Rush

   What did I dream? What did I eat last night?  What was my last thought before closing my eyes and falling asleep? It’s silly, but I don’t remember any of it, or at least not once. I have to be still and really try hard to remember the answer to every single one of those questions and many more that appear many minutes after I wake up. Does it all have to do with this? Is it all connected, as many people believe? They think that if one thing happens and then another or something else on the other side of the globe, then it’s all connected. To me it sounds stupid and very easily dismissible as a theory but who am I to trump over the delusions of so many of our fellow human beings. Maybe it’s better to let them wonder through the cosmos and just not pay attention to whatever they might have to say.

 Yet, I feel confused, scared and my stomach is rumbling like mad. Did I lose my last meal too, even if I haven’t vomited at all? It feels like I have. My belly really hurts and my body overall feels tired and weak in a very weird way. It’s like something took away my bones for a single second but I can still feel them readjusting to their original positions. It also feels as if the room had been completely moved like a gigantic cube while I was sleeping, causing my senses to become insane. I can’t really tell if up is that way or down is that other way. I don’t know and to be honest I have no intention to help anyone in that department. I just want this very awful feeling to leave me, my heart to stop pounding. It seems it wants out.

 Turning on the light in the room, and I say it in singular because there’s only the one, was not the best idea. Only to see the mess I caused… Well, it wasn’t me and it was, all at the same time. Maybe that’s why I feel a little bit guilty too, like when you’re little and you pee your bed. And you are conflicted between going to your parents and tell them what happen. Or maybe, you think, you can clean it yourself and put the linen in the washing machine and no one will ever know. And when they realize what happened, you feel weak and shaky and you cannot really talk and you want to cry but know it’s not really a moment to cry because, somehow, it doesn’t feel like it.

 My stomach is the worst part. It’s still restless and I don’t know if it’s a good idea to have breakfast. I mean, what if I just expel all of that in an hour or less? I don’t want to be cleaning that or feeling even worse than I feel right now. I don’t want to risk my mental health and my physical one. Besides, the possibility of having to clean the floors (here’s hoping it’s the floors…) does not really excite me at all. If anything, it makes my stomach even more restless, as if I had a very violent electric eel trapped in there and she stings me every time I think of pulling her out of her cozy environment. I don’t feel good, that’s the point.

 Breathing has become harder. I don’t know why, but it feels like this room, filled with freezing air, is running out of oxygen. However, I don’t want to open the window and become a human popsicle. Because even know, seating on my bed, I can feel that damn cold air like a snake going up my legs, through my belly and chest and to my brain. My fingers feel weird too, like they are about to crack. And I still cannot breath. Opening my mouth seems futile and only my nose is trying to keep me alive but I have no idea how skilled my nose is, even less right now when the punch had come from the area. I try to inhale some air and it feels heavy, almost solid. I can almost feel its taste and it doesn’t taste good at all.

 Why is that? Because of the surroundings I guess. I know now I don’t like this student life, or at least not at this age anymore. I sound old but I’m not, I just complain every single second about things that I have decided to be my life, so if you think about it, I should just shut up. And I do. I don’t really use my vocal chords as much as I did back home, although that is kind of obvious. After all, they are your family and you love them or at least I love mine. If you have issues with yours, well, sorry for that. But these other people, the truth is I don’t care for them at all. They could die out there, rammed by a bus, and I would honestly not give a shit. I would only worry for the next person, the next boring and predictable human male to stay in that room and talk about booze and pot, because apparently this is it for humanity.

  Well, that let’s a weight out, somehow. But still feel a bit lost. After all, my awakening today was too fast, too confusing and a little of a low blow. You never know when things are going to take a turn, one of those turns that changes your whole mindset for the day or even for more time. I hate it when it happens because change scares me and it scares me a lot more than I imagined it. I want it all the same over and over and over again and I’m not ashamed of confessing that. Because I don’t see anything over the hill. No green grass, no cute little houses, no beautiful people smiling at me and doggies coming to greet me. I don’t see anything.

 The future scares me and maybe my body had finally realized it. Maybe the war between my insides and my mind has begun and this, whatever it is that’s writing this, is in the middle of the fight. And I know there will be blood and pain all over, there will be losses and gains and my mind is going to spiral down a wormhole that I have made for myself. Because, if we are objective, no one else is guilty more than ourselves. If there’s something happening to us, we probably had it coming and we even knew that it was coming, even if we chose not to acknowledge and just pretend nothing was happening, as we often do.

 That roll of toilet paper is starting to look funny somehow. I guess it’s because it is. Such a funny thing to have around one’s house, when you think about it. It’s shape; it’s function, the one it is built and all the strategic marketing behind such a strange object. I don’t mean that to be funny or make some funny toilet jokes. I’m afraid I don’t know any of those so I cannot be funny that way. Actually, I have no idea if I’m funny in any way. Maybe I’m like the toilet paper, that’s just strange and everywhere and that’s me sometimes. There but not there at the same time, however always out of place, as if I was an extra and I always come in the scene a little too early or too late. I do feel like an extra sometimes and I believe we all do everyday, so I don’t really fell bad about it.

 I put on my socks again, as they slid out of my feet during the night. Maybe that’s the reason why I feel like I feel right now. But I doubt it. What do socks have to do with anything? I just want my feet to feel a bit warm in order for my body to stop trembling and for my belly to calm down. I know I have responsibilities and all that but I’m seriously thinking about staying in bed all day. The idea seems very alluring and a very great one, I must say… Fuck, there they go again with their music and their noise. I don’t care what time of the day it is; you just don’t shove your tastes down people’s throats. It says a lot about someone, music and how they behave with it and how they consume it or however you want to say it.

 My pillow was spared, mostly. I want to lay my head on it and just close my eyes because I start to feel a little dizzy again. I just want to rest and not have any of that annoying noise around me. I don’t want to feel more than the warmth of the bedspread and the smell that I leave in my pillow. That may sound a little bit self-centered, but I guess it is the only way to calm me down, to make me realize all of this is real and that I’m not imagining anything strange and crazy. Actually, I do want this all to be my imagination and I don’t mean this morning, I mean this whole part of my life. Because it doesn’t feel right and I’m just holding on, trying to make time pass day by day.

 All the blood I spilled this morning… It tells me it is real and that I still have to keep my ground, I still have to wait and endure for more time. I’m not a good person but I don’t think I’m bad either. I’m in between. When I woke up to a rush of blood coming out my noise, successfully avoiding everything to be tainted in red, I thought it was a punishment for something, I thought it was because I had done something wrong and now I was paying for it. Maybe through just the bleeding, maybe through something more. I don’t know that for sure and to be honest I don’t really want to know because my head is spinning. Although that awful music might have something to do with it… Sometimes I do hate people.

Humanity

    I feel I can’t even breathe, I can’t even talk like a normal person and everything I do tends to be joined by some kind of pain. Why is that? Why is it that whenever I want to do things right, they never really come down as easy as they should be or at least as enjoyable as they should be?

 They say, the people I guess, that the world is paved with good intentions. I don’t think that is true but if it were true, I think things would be much better than what they are. If good intentions were the norm, everyone would just be better off or at least would have more of a chance to make whatever they want to make come true.

 No, I’m not missing the point that such saying is precisely meant to be the opposite of what it is. Good intentions are obviously a façade, a way of getting into something and then you realize that being nice and good is simply not enough. You have to be bold and unapologetic. The thing is that when some people behave as such, they are admired and respected. People often love sincerity and that brass characteristic in some men and women. They would even go and call them “heroes”.

 But when others say the same things, even going a little further, then they are not heroes and they are considered just undesirable and annoying people. They are deemed not graceful enough by the rest of the so-called community and are treated worse than if they had a very contagious disease.

 That has happened to me many times. People told me I’m too shy, I never speak, I don’t talk and so on. And when I finally did and said what I had on my mind, many were shocked and seemed to confirm that the reason I didn’t speak up was actually a good one. Because most people mistrust the ones that don’t speak, that shy away from the lights of life.

 People love when a person just talks and talks and always has a story to tell. They don’t care if the story is real or not, they just love to hear and be in the presence of such gods of humanity who embody everything most people would like to be: confident, courageous, adventurous, experienced, interesting and many other character traits that are more realistic in a cartoon than in a real person.

 From the first years of school to the last years on Earth, people always seek those people out. If they can’t be like them, they want to be their friends, to always be close in order to catch those gems they often lay on the world, whether they are experiences that seem incredibly interesting or maybe a joke told in great way or romantic experience or whatever it is that makes them a magnet of attention.

  We are trained by society to be like that, to try to enter that select group. They teach us songs and they make us sing them in the presence of family members and even family friends and others. They make us repeat every word time and again and seek out new things for us to say, to make us interesting while we are children because there’s is an unspoken agreement that no one should be nasty to a child, at least not their face.

 Some kids succeed in the attempt initiated often by their parents (although the kid himself can do it) and then they are inside that group. The bad thing is that they don’t get to stay there forever. They have to keep doing things; they have to be little circus freaks, entertaining the world while they live their lives. Some people realized they are very good at this and others just fail and are forgotten.

 Of course, another way to get in later in life is when having good looks. In young life this doesn’t really count as judging kids by their looks is frowned upon by society, even if every single person has an actual opinions. But that ban is lifted in adolescence because that’s the moment you sort of transform into the person you are going to be for the rest of your life. So after puberty, everyone is magically entitled to judge you and every single person in the planet and, unfortunately, that’s one way to get noticed.

 If you are deemed good looking or beautiful or cute or whatever the word is, you will get into a select group that have certain privileges for a long period of life. Now that period of life is even longer than in other eras of humanity because now we judge more because we think we know more when the truth is that society is the same stupid animal that has thrown humanity of course thousands of times before and will keep doing it in the future.

 So you have to be interesting and beautiful and bold and nice and good and so many things that are not even clearly defined and that are just a mask that people put over their faces, their real faces and their real feelings about every single thing that happens in the world. Is not something revolutionary to say that many of those pretty faces, of those good people, are actually the front of the most despicable beings in the world. It has happened a lot that the mask just falls off and people realized that they cannot keep lying to themselves.

 To be clear, people know when those they admire are not real, are not honest and lie. But they simply look the other way, which is one of the main characteristics of the human being, which is not made of all good and lovable stuff. We are made of really slimy things and those characteristics have shifted the way humanity is many times.

 We are hypocrites. That’s the reality of everything, the truth of our existence and the reason I write and the reason you may read this to the end and the reason to many other things in this life. We love to do things in different ways, not always because we are dared but because we just want to disobey and create chaos. Other times we just nod and smile and nod and smile for life and there are many people in the world that are real professionals in the matter, people that have lied so well to others and for so long, that they have even begun to believe the lies they say.

 I’m not saying that the world is all made up of false and corrupt creatures but the goodness and perfection of it all is simply too annoying to be real, too superficial to be really something that anyone would authentically care about. I do think there is goodness and real feelings in people that can make them much more interesting than the superficial reasons most people use to get close to someone, to make their heroes. But those feelings are so ephemeral that most of the world doesn’t even care.

 The dangerous thing nowadays is all of this fake attention to issues that used to be taboo or forbidden or just dismissed in a second. Although many people really believe in discussing those subjects and be open and real, many more are using them to make them look better, to make them look like saviors and heroes again.

 There are people that simply do not care who they have to pass over as long as they get what they want. And the worst thing is that many others admire that in a person so it creates a very sick thing when someone is just deemed the best because they pretend to be something that they are not and are clearly doing wrong things to get there but they are all forgiven or forgotten.

 Yet, many others decide that they just don’t want to buy into all of that. They don’t want to be in those groups, in those sects that idealize every single aspect of a human’s life. Everything today is a standard, there is a very narrow path to follow is people decide to get off that standard. And even if they choose that path, the options at the end of it are scarce if they exist.

And it’s not about being different because that shouldn’t be a thing in life. At the end of the day, thanks to DNA, we are all different and that is obvious. We are not machines so we are not copies. Being different is imbedded in us so we shouldn’t praise or go after that because it’s who we are.

 I just hope my body let’s me speak and think again, soon.

Scorched

   Devastation. That’s the only word she could think about. Tally Green had been taught, throughout her life, that science was inherently good in its intentions and only very devious men, often on the side of the scientific path, would used it for dark purposes. But now, seeing what she had helped create, Tally was not very sure of that any more.

 She saw herself as a good person. She always helped various organizations during Christmas time, she gave money to non-profit groups that helped women and children around the world and she had never been particularly nasty against anyone. She didn’t liked violence, to the degree of never having seen a real fight between two people. Tally thought herself innocent even, of some of the things that human life had to offer.

 But that was the past. Wearing her light gray uniform, checking every camera in the field to check if what she was looking at was real, Tally realized her so-called innocent days were over.

 Applause came from her side, from the politicians and high-ranking military people that had attended the demonstration. They were all please and she could see in their faces that they were not innocent. Actually, it was rather easy to see they loved everything that had to do with destruction, with war and the capacity that someone had to destroy every single thread of decency left in this universe.

 The machine was identified as XLIU897 but the team that had created it called it The Fireman. It was a term of endearment for a weapon able to destroy entire acres of vegetation. It had been created so it would destroy all organic life but leave all the rest intact. They said it would come in handy if an army needed to liberate a city or if some townspeople needed to begin again with their crops. The weapon would destroy it all and then new crops could be put in place, as life could grow again on site.

 That was actually the only thing those men in ties didn’t like about the Fireman. They said they didn’t see the use of a weapon that destroyed and then left the land untouched. It was clear that the military uses for the weapon were a priority and that no government would really let farmers use it in their lands. All they wanted to do was to create hell on Earth and they had already done so.

 Just minutes ago, when everything disappeared under a red light and a hot wind, those awful men were smiling and apparently felt exceedingly happy with themselves. They were awful people, Tally knew that, but she felt she was an even worst person because she had helped create what those men were enjoying and were going to use to destroy.

 When she went back home that night, she was not only exhausted but the weight on her back felt much heavier than usual. Tally thought of the various books she had read about science and instantly remembered of Oppenheimer and all the other men and women involved in the creation of the first atom bomb. She thought that they were even guiltier than she was because an atom bomb had no possibility of being used as any other thing than as a weapon. The Fireman, on the other hand, had real possibilities as a helper to regenerate the land on places were it was needed. Tally had always wanted to help people and thought she was going to do it with that creation.

 But now, opening a can of beer in the kitchen and taking a sip, she realized she couldn’t just let things be. She left the can alone on the counter and grabbed her phone. Without thinking much about it, she called a friend that worked for the ethics committed of the department of defense. Tally told him about her case (she knew he was aware of the weapon) and asked him if was possible to stop the use of such a weapon in the world. After all, it had been created in an independent laboratory.

 The answer was somewhat disappointed, as he told her that if the army decided to acquire the weapon, the government would just block everyone trying to talk or know more about the subject. He said that they could even make her loose her job, just to make her look desperate and use her in public as a case of anti-patriotism.

 When Tally hung up, she had another idea in her mind. She knew her friend was honest and that the army was practically taking over the project. As she walked out of the laboratory, she saw some more military men arriving. That wasn’t normal and it was very likely the department of defense was already enabling the purchase of the weapon, even if the army wanted it to be changed and target also the ground itself.

 In her bedroom, Tally put some clothes on a backpack and also some food. She carried that to her car and drove back to work. As she was one of the main people on the project, she had every key possible. She entered the building, smiling to the security man and hoping she wouldn’t find any military men inside. But there were none. So she entered her lab and almost ran to the main computers. The idea was simple: to erase everything and make it disappear or simply take some vital piece on a portable device and just vanish with it.

 But she was too late. There was nothing on the computers. It had already been taken and people hired by the government were already monitoring the project. She had acted too slowly against them and the world would pay.

 Tally found a job in a pharmaceutical company, not a big one like those in movies but a smaller company that produced cheaper versions of very expensive drugs used to treat HIV and many virus related diseases. The company was controversial because it gave a chance to people suffering the AIDS pandemic to survive and live a happy and healthy life. She loved it there and loved to see reporters and protesters every morning. That way she knew she was finally doing some good in the world.

 She was not really involved in the creation of the drugs but rather on something even more interesting: the development of an effective cure. And they felt they were closer and closer and she felt proud of herself everyday because of that.

 That was until it happened. Half of the whole woke up to the news, the other half saw it begin live. Something was happening in Eastern Europe, some kind of wave was burning every single piece of land, meter by meter. People could see how everything died, slowly. Some ran away from the wave, others stayed and were burned alive by the invisible wall that advanced toward the east. Entire countries were burned alive and survivors were very scattered and not many.

 Then, out of nowhere, a huge army appeared and started invading the devastated lands. It was the first time in History that Moscow fell into foreign hands, half of its population killed slowly by burning. The men that had taken the city proclaimed the end of the failed Russia and announced the annexation of the country to their own new empire.

 All work at her company was stopped that day. Outside, there were no protesters or really anyone. People were too scared to go out to the street. What if one of those invisible walls advanced towards them and turned them into ashes in a matter of seconds?

 It was announced the next day that it had been, as Tally knew, a move by the most powerful country in the world. She had left that place years ago and it haunted her that her work was killing millions somewhere else. What she had been working on now just didn’t cover the evil she had helped create, the enormous guilt she felt for what she had done with her so-called innocence.

 The next day, as more and more troops, more and more bombs, and another wall advanced to the west, Tally decided she just couldn’t keep on living. She hung herself in her living room and was only found weeks after, when the invading army entered the city and saw her charred bones.

Dark enemy

   When the doors finally closed, everyone who had gathered in front of them just looked to the ground. They slowly went back to their duties in the palace or to their new houses in the lower levels, where they had been accepted just some hours ago. Another door that had closed was the one of the throne room, as the emperor had demanded to be left alone as he had “a strategy” to think about. The truth was, and everyone knew this, that the enemy was coming fast and that it couldn’t be stopped. It had been announced that they would destroy everything and everyone on their path and that’s why many had found shelter in the palace. The idea was that, as strong as the enemy was, they behaved like a group of buffalos. They charged until they hit something and then they moved on.

 The funny thing there was that no one really knew anything about the enemy except what people coming from other towns said. They were called “survivors” as they always arrived on the verge of collapse and they all had the same story about how awful and terrible the enemy was. However, despite been able to describe how their own tows burned and how people had been killed, they couldn’t tell anyone about the general aspects of the enemy. It was strange, but it was as if they had seen a shadow destroy all of those towns. No physical traits of any kind had been revealed, only the way they operated and that had been scary enough for everyone to take shelter in a building that was normally reserved for the rich and noble. That said a lot about their fear.

 The palace was a structure built in ten concentric rings, the highest been the one where the emperor lived and the lower ones where his staff lived. There were also some sublevels, normally catacombs used as prisons and to get access to a subterranean river. All of that space was now been used by the families that lived in the town and that had been allowed to come in by order of the empress. She was the one that was doing the most. Her name was Serena and she even went down to the sublevels and helped people build a house in the many rooms and spaces that had been only populated by rats for several hundreds of years. Her husband, however, was too scared or apprehensive to do nothing.

 No one knew if he had seen the enemy first hand or if he just felt this was the end of his reign. He had been emperor for fifty years; since he was a very young boy and this was the first time someone defied his power. And the truth was, he was very scared about it. Specially because there wasn’t a single man in the entire kingdom that could tell him anything useful about the enemy. No any general characteristics, not a weakness, not even the way they killed. It was true he was planning and working on the problem but it was also the truth that there was nothing he could really do about it.

 In the lower levels, many families tried to create the feeling of a home but it was practically impossible. Many of them were staying in rooms that felt too much like a prison and they soon realized that if the enemy didn’t walk through town but instead came to the palace, they would be trapped in the catacombs. The only way out was through the underground river but no one really knew how to navigate it and not everyone would be able to use the only boat that remained there. It was said that many of the emperor’s servants had escaped on other boats, leaving only one in the docks. Many children of these refugees loved to go and play in the docks as it was the only place that felt different and worth exploring, even if it was as dark and moist as the rest of the sublevels.

 Life in the upper levels, however, rapidly went back to normal. All the people working for the emperor resumed their work: they cooked big feasts for the few members of royalty, they made fabulous robes and they even brought in objects from the outside by specially trained hawks. They brought jewelry from very far cities and also delicacies that the king always liked. But the empress wasn’t too impressed by this. She was actually revolted by the fact they were eating a five-course meal as the people in the catacombs had only some bread to feed their children. She tried to protest before her majesty but his aides wouldn’t let her, as she would disturb him greatly. They didn’t want to bother him as he drank his beer.

 Serena decided to go for a walk around all the levels and wrote on a piece of paper everything that she saw that was wrong: too much water been wasted on plants in the gardens, a whole level dedicated to keeping his majesty’s clothes cleaned and perfect, the vaults of money and jewels been filled everyday despite the industry and commerce coming to halt, the closure of the market that had always worked in front of the main entrance, the fact that the his majesty’s guard was very numerous but there were only a few men guarding the first wall that would prevent the enemy from coming in and many other things. She actually ran out of paper as she walked along the edge of the wall, looking towards the town where only ghosts lived now.

 But she realized she was mistaken. There was smoke coming out from one of the houses chimney. She asked one of the few guards for how long that smoke had been there and they said that since the time the people of the town entered the palace. She concluded then that someone, maybe an entire family, had decided to stay behind and leave their lives as always. They didn’t care about the enemy, about wars or even about their emperor. They just wanted to keep living and Serena admired that. She asked her husband to let her go to the town, but his answer was obviously negative.

 But Serena wasn’t really one to wait around for others to approve. She had always been rebellious and she had always been curious about her marriage to the emperor. Despite having even younger sisters that were a lot less trouble, he had chosen her to be his wife. He said that it was because of her hair, which reminded him of wheat. But it had to be something else, or so she hoped. One night, she slipped out of her room and disguised herself as one of the refugees. Her handmaiden had gotten the clothes. Serena descended through secrets stairs and hallways that only a few knew about and finally reached the market in front of the entrance. There, she had to run through the square and reach a dark wall on the other end. There was a secret passage there too but the soldiers could see her if she made too much noise.

 She stopped first to calculate how to cross the square and then breath heavily in order to get herself pumped up. She then ran for her life like a mad person and reached the dark wall in seconds. It was strange that no one had seen her, as the moon was particularly bright, but she moved on. The tunnel she was walking on was very humid and full of moss. She fell a couple of times before reaching the end of the path. The tunnel ended in a small room, right in the middle of town. It was amazing no one knew about it. Serene walked out of it slowly and looked at the sky, looking for the smoke.

 The house she was looking for was just a couple of streets away. She walked slowly but not really trying not to make noise, as supposedly, there was no one in town. When she arrived at the house, she knocked. Maybe it had been a bold move but she really didn’t have time to play around. No one answered so she knocked again. Then, she let out a scream as someone pulled a curtain and looked out. Then the door opened and scared faces looked straight at her. There wasn’t one family living there, but two: three adults and five children. They recognized her and that was why they let her in. They were visibly nervous and she tried to reassure them but it was a lost cause. In the end, it was pretty reasonable to be scared and jumpy after been through so much.

 Serena was about to speak when the ground started to tremble. Everyone pulled back from the door and the walls and ran towards a hatch on the ground. Serena didn’t. She was too curious, too urged for the truth. She walked to the curtain and stood still, looking through the window, not even moving. The tremor grew stronger and then, what felt like hundreds of boars passed in front of the house. They were huge, with big horns and red eyes. They destroyed everything outside but they passed fast. She breathed again but it was too soon. Something else was coming down the street and she had to cover her mouth in order not to scream and reveal her position.

 In the palace, they finally realized something was wrong. But it was too late as the moon revealed what was happening there, in the town. And it also revealed that the palace wasn’t safe because, whatever was causing the ground to shake was coming their way. It was only a matter of minutes before the boars overran the market square. And even then, watching it all from his room, the emperor did nothing. Not even thinking about his wife.