Memories with sauce

   As the water began to bowl, I opened the pasta packet and dropped it all inside. I was eating alone, but I felt hungry and also felt like not having to excuse myself if I wanted to eat a bit more than usual. I turned to the fridge and grabbed my favorite pasta sauce. I would mix it with vegetables and cheese, in order to turn my meal into a needed relaxing time. I really needed to stop thinking about all the things around me and just, for once, enjoy myself having a nice plate of hot and hearty food.

 The pasta softened fast and my sauce started boiling in no time as well. I had chopped onions, peppers, carrots and mushrooms, as well as a big eggplant that I had found in my fridge and didn’t remember buying at the store. It all went into the sauce and I decided to wait for everything to be just perfect. I grabbed my phone, and browsed through happy pictures of people, some traveling and some others with their children and getting married or celebrating something with, apparently, thousands of people somewhere nice.

 I rarely had any time to go on holidays, so I always wondered how the hell they did it, how was it that they earned a very decent living and, at the same time, had so much time to do nothing. Getting a job had taken me forever and it was not now that I would attempt to lose it only to go frolicking in the waves of some beach in an Asian country. I sure was jealous of what they had, but not at every single moment of my life. It was just when I browsed those stupid pictures and also when I felt not so high on myself.

 The pasta had to be ready then. I grabbed my plastic strainer and took all the water out from it. When it was good and dry, I put it back into the pot. No moment left to think, I grabbed the other pot with the sauce and pour it all over my pasta. Looking at those delicious chunks of deliciousness was enough to make me feel very happy again. I forgot about the stupid pictures I had seen and decided to only dedicate the rest of that day to the delicious food I was making and also going to eat.

 I stir it all good and even put on some butter on it, in order for the pasta not to stick to anything too much. As I moved my food around, the smell of it all reminded me of better times or at least easier ones. I remembered the food that was served to me in the cafeteria, at school. I especially remembered taco day. The tacos were not even that good but the rush of having such an uncommon food in school was enough to make me feel happy. It even made the food taste so much better. I would ask the lady for more and more, until she had to tell me that others also wanted to eat tacos.

 Fat was something I never really was but I did get a bit chunky in high school. I think it was because I would rather completely avoid any physical exercise. I ate like any kid does at that age, tacos were an exception. What I really hated was physical education and how the teachers were always so happy and positive in those courses. It was really unnerving how fucking happy they were to play anything or to make us run around the whole school. It was almost like some sort of boot camp, at least in their minds.

 As I served myself a big bowl of pasta, I realized I was smiling from ear to ear. Apparently, remembering school was causing me some kind of pleasure, which was very strange because I didn’t really have any nice memories from that time in my life. I was a very average student, I even had to do one year all over again. Making friends seemed like the world’s hardest task and I also felt it was just futile because I kept failing horribly when trying to get to know people, and kids are tough as nails when they want to be.

 I smiled though. I sat down on my two-seat dinner table and turned on the TV in order to feel some company in the apartment. It was one of those things most lonely people do in order not to feel they are going completely insane. I left it on some animal channel, were dogs seemed to be misbehaving and a man was trying to get them to be nicer. I didn’t pay much attention to it, preferring to get back to my teenage years and explain to myself why I had been smiling before. The answer was pretty simple.

 As strange as it may be, I realized I really liked myself back then. What I mean is that I love how I did some things in that time. Sometimes we recall are youth and have second thoughts about everything, but I had just realized I didn’t or at least not about that whole segment in my life. I loved that I had the balls to just not go to some of my PE classes, I’m glad I stood my ground and just pretended to go to the bathroom and instead sitting down on the library in order to enjoy myself in a more personal way.

 Yes, the teachers caught a couple of times and I got in trouble with my parents because of that but it was worth it. Because I was building myself, I was building this man and everything could have been different if I had forced myself to do the things I didn’t want to do. Some people don’t understand that doing things that you don’t like is only good when it makes sense and not when the only thinks that it causes is that just start disappearing, you stop being yourself and instead you become this copy, a bad one probably, of some else who’s not even that interesting to begin with.

 The dog show has ended and now it’s a cat show. Every single piece of vegetable in the sauce is just right, beautifully seasoned and with a taste that would make any Italian mother and grandmother proud. It fills my heart and my soul that I had the good idea to make something that delicious in a moment when I really needed to feel comforted. It cannot be all about responsibilities in life; we have to learn how to have fun and how to make ourselves feel good when we need to. That’s the only way we can survive.

 The only really bad thing about those times and my life in general, is that I never really had what it took to make friends or get to know people properly. Sure, I did call some people friends during high school and also in college. Even now, I call some of the people I work with “friends”. But I know the word is probably too big for our relationships. I know that friendships are built of much stronger materials and that they should at least last for a couple of years in order to be considered real friendships.

 So, in that sense, the amount of friends I have is alarmingly low. And again, I put the blame on me. I lack what it takes to be a really good friend and I have to confess I don’t really know what it is that makes you that. Even in high school, I failed horribly at trying to make connections with people. Sure, I had “friends” but once we parted ways after college started, people disappeared in seconds because we stopped having something in common. Only being in school made us feel similar and much more is needed.

 I think that is my only regret, not trying hard enough to be a better friend or just trying to figure out what people look for when they are looking for a friend. Well, for starters I guess people don’t really “look for” friends, they just happen to get some as any normal human being. Damn, I guess most people don’t put so much pressure on the whole business to start with. But, again, if I didn’t think too much about things, I just wouldn’t be me. And what would be the point then, if it’s not the real me looking for those friends?

 The past filled my soul and body. I learned the recipe from my mom and I thanked her for that later that day. But after eating, I sat there at the dinner table, thinking about my memories from school. The people I had hated for being so easy going, the likely friendships lost because of that.

 I grabbed my cellphone and look around some of the apps. I finally found the name I was looking for and started texting with him. After a few minutes, I asked if he could come by my house or if he wanted to have a drink. No idea if a friendship is possible there but at least I’m willing to try.

Our necklaces

   The necklaces came in different colors. Actually the only choice we had in the whole matter was to choose the color of our liking. Of course, we couldn’t make that choice the moment we were born. But once we grew to be five years old, they accepted our requests for colors. That way, kids would compare their necklaces in school and change them every few months during the puberty. When that was done, the change was done every two years, in order to download some content and replace it if it was needed.

 Nobody really remembered when the necklaces were put into place. Some say, the reason we don’t know the exact date is because they have wiped out our brains of memories. Not all of them, of course, but the ones that are important to the government. They say the necklaces are there to ensure our safety and, to be fair, even top officers use them. Of course, theirs are much more beautiful than the normal ones, some even made of different materials and adorned with jewels or other beautiful things. But in the end, same as ours.

 It has been like this for a long time and we just live alongside the whole thing. Our necklaces record our daily lives and all of that is passed on to the government in order to decide who is loyal and who is not. We are taught that’s a good thing because we cannot have rebellious people around. The yare the ones that could hurt us the most and they sometimes do. The explosions and attacks that happen sometimes are all of their doing and its because they don’t want us to keep living like this.

 To them, this system is wrong and we are also wrong because we let it exist. But the truth is that most of us don’t make our lives being like this at all. We just wake up in the morning and then go to work and then comeback to our families, like every single person has done for thousands of years. The necklaces don’t make any difference in our lives; it’s just an accessory that we have to carry from the moment we are born to the moment of our death. Not more than that and we accept it.

 Rebels, people say, are people that want everything to be as it once was. We are taught in school that the world was chaotic in the past, filled with war and poverty and hunger. We don’t have any of that to today and we fail to realize why some people would like all of that to come back. Back in the past, people fought for everything that we have now, so why would we even remotely agree with a rebel that just wants us to fight and fight and fight, with no end in sight? They are crazy people and they have to be detained by the government, the only ones that actually care about us.

 Once a year, there are public showings of a movie shot by drones that fly away to other areas of the world. Our country is large and prosperous but some others were actually destroyed in the wars of the past. They want us to see all of that for ourselves because the truth is more important than anything. The footage is always different but the message is always the same: we cannot keep rising because when people do that, other people, less fortunate people, suffer all of the consequences. And that’s what happened.

 None of us remember the wars. None of us remembers when the bombs were dropped from the skies and from the blackness above us. What we do know for sure is that some of the people, those that survived to create the government, they hid for years in deep caves, eating only canned goods. Nowadays, we have all the fruits and vegetables that we would ever need. We don’t buy them, because they are delivered to our houses and distributed equally among the populace. We don’t have to suffer anymore.

 Rebels, apparently, say that the government keeps most of the food for themselves. But they don’t understand that we don’t really care. Because we are able to eat what we want, we can ask for it and it will be delivered. Only a few things are commonly rejected and it’s due to the low amount of some resources. But we understand that. We have learned that oil and coal and so many more things became almost extinct after the wars. So we have learned not to ask for any of that. Actually, we have mostly replaced it all.

 Complaining and complaining. Not wanting to fit into a society. That’s what’s wrong with those people, with those rebels. They just don’t want every single one of us to be happy. They want to create chaos because they are the kind of people that love to kills others and see the world burn. They do what they do because the amount of order in this world makes them mad. They cannot bare to think that we have peace, that we finally have a world in which we can be ourselves, just by giving up a little bit.

 And yeah, we do. We give the government access to our lives; we keep our necklaces because we have agreed to live in peace with everyone and everything else. And they cannot understand it, they are furious every single day because a bomb hasn’t killed a whole family or a soldier has not been slaughtered with a knife. They find chaos amusing and they thrive in it, as if they were flowers fed with blood. Deadly flowers that have nothing pretty about them, they are only poisonous and looking to kill us all, slowly. Rebels are that type of scum and we don’t want them here.

 Sometimes, not too often, a billboard is raised to announce the number of rebels leaving the country to be sent to a specialized facility where the government can take care of their kind. Some people say its located on one of the caves that our ancestors used after the war. Some others say it’s an island just a few kilometers from the capital city. Well, of course most of us don’t know where it is or what it’s like because we are not rebels and we haven’t done anything to deserve that kind of punishment.

 The idea is that rebels are stripped of their ideas there and then the yare sent back to the country, in order to be valuable members of our society. Most of us think that’s a great idea but we know it doesn’t happen very often. The few times the military makes raids, they kill all of the country’s enemies and we celebrate it by applauding for a whole minute at home. We do it to make our boys and girls in uniform for their fantastic job. Without them, it is quite possible that the world would be lost.

 It’s not common to see one of those rebels that have become a member of the community once more. They are rarely seen in the cities and, people say, they are mostly used in the large farms that feed all of us daily. It must be a nice change of pace, from carrying weapons and killing people, to milk cows and planting rice in the fields. Maybe they don’t deserve it, or maybe they don’t, but the government gives them a chance and that’s a lot more than they deserve, that’s for damn sure.

 We also partake in an event called the Games, every four years. In the Games, we face each other in different sports. The idea is that every single member of society should have an ability to exploit. The Games are most important for teenagers; because that’s the way they find out what their jobs will be in the future. Adults participate too, but it’s more like training and a gathering of different people to share experiences and get to know one another. It’s not something we do a lot and its fun sometimes.

 Something curious is the moment we loose our necklaces, when they are being replaced for one reason or the other. It is then when we all change a bit. It is a very short moment, a glimpse in time. But we all react differently when we are disconnected from our government. It is a very peculiar thing.

 Some of us scream, as if we were staring at a monster. Some other start crying profusely and others even laugh their heads off for a few seconds. We all do something. Or at least most of us. They are some, not many, that do not react to loosing their necklace. They don’t move or make a noise. They just wait.

Trip to the city

   The smell of books was overwhelming but soothing at the same time. The rows and rows of books stacked to the ceiling, stood there still forever, as the sunlight came in through the big windows and caressed different parts of them. It was a beautiful place that seemed to be miles away fro many sound that could be caused in the world. Only a very low-pitch murmur could be heard, caused by people flipping pages or gently breathing as they immersed themselves into the worlds described in their books.

 Martina walked towards the center of the gigantic room and tried to appreciate the beauty of the place from there. Sadly, it could not be done. It was way too big and with many hallways and corners to see it all at once. So she walked to a metal staircase instead and ascended to the second level, which had been built all around the edge, enabling views over the first floor were people were granted access to the library and the books. The view from there was much better but there was still a lot to explore.

 However, Martina was not there to explore the place. She was there to look for a specific book. She had the name of it in a small piece of paper she had in her pocket, given to her by her father. He needed it in order to complete a paper he was writing for the university he worked on. It was only to check some facts and maybe give a bit more of information to the reader. He had sent his daughter to this mission because she wasn’t doing much at home, as the summer holidays had recently begun.

 At first, she thought it would be very boring to go to a library. After all, they were not known to be the best places to have any kind of fun. Besides, she had to walk to the metro station and then take the train to downtown and then walk once more, this time towards the library building. It was quite a trip from her home. Such a long trip it was that, her father, had given her some money to pay herself some lunch after she had grabbed the book. However, he had asked for her to come home “as soon as possible”.

 That was all before she had seen the beauty of the place, of its main room at least. Because, according to a sign outside of the main door, there were lots of different rooms, further divided in sections. She had entered the largest one but the truth was that she had no idea if the book she was looking for was there. Martina had just been pushed inside by a feeling that she had the moment she saw the very tall windows and the sun entering in the most beautiful way. It took her a while to realize that she had a mission to accomplish and that her father was waiting for him back at home.

 She descended the metal staircase and almost ran towards the main counter. It was obviously not a thing people should do because a couple of people raise their heads only to look at her disapprovingly. Martina slowed down and almost tiptoed the rest of the way. When she got to the counter, she waited for one of the ladies that worked there to notice her. As she did, she saw a weird looking kid come into the room and walk straight into a dark corridor to the left. He was wearing strange clothes and what looked like makeup.

 One of the ladies interrupted the moment and Martina just passed her the piece of paper her father had written on. The woman moved her glasses a bit, as if she needed to make out what she was reading. The woman did not say a word and Martina had no idea what to say. There was a very uncomfortable silence, and that’s was in a place were silence is pretty much the norm. The woman then turned around and started using a computer, probably looking for the book’s location in the massive collection of the library.

 Again, Martina had time to turn around and look at the rows and rows of tables, where people were reading and trying to study. It was kind of amazing how some of them were reading only one book, in some cases one of the most popular novels in existence, and how others had a huge stack of them next to their main read or a laptop. Martina smiled because places like those were almost extinct at it was nice to see that they kept going on, no matter what happened with life and technology in the world.

 The woman came back from her computer and told Martina that book was a very unique exemplary and that a special permit had to be granted. Martina started getting worried but the woman asked her if it was possible for her to call her father, who they would talk to in order to make the permit that morning. Martina grabbed her cellphone and called him, passing him on to the lady. They talked for a long time, which wasn’t very nice for Martina, as she was already getting hungry and her cellphone battery was not eternal.

 When the woman finished, she told Martina that her father would have to talk to the manager of the library too. They were kind of doing that right then, so she would have to wait for a while until the permit was approved. When Martina was about to ask how much time that would take, the lady only said “In an hour” and started talking to another person. Martina was a bit surprised by that attitude but decided to make the best of it and have something to eat before coming back for the damn book. She was already thinking of a big subway sandwich when she noticed the kid she had seen before.

 He was coming out of the dark corner he had entered. Martina now noticed he was wearing something resembling a cape. He apparently felt her eyes on him because he stared for a bit, until she decided to move on and walk out of the building. The kid passed her on the stairs outside and almost ran down the street. Martina stayed there for a bit, both because she was thinking about where the subs place was located but also wondering what that kid’s deal was. He looked very suspicious and way too young to be that.

 She remembered the place was only one block away, so she walked slowly and enjoyed the sun hitting her head. She noticed then that the library was a bit colder than the outside, probably because of all the marble and other stones that had been used for the construction of the building. As she got near the restaurant, Martina tried to remember if she had ever been inside the library before, but she somehow could not remember. It was as if accessing those files in its head was not possible.

 Inside the restaurant, Martina bought one of the biggest subs, with everything on it. She asked for the spicy sauce and potato chips with tomato flavor as a side. Instead of soda, she asked for an iced tea. After paying, she took her tray to a small table by the window and sat down there to have a view of the people passing by and the sun moving along the front parts of the building and over the sidewalk. The city could be very nice sometimes, even if she didn’t get very excited to be there often. Maybe that could change.

 As she bit her sub for the first time, and then cleaned the sides of her mouth with a napkin, Martina saw the kid with a cape walking on the other side of the street. He had just come out of a small store. In the front it said “Mystical treats” and it was adorned with many candles and painted all in black. It looked like a very spooky place for a kid that age (maybe ten or twelve). The fun part was, Martina thought as she took another bite, that no one else seemed to be noticing the kid with the cape. As if he was invisible or something.

 It was then when Martina realized something. The same thing had happened in the library. She had been the only one looking at the kid there too and he looked quite surprised and even angry when Martina stared at him. It was as if he was not very used to that happening to him.

 As she sipped some iced tea, Martina stopped and left her food on the tray. The kid was still on the other side of the sidewalk, in front of another store: “Mirror Wonderland”. But that was not the most surprising part. The fact that the kid had no reflection on any of the mirrors in the storefront was.

Every day is a raining day

   Every day is a raining day. Or at least that’s what it seems like these days. A storm follows another storm, which follows one more after that. There are only a few hours each day for people to get from one place to the other without being drenched in water. The rest of the time is almost impossible to look beyond oneself. There’s this mist that accompanies the rain, a strange vapor that seems to set in whenever water comes down pouring and those are the things some people thrive in.

 Not most but some. Some like to live in the dark, in alleys and dimly lit corridors. They even fear the light and what it brings, the people it lets into their lives. They’d rater stay in the shade with the other creatures of the darkness, as it is more comfortable for them and for the dealings they do with others like them. We all know what happens in those places, in those corners of the world we never really see but that we can imagine, with the distorted help of media, such as movies and television shows.

 The truth is that the darkness is way darker and grittier than we think. It’s not just about ugly people doing ugly things. It’s about every single kind of person doing things that we cannot even imagine. It’s about their lives, taking a turn for the worse and having to head for those shadows in order to survive, probably doing things that we think we would never do. But we haven’t fallen to the darkness, not yet anyways. We don’t even fear that happening because we feel it will never happen to us.

 But it does, all the time and everywhere. There are people right now; doing things they have to do in order to survive the day, maybe even to get some money to have something to eat. It won’t be a nice meal, a complete set of vegetables and proteins. It will most likely be something not very sanitary but cheap enough to sustain a body and a soul for a little longer. It’s what they have and what they can afford. And most of the times, they don’t even care. They just need the fuel to keep going.

 Eating is not a priority in their lives. Some of them don’t even do it often and they have lost all taste for things that they may have loved in their past, their better past. Food is a luxury to think about and to have. They go seeking other stuff, harder stuff; in order to be able to stay up all day doing whatever it is they need to do. Some of them sell drugs, some others sell themselves. Some kill and some are escaping people that want them dead. It’s the lowest and grimiest circle of life, one that barely exists and its filled with the worst this world can produce, which happens to be more than one would think.

 Once they hear thunder in the distance, they run to their hiding spots. These creatures, these people if that’s how you want to call them, they don’t really have a home. They have places to stay and the most fortunate ones amongst the unfortunate have a room somewhere that they can call their own. But it never feels like a proper home because most of the things there are not really theirs, the place is not theirs and they can never stay there for long. It’s just a place to go if they need such a thing, and a storage room.

 Everything is different in the dark. Not only you have to be stronger than in most places, you also have to be a bit smarter than the rest or at least more intuitive than in the real world. People will want to deceive you and there’s not really someone to trust fully. There are no friends or family, they are just people that are ok in one moment and then enemies or strangers the next second. It changes that fast because it has to, because it is a world in a never-ending flux.

 They also feel, like us. That’s not really different. The thing is they have to mask those feelings and even make them harder to manifest. They will love someone if the proper situation arises, they will also hate them with ease. But feelings can be dangerous to have in such a place because they are a weakness others can exploit. So you have to be tough, you have to be a rock even if you do feel like any other human being. Because they’re also humans, just ones that have ran out of any luck.

 Luck is not only about being fortunate enough to have a loving family and the right set of opportunities in life. Luck is also that thing that always seems to help you in moments when nothing seems to be able to give you a proper hand. We are all lucky, up here. In one way or the other. But down there, there is no luck. You actively have to know how to survive; you have to think your every move. One misstep, and you are out. And when you are out in the darkness, the consequences are much more serious.

 The darkness feeds on those who inhabit it. It’s a symbiotic relationship that is very tense and can break in any moment. That’s why those who live in it have to be careful. They don’t have one second to stop and think about life and feelings and how everything around them happens or doesn’t happen. They don’t have that luxury. They have to keep moving, keep doing things in order for their head to stay above water level. Because if for only little moment they forget where they are or who they are, they will drowned in the deep darkness of the world.

 And there’s nothing or no one that can help after that. In this world you are on your own and that is even more of a reality down there. Things may hurt and be scary but the real trick is to adapt fast and use who you are to stay in the most advantageous position you can be in.

 It’s not always easy and many; actually most of those who live in the dark, die without anyone else in the world knowing what ever happened to them. And that’s sad but its also not surprising seeing the kind of species we have become, one that is more than carnivorous but does eat one piece of meat.