very modest, his cat was second-hand and clothes had never been a concern of his. His loves were doing his job and walking around beautiful parts of the country, in those moments he allowed himself to go on vacation and enjoy himself a little bit. Fred did feel a bit sad to realize that he didn’t really have anyone to share those experiences with, but understood that not every single person in the world was meant to be in a relationship. It was one of many things he had learned in the cleaning business and working with deceased people.

 Everyone makes such a fuss about life and death and about what you own and who you share it with and so on and Fred found all of that to be utter stupidity. He just wanted to feel that he could accomplish something, no matter how small, and that was it. He didn’t need to fill his life with a bunch of things that he didn’t really need it. He even tried finding new hobbies and passions and it did work, with some things, but it he was always back to work on time and he always very attentive of his tiny apartment and his cat. The top priorities never changed and some people thought that indicated that he was sad or depressed.

 And, although he did feel a bit lonely sometimes, he enjoyed his life thoroughly. He didn’t care for having more or changing something from what he knew. He felt great about it and had realized that he didn’t need any more from life. He didn’t even understand why some people demanded so much just because. He had his things, his little joys, and that was enough for a man like Fred.

Fortune favors the bold

   Every piece had fallen exactly in the place she had wanted. Every single one of them represented something she had been looking to achieve for a long time and now, she was finally able to reach every single goal she had ever wanted to attain. She was merely hours away from all of it and the only thing she could do was looking at her laptop and then at the city from her balcony and then again to the screen, where everything should appear at the right time.

 She had decided to be alone for that moment. The idea had never been to share this monumental achievement with anyone else, but to celebrate it alone in a very personal way. She had a bottle of her favorite champagne at hand, her most comfortable and loved clothes on and she was in the most private place she could ever be able to get to: her own home. Everything was just as she wanted and she had insisted on disappearing for that night, avoiding people constantly in order to have a few hours all to herself.

 It’s not like she was going to party hard until the next day came. She was not as young as she was when everything had started and, even if she felt younger, she had never been one to do that sort of thing. She had achieved her goals because she had been so focused, taking care of every single thing from the moment she had decided she would stop being the person she was during her youth and start her transformation into the woman she really wanted to be. It would take time but it would all be very much worth it.

 And it was. The sole feeling of being there, in that beautiful apartment, nestled in the mountains, with such an amazing view of her preferred city in the world, could not be topped by anything. She had everything she had always wanted: not only objects such as clothes and jewelry or furniture and the proper décor, but also things that no one could never buy with money. Things that only experience and intelligence could teach a person their worth and the real position that every single thing and person had to have around them.

 She had been patient and very controlling of it all, and it was worth it. Only minutes away from the awaited time, she poured some of the champagne into a tall glass and opened a box of fresh strawberries that she had picked up herself from a local farmers market. The smell was sweet and luscious, the perfect thing to go with the night she was having. She felt as if tears would start coming down her face in any minute, but she had also learned how to prepare for that: just open her eyes wider, smile and let the waves of good energy enter her body. When the clock on her laptop struck the hour, a shower of pyrotechnics covered the city.

 Champagne disappeared in a moment. She poured herself another glass and then another one after that. She saw the bright lights over the city and felt as she had never felt before. It was then tears begun pouring down her face and she didn’t bother to wipe them out or do anything about them. She wanted to cry and scream and to whatever she wanted because, when time had come, she became who she had always wanted to be and it was something that had never been guaranteed, so it was an understandable reaction.

 She remembered how, in her first years in the company she now ran, many people had tried to make her feel as if she didn’t belong there. They made comments very often, about her parents and her siblings, about their house and her clothes and a truth they claimed to be irreplaceable: that no girl from a background like the one she had would ever be able to achieve anything in such a competitive world. Everyone was against her and she had to take it all with patience and care, always thinking about the future.

 Every time they slammed her with horrible words, she would deflect them with indifference and, with time, she learned to outwit them at every turn, making them feel that the girl they had seen coming into their company was not the same they were standing in front of years later. She became much more certain of her choices and even dared to share her past life with no regrets whatsoever. Contrary to her enemies’ beliefs, she gained a strong following because of that choice. People regarded her as a true beacon of light to look up to.

 Power could be gained easily, or so she thought, if she followed her well thought plan from the beginning. That had started years before, when she had decided to save for school doing horrible and menial jobs. But she got to the point where she could study and also work, and she did. By the time her bosses understood she could not be so easily “taken care of”, she was almost untouchable because of the support of the people that worked under her. They knew that if she left, they would leave after her and sink the company in the blink of an eye.

 That power grew exponentially until she made it to the top ranking of the company. She made it to the board of directors before she turned forty years old and, by then, most of her competition had either died out or moved on to other endeavors. She ultimately took over completely and then, it was impossible to pretend she hadn’t achieved something that seemed impossible. The former owner was still there, but she had become the face of the company they had owned for so many years and there was no way they could live without her. And she knew it very well, even if her plan still had some stages to be accomplished.

 The night of New Year’s Eve, the one when she celebrated with champagne on the balcony of her elegant home, she fifty-six years old. She had effectively ended her plans, the ones she had designed from the age of fifteen. She had executed every single stage of the whole thing and she celebrated the fact that she had won. No one in the planet could argue with her that, after so many years, she had been the one to come on top and not him. Not Anthony Klein Volker, the man that was supposed to own all of it once his father died.

 Anthony was her prime target and the one she really wanted to get with all of her scheming and plotting. Of course, Lavinia and Arthur, Anthony’s siblings, could not be left out of it all. And not his mother Clara either, or his father Jonathan. None of them were going to be left alone until she got what she wanted and, what she really wanted more than anything in the world, was to have every single thing that belonged to them: every property, all the money, their precious company, their transports and even their pets. She wanted it all.

 And although most people loved her for being who she was and became, some hated her. Most of them sided with the Klein Volker’s because they had business with them or because they knew the truth and were the kind of people that hated when someone brings out the shit that has stained the carpet and is making everyone ask themselves why there’s such an awful smell in the room. Of course, they knew, she could clearly see that in their eyes when they tried to scare her out of making one of her bold moves.

 But she moved. She moved because Anthony had been the one that had assaulted her one night, after he had seen her in one the company’s open picnics for children in need. The oldest of the Klein Volker’s raped her and his father Jonathan, instead of vomiting when he saw what his son had done, he rewarded him with objects and ordered the girl to vanish, forcing her into a life of prostitution, a life she would never be able to leave. They thought she was weak and that she could be punished into compliance, shutting her mouth forever.

 And she did, for a while. She did work as a prostitute and saved money that way. Then she got another job and then another and she started school and education became her best weapon against everything that had ever happened to him. When they saw him, they didn’t recognize her at first.

 But, after a while, they did. But it was too late to say or do anything. She had them right where she wanted them and she claimed revenge in a myriad of ways, in every single one of them because they all knew what had happened and had all collaborated in her destruction. Yet, fortune favors the bold.

Cape Horn

   The island had seemed so close, just a few minutes away from us. But the sea could never be trusted in that region. The weather changed in seconds and we were suddenly in the middle of gigantic waves and the most terrible wind anyone had ever experienced. We were prepared though; we had been doing calculations in order to properly avoid the disastrous things that could happen in that sector of our journey. But one thing is what you expect and one very different is the one that you get.

 The storm was fierce and seemed almost sentient, as if nature had no intention of letting us pass through. We were close and also so very far from our target and it felt almost like cruelty towards us that we were not being let to land on the island or to continue our journey. We wanted to set foot there but if that wasn’t happening, we could have scrapped it from our itinerary. But if we couldn’t pass to the other side, if we couldn’t reach the other side of the continent, shame would befall us back at home.

 We had sailed several weeks ago, promising to be successful. Many others had already done it in the past and we wouldn’t be breaking records or anything like that, but our small town was one proud of its seafaring history and we really wanted every single neighbor and friend to be proud of us. Besides, we were still very young in comparison to most sailors, so that was a thing we could play for the media, if we were successful. But first we had to overcome nature and she wasn’t letting us do what we intended.

 Wet and tired, still trying to make our yacht change course every two minutes, I remembered training with the group for months. Some did think we were idiots for attempting to do the journey, instead of just going to college and get a degree on something useful. Small town people don’t often care about dreams or things that are beyond themselves, they just want young people to know their place fast in order to keep the order and move along. They want some degree of tranquility and we weren’t there for it.

 What we wanted was to make something in life that would make us special or at least memorable. We all knew very well that our lives would probably not amount to much. After all, we came from a lost town in a place no one really cared about and we didn’t have money or fame to make us different, because that’s what makes people stick out in this world. We just wanted to do something that could make us proud in the future when we would have boring jobs that don’t pay well or we get to form families that we don’t really know how to envision from this young age.

 It was hard to explain it to them and that’s why we had to do everything by ourselves. The boat had been lent to us by a guy who had actually circumnavigated the globe several times. He was really interested in our story and came to help and train us. He even wanted to come with us but his doctor forbid it because of his health problems. He never really told us what was wrong with him but it was obvious it was quite serious. After we trained, he would often seat alone for ours, just staring at something in the horizon.

 His training was rough. He made us do in a few months what all sailors have to learn in years. He tried to make us understand the passion that makes a sailor become in love with the ocean and he taught about so many other things that relate to navigating, like the lives of marine creatures and many legends that had been told to him on his journeys around the world. It was amazing to listen to him and really feel that he loved what he did. His passion made us feel that what we were about to do was not crazy or stupid.

 Our parents and other friends did tell us that several times. Even journalists from small radio stations and television channels that came the day we departed, asked us if we were insane to do what we were going to do. And we all laughed and joked and just shrugged it off because there was nothing that they could say that would derail us from doing what we intended to do. It was already something that we had in our heads, deep in there, and it couldn’t be moved, changed or destroyed. We had to do it.

 Some were sad the day we left but not because they felt regret but because they missed some of the guys and girls that had decided not to go with us. Many did, almost half of the initial group to be honest. But I think we understood where they were coming from, because it’s not so easy to say that you’re leaving and don’t even know if you’re coming back. Because the trip is not about us and our skills as sailors, it’s about the world that we live in, the kind of people we may find and nature’s relentless struggle to be all-powerful.

 It was nice though, to feel the wind in one’s hair and sniff the salty air all around. That first day and first night were the pinnacle of many of our lives. We felt like adults, like really fully adults, for the first time since we had graduated high school. We felt like men and women capable of doing things that no one expected from us. Everything around us and our senses told us that this had been the right idea all along. We were right and we were going to prove to every single person in the world that no one can be taken for granted for any reason. We had our chance to prove them all wrong.

 We stayed in that storm for two whole days. Rations were beginning to go scarce but we had a good person managing that, in order to resist for at least two more days. We were even thing about going back to the last port and just try some other day, but going back also proved to be very difficult. In every direction, waves were beginning to grow larger and larger, the sky was always grey and the wind pushed the boat in the opposite direction. It was almost impossible to be sane in such a situation.

 We decided we couldn’t stop, we couldn’t just give up. Pushing through was the only way we were going to move on to something else. So we checked the equipment, we confirmed it on the outside and we pressed on. The idea was to go through the storm and then head straight to the nearest port in the coast. It would be a very small town, but that seemed suitable for a group of people that came from a very similar place. Actually, we were all looking forward to the kind of hospitality only given in such places.

 Everyone performed admirably, as if they had done this all of their lives. They were all essential in make the boat go through the toughest waves and pulls and pushes of the wind. We risked our lives and we did feel death looming close by. But we couldn’t back down in that moment. We had to push through once and again and again, until we could finally rest and leave that horrible storm behind. For a moment there, it was almost certain that we would die and it seemed we were ready for it, like never before.

 But nature suddenly seemed to feel kind and generous. The waves started shrinking and the wind also calmed down a bit. A hole through the clouds opened and we could see the sun, shining brightly over our tired heads. And then, very close once again, we saw Horn island. It felt so close again and we were tempted to try and land there but we decided against it. We couldn’t let the storm trap us there. So we decided to salute the island and move on up the coast, towards something more certain.

 The people on the village we docked in were extremely nice and friendly. They gave us food and even let us use their washing machines for our laundry. We were going to sleep in the boat but they also insisted we should all sleep in nice beds that night, so that’s what we did.

 We ended up staying there for four days, after fixing some problems with our ride. Then, we said goodbye and moved on to the next port. We would go north and then on to the open ocean again, to cross the Pacific. We were still a long way from home and we were very thrilled about it.