War there, peace here

   The park slowly fell into disuse. First, because it was all the way up the hill, something that had been a prime feature of the place but later was seen as just a silly way to make people pay more money for just some rides that they could easily find somewhere else. The rollercoaster, the ferris wheel, the bumpers cars and all those stands where you could get food and silly prizes were still there fifty years later but in a very different state.

 The city had wanted to dismantle the park but it would have been really expensive and it wasn’t a very rich area to pay for anything that big so they decided to send a team of experts to define if the park was safe as it was or if it had to be demolished, at least partially.

 It was a team of only three people that checked every single machine and structure for a period of five days. They used special devices to help them and took pictures. They were very noticeable in town because it wasn’t a very big city and people knew each other really well. It wasn’t a secret that most people believe the park should be left alone, as it had memories for many of the inhabitants of town but also because it was a very obvious and unique feature of town to have the park overlooking them from a hill. It was something like out of a movie.

 By the end of their studies, the team agreed the park was safe and that only some parts of the rollercoaster should be either demolished or repaired in order to avoid a future collapse. What surprised everyone was that the city council did nothing with the study and decided to file everything concerning the park. As they saw it, it was a place that was out of bounds, so if something collapsed no one would be hurt. After all, a perimeter fence had been built around the park many years ago and they could still manage to electrify it in order to keep out any intruders.

 The citizens were not very happy about this, as it would mean that a portion of the city’s electricity would go to a place no one cared about anymore. Some people presented their complaints but nothing happened. So the subject was left alone for a long time and people eventually forgot about the danger the study had shown, the electrified fence and so many other details that the council had omitted about the park.

 In the period of time that followed, the park was only seen as a feature of the city, like the rest of the hills and the forest to one side and the lake to the other. It was just something that was there and that no one really cared about a lot. It was ten years later, when young people, who didn’t know anything about the park and all that had happened with it, decided to are each other to cross the fence and get into the park. No one really knows why that came up but it did.

 They weren’t surprised when the first boy started climbing the fence and wasn’t electrocuted. Inadvertently, they had been the first people to realize that the perimeter fence of the park had not been electrified in many years. Actually, it had only been like that for a few months until the city dropped it. However, the townsfolk were never notified so they still thought safety was paramount among the rulers of the town.

 The kids loved to enter the park and eventually someone brought a pair of industrial cutters and made a whole on the fence in order for everyone to come in and just play around. Important to say they were just children and young adults, the oldest been twenty-five years old. The young ones liked to go around and destroy what could be destroyed, as well as use the former walkways as places to play baseball, pee and practice their shooting with toy guns. In the summer, they changed that to water guns.

 Meanwhile, the older new visitors went all the way up there to have beer and smoke cigarettes or marihuana. There was no place in town to do any of that without someone’s parents been aware of them so it was like a gold mine when they realized no one was looking at them in the park. Many got really drunk and passed out but friends would always help the guy or girl in trouble: they would help the person eat something, vomit as much as they needed to and then help them go home and say they had been food poisoned.

 Surprisingly, parents were very slow to understand what was happening and there’s no way to blame them as the country had entered another war in a far away land and many of the sons of the town had decided to go and defend the honor of their land. The truth behind this was that unemployment was rampant, which combined by the very traditional values of the region, made for a large part of the population supporting that war and being very proud that their children were participating in it.

 When they began to be killed, pride mutated into despair and worry and the fact that kids were smoking and drinking and playing in a dangerous place, was not really an important thing in the parent’s lives. They wanted to win that war but also see their boys, and in some cases girls, come back. The first coffins arrived only five months after the war had started.

 The perpetual state of mourning and overused patriotism was the perfect veil the younger kids needed to go to the park in the hill and just get away from their parents who spent every second of their day putting flags in every corner of the house or watching TV, usually the most fanatic TV station ever.

 They’d rather be shooting their toy guns to the roller coaster’s pillars or from the lower seats in the ferris wheel. It was amazing how the ambiance changed from the town square to the hill park. In the hill everyone laughed and ran and you could always pick up some gossip from the girl that sat in the benches to talk about their schoolmates. Even pets were allowed now as kids brought their dogs and other animals for their classmates and friends to meet.

 The truth is the place had become a kind of haven for children that were ignored at home. If the parents weren’t there for them, their friends would be. Many became friends after meeting in the park and many fell in love there too, initiating many relationships that would last for years and years, although kids had no idea of this.

 Even things as forbidden as two boys kissing was normal in their little world up in the hill, no one said anything to the boys that did it because there was an unspoken agreement that no one would judge anyone for anything they did, unless it was pretty violent or just wrong. For example, a group of kids saved a girl from being raped by some guy in one of the bumper cars and they decided to form some sort of security group, telling others to be aware of their surroundings at all time.

 Life was good for those kids and teenagers. And it was just like that for some years until an accident happened, the one that eventually was set to happen: the rollercoaster collapsed and killed two children and destroyed part of the fence and toppled trees that were located down the hill. As everyone in town was able to see the tragedy, no one was able to ignore reality anymore.

 Parents grieved now for the kids they had at home and realized what the city had done to them. Lawsuits ensued and media frenzy was created, as people loved all the drama and the tragedy behind this story.

Meanwhile, kids mourned their dead too and mourned the loss of the only place they had to be themselves, to enjoy being young in a world were adults were crazy enough to praise children going to war. The ones in the park talked about the subject often and thought all their parents were insane, even if none of them had said that to them ever.

After the tragedy, the town went back to worrying about those who had left willingly to die. But kids wouldn’t take it anymore. It all started with a twelve year old grabbing all the national flags in the house, piling ALL of them and burning them at the backyard. War had come home.

The frozen forest

   Blood slowly dripped from the top of the tallest tree surrounding the clearing. It glistened again the moonlight and didn’t stop until it hit the frozen forest soil. Something had happened up there, something that no creature in the forest was willing to explain or understand. The blood on the tree froze and remained there forever, working as reminder to every single creature to be very careful on this part of the world.

 A long time after that, a woman dedicated to washing the clothes of others got lost in the forest. She had been washing sheets and dirty underwear in the cold water of the river but she had lost her way because of the snow, that had begun to fall very slowly, changing every single aspect of the forest in the process.

 Unknown to the woman, she was being watched by various creatures but not because they wanted her out of because they feared her. They just wanted her to leave forever and never return. They knew that the frozen trail of blood on the tallest tree was from human origin and that, in simple words, meant that humans were better off very far from the forest.

 However, the laundry lady had gotten lost. She was not a young woman, rather having a lot of experience in what she did, as she had been doing it for the past thirty years, at least. It had been her mother who taught her everything “ a woman should know”. And she learned everything because women could learn so little that it was better for her to get every piece of information available, instead of suffering for what wasn’t true.

 She had dreamed, long ago, to marry a handsome man and have beautiful children and leave the rest of her days as the best housewife in town. Her little corner of the world was so peaceful and small, that she never thought thinking what she thought was asking too much. After all, every other girl had exactly the same luck, with various results but at least they got to have a proper family.

 Her name was Irene, after her mother, and no one had ever asked her to marry. She knew she wasn’t the prettiest girl in town but she was one of few girls available. And, as uncommon as it was, there were more single men in town than single women. And even so, she remained a spinster for the rest of her life. As old as she was now, she knew she wasn’t going to have any chance of having the life she had always wanted. Instead, she found herself a nice little cottage and people came over to leave their dirty laundry for her to wash. It was a simple and sad life.

 When she got lost, she didn’t really got scared. Her life was so full of the same always, that a little bit of excitement wasn’t unwelcomed. Irene had a big bag on her back, carrying everything she had been washing and realized she needed to head back fast or frost will begin to form on the wet parts of the sheets and defrosting them would be even harder inside of her house. She used her chimney fire to dry the clothes and other items but if frost was involved, it would take much longer and the payment would also take longer to reach her.

 She walked and walked, first with no worry but as the sun began to fold, she accelerated her steps. Suddenly, Irene arrived to the clearing were the tall tree stood but because of the snow, she didn’t notice the frozen blood or the large amount of birds watching her from above. She stopped walking and started yelling “Hello!” to no avail. The truth was, and she had no way of knowing it, that she had walked farther and farther away from town instead of getting closer to it.

 No one ever reached the clearing, not even in the summer. It was a private place the forest revealed only in special occasions and, apparently, Irene was special enough to get there. But that, somehow, wasn’t a good thing. Snow was pilling up and the forest was slowly getting darker. The woman, now desperate, turned around and ran into the forest but it was too late. The trees had suddenly decided to be closer that they had been before, so walking between them was now very difficult. The lack of light made it hard for Irene to see that she was slowly making a circle.

 After a while, she got back into the clearing and it was then when she dropped her bag, fell to her knees and started to cry and to beg for help. She yelled and cried very loudly in order to be heard and she actually managed to do that but that person, a hunter returning home, confused her voice with the sounds in the wind. To put it simply, he thought he had been too long out in the woods and that he needed food and the warmth of his home and family.

 Irene stopped yelling, she also stopped punching the frozen soil, which made her hands hurt because it was like punching steel. She cried but it hurt too badly so she stopped fast. She looked around and realized that, despite being night, there was some kind of light illuminating the clearing. She looked everywhere for the source and realized someone was coming. She stood up fast, thinking help was on the way.

 But it wasn’t a helping hand. It was a figure wearing a cloak, revealing no human attributes except the shape. It didn’t seem to be walking like normal people did, instead floating around, as it happened to be some sort of ghost. Irene’s hope vanished and tried to get back to the forest but everything behind her was black, she couldn’t see trees or anything else. There appeared to be a very black wall there and she just couldn’t run anywhere. Anyway, her feet were unresponsive and once she tried to walk, she fell to the ground.

 The figure then stood in front of her and appeared to wait there. It was unclear what it was waiting for, if it needed Irene to speak first or if it was there for other matters and was completely ignoring the fact that Irene was there.

 Then, the creature started to transform. It grew a bit larger and Irene could see feet and hand emerge from the bright cloak that had been floating in front of her before. As the feet touched the ground, the hands pulled back the cloak’s hood and revealed the head of a woman. In appearance, it did look like a woman but she wasn’t like Irene. The laundry lady was older, had pale skin and blue eyes. She was taller than many women and her nose was bigger too.

 The figure, or rather, the woman beneath the cloak, was smaller even as it had grown larger, had bronze skin and big hazelnut eyes. Her skin seemed to be really soft and her ears and nose were very delicate. She looked patiently at Irene, and then spoke.

      - You are alone. – She said.

Irene started crying again, but this time she didn’t care about how much it hurt to do that in a frozen forest. Slowly, she nodded to accept the spirit’s statement. She then noticed the women that had appeared before her had some sort of drawing on her faces, very subtle and beautiful.

      - You don’t have to.

And she raised one hand and offered it to Irene. The villager had no idea what to do. Something, a voice in her head, told her to hold that hand. But her inner voice, the one that was actually hers, was afraid of what might happen. She was afraid that this apparition had something to do with death and, she had known this for a while, she wasn’t ready to die.

      - I’m not ready to die.

It escaped her lips as she had thought about it. Surprisingly, the spirit kept its hand stretched towards Irene and, suddenly, she smiled. And then Irene’s hand just decided, almost by itself, to grab the hand of the spirit. Then it was all engulfed in white light and the older woman thought her moment had finally come.

 But that wasn’t the case. Irene was again at the edge of the river and it was still day. The sheets were on the bag and she had to get going. She could see the smoke of a house and knew that was the way towards the town. As she walked to her home, she wondered about the spirit and asked herself if she had dreamt the whole thing. It was only when she got home and found a person knocking on her door, that she realized she hadn’t dreamt anything.

 The girl with hazelnut eyes, bronze skin and beautiful nose, was knocking on her door.

Life's a bitch? No, you are.

   Charlie was still breathing heavily. Mike went out of bed, almost running to the bathroom. From there, came the sound of running water. Charlie wasn’t really listening, still trying to catch his breath. He had this stupid smile on his face and he knew it but had no idea of how to get rid of it. Anyway, who cared? He was happy and wanted to feel that way for as long as he could. It wasn’t that often he felt fulfilled in life.

 His boss had recently promised him a promotion, then Mike had moved in with him and they were planning a trip around Europe to celebrate their first year together. It was all going great and he had no reason to stop smiling. When Mike came back to bed, he told Charlie he was very thirsty and had to drink water from the tap. Charlie kept smiling at him and kissed him without saying a word. Just as they were, they fell asleep until the day was new.

 They had breakfast and a nice conversation before separating to get to their jobs. Then, Charlie’s happiness ended. He had been notified that someone else had landed the promotion instead of him. All morning, he was too embarrassed by this new development to ask anything but, after lunch, he decided to talk to his boss about it. After all, he liked him and new that he would be honest and would properly explain what had happened.

 As it happens, the guy who had landed the promotion was not even a long time employee but a new staff member and the boss told Charlie he had been obligated to give him that post as he was the company’s owner son. Charlie tried to understand how a person that had been working there for four years, working hard to be precise, was not going to get the job and a kid who had no idea of the business just landed the gig because he was related to someone.

 Unknown to him, Charlie had asked this enraged, screaming a bit and visibly annoyed. The boss asked him to calm down but he didn’t. He had no idea what came over him but he just started grabbing things and throwing them all around the room. He was about to go for his boss when two security guards subdued him. He was in such a state; it was hard for them to pull him out of there. He was not a tall guy but he was apparently really strong and would go without further fighting. But the two guys were stronger and they threw him out the front door. They left but returned shortly, telling him he needed to ask someone to empty his desk. He called his only friend in the office and she put everything worth something in a box and gave it to him in the parking lot. They parted, saying nothing.

 He walked to a coffee shop with his box and tried calling Mike from his cellphone several times but he wasn’t picking up. The last time he tried, the call went straight to voice mail. Then something came over him. It wasn’t the rage he had felt before but rather a sense of worry, that something wasn’t completely fine. He decided to go back to his house and call Mike from there. Maybe his cellphone had just died or maybe something else was going on. It was certainly not the best day to be Charlie and, as he walked to the train station with his box, he hoped for everything to be ok and for this to be just a normal day or a dream.

 When he stepped off the train, he received a call from the bank, telling him why he had his bank account blocked. He hung up immediately. It made no sense that his account was blocked and he knew those calls were just pranks or ways to get his data in order to rob him. He wasn’t going to fall for that. He walked fast from the station to his building. He was helped by a lady to open the front door and took the stairs as the elevator took too long to arrive at the ground floor. When he finally made it to the sixth floor, he looked for the keys in the box and open the door.

 The place was empty and he had hoped to see Mike there. But he was obviously at work. He just wanted to know right away that he was ok but apparently that was a lot to ask for. He decided to take the phone and call him again but the cellphone number he was calling was dead. Voice mail time and again. Then he sat in his sofa and started thinking where he might be. He could go to Mike’s work, but he said they didn’t know he was gay so maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe…

 And then he heard it. It was a sound coming from somewhere, like the one of someone complaining but soft. It was just as if someone tried to be silent but couldn’t really mask their own voice. It was then when Charlie realized the sound was not coming from outside or from another apartment. It was coming from one of the rooms, from the bedroom to be precise. He forgot all about his search for Mike, about his dismissal and his little box filled with shitty things. He just walked down the hall and opened the door, without even thinking much about it.

 The bedroom door was never closed but it had been this time and he now knew why. Mike was there all right. But he wasn’t wearing any clothes and wasn’t hurt at all except a few nail marks in his back. Trying to cover himself up, Mike fell from the bed and Charlie saw the person who had been moaning. Different than he might think, the person was a woman. Charlie had never seen her before and that really didn’t matter.

-       Get out of my house…

 The woman looked at Mike and then at Charlie and then at Mike again, who was putting up his underwear and walking slowly to Charlie.

-       Get the fuck out of my house! And you…

 He said nothing. The woman picked up her things and ran past Charlie, still naked. She took his bed sheet but he didn’t care. He just wanted her out of his home. Once she was out, he stood in front of the door, still shocked. There was no way of crying, of going through another episode of crazy rage. He was too overwhelmed and too hurt to cry, scream or yell. Mike came out of the bedroom and was about to touch him but Charlie slapped his arm to one side and told him to go fuck himself. He told him he had been the best person in the world to him for a whole year. How could he be like this to him?

 He shouldn’t have asked. Mike told him, caressing his arm, that he had liked at first and that he was a nice fuck but that was it. He got boring both in bed and in the rest but he didn’t let him go because of how well positioned he was. But now, Mike said, he had enough of that and wanted to leave him. Charlie followed him back to the room and told him that he wasn’t just leaving. He was throwing him out. He wasn’t going to be the victim, he told Mike, not when he was clearly the one that was losing more.

 Mike didn’t listen to anything he said. He just put some clothes, grabbed a small bag and started packing. He packed all the clothes that Mike had given him. He had to take out another bag, a bigger one, and by then Charlie decided he had to breath and count to ten, so he went to the living room and tried to calm himself down. He finally started crying profusely and didn’t heard when Mike left with two big bags full of everything Charlie had bought him

 He had been alone for at least an hour when the phone rang and he had to answer because the sound annoyed him. It was the bank again. They were sorry to tell him Internet pirates had targeted his account and that he had lost of the savings in there. He laughed like a crazy person right then, and the lady talking to him thought he had gone insane or something. She was careful to say it may take a while but that the bank would reinstate all his savings, as he had paid the insurance they sold.

 Charlie just said thanks and hung up. He cleaned up his tears and, as painful as it was, he tried to think what he had done wrong. Although he saw nothing at the time and decided it was best to take a nap, Charlie had been not that great at his job and had been promised a promotion he didn’t deserve. The owner’s boss was not the stupid kid he thought he was. The man was actually an expert in advertising and would make the company double its earning in a single year.

 As for Mike, he had met him in a bar and, been drunk, had taken him to his apartment and had sex with him. The first three months, it was all about sex, not minding anything else. It was Charlie who asked Mike to be his boyfriend and the one that insisted on Mike leaving with him. All of this happened in a matter of months, including the expensive gifts and the planning of the trip that, unknown to him, Mike was still going to have. Charlie had left him in control of one of his credit cards and Mike had recently bought the tickets for both his female friend and him. Charlie would realize about this in the future, a bit too late.

 And the pirates. That looks random but it isn’t. Mike had paid for porn and clothes in many websites and that’s where the pirates always take their information from.

 In conclusion, Charlie had all the answers in front of him but he wasn’t acknowledging any of them, anything that he had done. He blinded himself into thinking certain things and rushed into liking somebody because he thought he would never find someone. His sunken self-esteem had been the one to blame and it would take him still a lot of life to learn the necessary to stop blaming others for his mistakes.