Not there

   A small crab ran across the beach, fighting the powerful gust of wind that was sweeping the area. It moved fast and then burrowed himself into the sand, disappearing in a matter of seconds. There was another creature in the beach. A young woman, dressed in plastic boots and a coat that resembled the capes that superheroes used in comic books and movies. It was red and the boots two. Not like the crab, she just stood in one place and looked at the ocean and how the waves were becoming bigger and bigger, how they appeared to be alive. The water and foam came closer and closer to her feet but she did not move. She seemed out of herself, in a way.

 Finally a wave crashed violently against the beach and reached her knees. She seemed to have woken up from a dream, only cleaning her legs with her hands and turning around, walking up the natural hill that had formed because of erosion and went back home, not far from the sound of the ocean. The sky was becoming darker, both because of the time of day but also because of the storm that was brewing in the ocean. The woman walked slowly towards her house, soon joined by a beautiful Labrador dog that was of her property. The dog’s name was Chance. Hers was Amelia.

 She entered the house through the back door that led to the kitchen. She took off her coat and boots and left them in a small cabinet she used for such purposes. Walking in socks, she grabbed a beer from the fridge and petted Chance who followed her everywhere. She crossed the house towards the living room, where she lay down in a sofa, drinking her beer and letting the dog sleep by her feet. But the women wasn’t calm, she was apparently trying the drink the content of the bottle in one gulp and even some of the beer slid down her chin and neck. She cleaned it with her sleeve.

 The main door, a room away, opened to reveal her husband coming in. They had been married for about a year and had come to this house, owned by Amelia’s father, to get away from everyone else. Their anniversary was the next day and they didn’t want to have to share that day with anyone else. Or at least that was the original reason they had for coming to that windy beach. He went straight to the kitchen, left some bags there and organized its contents, and only after finishing he sat down on an armchair across Amelia.

- Isn’t it a bit early?

  Her only answer was to burp with no shame or limit. She had finished her beer so she left the bottle by the sofa and looked at her husband, her eyes sad as they could be. He looked at her too and they wrestled with their eyesight for almost a whole minute, until Amelia asked her husband Matt to come to her in the sofa and he refused. She heard her footsteps going up, to the bedroom. She decided to follow, seeing night had already fallen.

 When she entered the room, he was taking off his shoes and putting some slippers. He always complained about some of the shoes he had brought recently, because they all made his feet hurt a lot. He had just being out in the supermarket for a couple of hours and he felt blood pumping through his feet. Amelia sat down by him on the bed and took his hand. She squeezed and he squeezed back but they didn’t look at each other. They just sat there in silence, only illuminated by the very week light of a nightstand lamp.

 The moment was broken by a thunder in the distance. They had not seen the lighting so maybe the storm was out in the ocean but they knew the night was going to be long. Matt looked at Amelia and proposed to her to go down to the kitchen and make some dinner. She tried to smiled but couldn’t; only nodding and releasing his hand from her grip. She walked down first, arriving at the kitchen where Chance was smelling his plate. She had forgotten to feed him and proceed to pour some of his food into it before Matt saw her. But Chance had to eat earlier.

- You always forget. Is like you don’t care about him

- I do.

- Really?

 Matt had that quality that some people have to make you feel, with simple words, like a bug squashed against a wall. Of course she loved the dog but she had been thinking all the day long, going away to the beach   and the dog didn’t like the beach, possibly because it was very humid or because of the crabs. Maybe if the dog had come with her to the beach, she wouldn’t have forgotten to feed him. But it was too late for that now and the dog was eating already.

 Her husband gave her some vegetables to cut into dices as he marinated some shrimps and cut some slices of eggplant. He had always loved to cook and invent new recipes. It drove him away from everything in the world; he became the only person alive with all the ingredients, focusing only on how good it had to look and how nice it had to taste to any palate. The recipe they were doing had been created by him, several years ago.

 Amelia cooked the vegetables with a bit of oil and butter. They had to be nice and crunchy. The shrimps were cooked in a pan with olive oil, salt and pepper and also some paprika. Amelia looked at him, almost smiling to the prawns, so much happier than ever before. She loves to see him smile but it wasn’t often that she saw that these days. Then again, she didn’t smile herself too often either. He proceeded to fry the eggplants after submerging them in water. The smell was all around the house.

 In each plate, Matt served two big slices of eggplant topped with shrimp and vegetables. He poured some olive oil to give it a nice look and asked Amelia to take it to the table. He took out a bottle of wine from a special fridge he had bought and joined his wife at the dining table. It was a small space, the table only for four. They sat one across he other and sat in silence. Matt poured wine into two cups that had been set up by her and they just started eating in silence. It was really good and Chance had followed them to see if they would give him at least a bite of what they had cooked.

 But each one of them was too distracted to notice him, panting included. Amelia wanted to tell her husband how nice it all was but something in her throat didn’t let her. It was as if she had a knot there that wouldn’t let her talk her mind. It wasn’t that she feared her husband or anything like that. She loved him deeply but she knew she was know miles away from him and had been like that since her mother had advised them to come out here and get away from all the eyes and the ears.

 He was distracted too, cutting his eggplant and then sipping some wine and then looking out the window to the storm. From that room, during the day, you could see the horizon and part of the ocean. If there had been light, he would have seen the darkness of the tempest and the violence of the waves in the sea. But now he could only guess all of that by the lights of the thunder and the resounding sound of storm, that seemed like a monster rising from the water and howling, trying to caution every other living creature from getting near him.

- It’s good.

 Amelia had finally said it and as she did, she knew she had committed a mistake. Her voice broke off and couldn’t speak anymore and he looked at her for a moment and just stood up, walking towards the living room. She followed him, thinking for a second he was leaving. She grabbed him by the arm and he pulled her apart, almost in disgust. Her eyes were filled with tears. It was then he said, he finally said what she had dreaded for some time: “You killed her”.

 The only thing Amelia could do, out of rage and despair, was to grab the bottle of beer she had left there earlier and throw it towards him. He dodged it just in time so the bottle crossed the room and smashed against the window, which broke into thousands of big and small pieces. She was breathing heavily and he seemed scared. She finally shed a single tear and said: “Never. I could have never”. The wind entering from outside froze them, leaving them like statues in the middle of the house, thinking of the unborn.

The wind on L

   The wind roared and roared. It seemed like it carried the voices of thousands of people long deceased, as if it all of them had decided that life on planet L should be eradicated. For thousands of years, the elders had gathered every single piece of mysticism and mythology, every tale and story told by a grandmother or a priest. And in many of those tales the wind played a very important role. It was always a destructive force, a very awful power of nature that menaced everything on its path, specially the sensible civilization that had grown on L. Despite their advancements in many fields, they still hadn’t been able to put an end to the never-ending problem of the wind. Besides, they knew that doing anything against it would cause consequences and who knew what those might be.

 Planet L was mostly water, so the wind didn’t really have obstacles that would stop it, like mountain ranges. On L, the only obstacles were caves dug underground by centuries of people trying to find a solution for their awful problem. They had also tried to build walls but that had failed fast. The only way to properly survive was underground, below the few continental masses of the planet. The cities below were small and very damp, but the people had adapted fast and did not care anymore. They had also developed a great sense of hearing and of sight, meaning they could navigate the caves without fear of getting lost or hurt by falling or something like that.

 Their way of living was the main reason no one in that area of the galaxy knew of their existence. Funny enough, many creatures of the universe knew planet L. Pirates, bounty hunters and warriors met there sometimes to exchange prisoners, goods or just to kill each other off in very bloody battles. Almost all alien creatures could withstand the wind easily, at least in some regions. And they liked that it made a cover for them, in case authorities followed them from other systems. But the inhabitants of L had no idea this had been going on for a long time. Their personal belief was that no one on the galaxy would be interested in landing in such a nightmare of a planet.

 One day, however, something rather different happened. Two ships entered L at very high speed, breaking the sound barrier several times. One was after the other and, from time to time, it fired on it. They had cannons mounted everywhere so one could only think they were bounty hunters or assassins. The ship being attacked caught fire but kept fleeing into some more shots mad it crash into one of the largest islands of the windy world. The ship that went down exploded and the other one just left, its crew thinking that all life inside of the downed ship would soon be dead, if it already wasn’t. It was a matter of time.

 Below, the people of a city had felt the tremor of the ship crashing into the ground. They had been scared for a moment, but then remembered that the weather report had clarified that a very strong storm was going to take place outside, so it was better to stay at home and close all doors, just in case the wind breached the main entrance. That was almost impossible as the main entrance was made from an incredibly strong type of metal they had found when building the caves, but these people preferred to play it safe, specially when from their houses they could hear the moaning of the wind and the voices of all creatures that had died out there in it. For the young ones, the wind was a monster to avoid. For the older ones, it was the difference between life and death and the thing that kept them there, at home.

 As they all ran to their houses and took shelter from the sound of the wind, in the downed ship its pilot was struggling to get out of there fast. The other members of its crew had been killed and he was the only one capable to transport their precious cargo back to their home planet. The treasure was on a small chest he grabbed with bloodied hands. He put it on a bag, which in turn he put on his back. He checked conditions outside but couldn’t wait for the computer to calculate anything. Partly because it had been damaged in the crash but also because there was gasoline leaking all over the place. He didn’t have time to wait so he just put on a suit and went outside. The wind knocked him off at first but then he managed to sink his feet into the ground and at least walk slowly.

 The storm was too strong but he managed to walk away from the ship a few meters just before it exploded. He was pushed away, landing on a puddle of mud and dirty water. The strength of the explosion caused him to lose his balance and stability for a while. He even bled from one if his ears but he could still hear fine, or so its seemed at least in the middle of the storm. He had nowhere to go now so we just stood up and slowly walked away from the wreckage. He turned around to see his ship one last time and a small tear slid down his face. He had lived in that ship for years, but now he had to move on and try to get someone to pick him up there. His suit had a communications device but the wind wouldn’t let it work.

 In the city below, as he tried to use the device, a red light appeared in one of the consoles that checked security all over the city. The computer had detected the device that the stranded alien was using out there. But there was no one there to see it. Everyone had been ordered to their homes due to the storm, to their fear of a wind that just couldn’t get inside their city. However, there was a lonely native of L who happened to be a priest. Secretly, he left his door opened when a storm happened, as he loved the sound of the voices. He thought he could hear in the wind what his ancestors wanted for all of them.

 That priest was the only creature that heard the destruction of the ship outside and he knew, right away, that that sound had nothing to do with the storm. He ran to the metallic door that separated the city from the outside world but just stood there, as if it was going to open magically. Of course, it didn’t and he didn’t dare to open it by himself. Doing so would mean the death penalty, by precisely stepping outside and never coming back. The rules of their civilization were pretty clear and even it moment, when his desire to see what was outside was so big in his heart, even then he just couldn’t do anything. He just stood there by the door, waiting for one more sound to make him do something crazy or at least let him know they weren’t alone.

 Outside, the stranded one was walking clumsily, falling over very often, and almost going insane due to the voices that he could now hear very clearly around him. He didn’t have a clue of what they said, but he had a feeling it wasn’t anything good. Finally his device began beeping and he thought that some ship was en route to save him. But that wasn’t it. It had detected an energy source ahead, which might lead to life or at least to a shelter. Going more and more crazy by the minute, he walked in that suit as fast as he could, careful not to drop his bag with the small chest inside. He had a massive headache and he knew he was bleeding but he just kept on going.

 Then, the priest heard a sound on the door. It had been a subtle, soft sound but he knew he had heard it… Again! It was as if someone was trying to know but didn’t have the strength to do it. As one of the few that dared to listen to his planet, the priest knew this time the death penalty was worth it. Even if there was nothing there when the door opened, he knew something else had happened and that was good enough for him. He then ran to the control panel and entered a password that had never been used. The door moaned, as everything turned to lift it over the priest’s head. The wind entered from the outside like a plague but he felt something else enter so he closed the door instantly.

 When the metallic door had fallen into its place, the priest turned around and saw the stranded alien lying on the cave’s floor. He was bleeding or at least that was what it looked like. Their blood was yellow and his was green. His breath was slowing down. The priest dragged the body to his house and there checked the alien. It was risky, but he took off the helmet. He waited but nothing happened so he got to work and cured him as well as he could. He removed him from the suit and put the bag with the chest on a chair nearby. For days, no one knew there was an alien in that house and they wouldn’t think twice about the bag on the chair.

 As it happened, that bag carried the most important object in the universe. And it was a coincidence, a very happy one to be precise, that it had landed in that forgotten part of the universe as many hands wanted that thing but only one person could manage to handle it. And that person was not very far now.

The man of Pearl Island

   The island called Pearl had only one small settlement that covered one third of the island. The rest was jungle and the beautiful beaches that many tourists visited often in the summer. The rest of the year, Pearl Island was only attractive to the seekers of new marine species or people looking to score big by finding a sunken treasure. Many years had passed since anyone had discovered any of those, but people kept trying, as legends were abundant in the island. All children knew stories with mermaids, colossal creatures that lived in the sea, the god of the ocean and so on. That’s why the souvenirs in the summer were such an important source of income for the people of Pearl Island. Everyone wanted to be part of their heritage and the residents liked that.

 One of the many stories involved the old town of Saint Mary. The new Saint Mary was the only settlement in the island and was located in a small bay in the west end of the island. The old Saint Mary was on the west, on the side the first people to arrive to the island had landed. There, in the middle of the jungle, they had built a very modest town, which they abandoned years later due to the dangers of being so close to the wild and also because this side of the island flooded when hurricanes passed over it. So people eventually moved and they had remained in the same spot for many years. The ruins of old Saint Mary could still be visited on trips to the jungles and it even featured one home that was almost untouched since the days of the first settlers.

 There was a story too involving the migration of people from one town to the next and it was the one that would haunt the island and the tourists for a while. It was said that of all the families and people that lived in old Saint Mary, only one man refused to leave his house. Coincidently, he lived in the house which was untouched today. He had decided he would not leave because he had built his home himself, with his hands, working every single day since he had arrived to the island. The houses were made of stone and a kind of glue they had discovered in the jungle. It was very resistant and, at least at first, the hurricanes were unable to knock any house down.

But with time, the floods came and some people went missing, which of course worried many. Then the hurricanes became stronger and one by one, the houses ended up being just a pile of rocks. That’s how the migration to the bay began but without one of the residents, who blatantly refused to leave his home. He had also being affected by everything, even one of his sons had died in a storm once, but he didn’t think running away was the answer. His wife thought he had gone mad, so he left him there in the jungle without ever looking back. He never knew, but she remarried and had a very good life. They never knew this either, but they died the same year, her first. He had always been more resilient.

 Or maybe he was stubborn. He attempted to rebuild the hole old town but it appeared that nature only wants his house to be there, not anyone else’s. So after a while, he stopped trying to revive the past and decided to just give up to the forces that controlled the place. The rainy months were harsh, and he would often have to make small works on his house, but the whole time he remained inside, writing on a diary and smoking on his pipe. That was the way he spent his days on the house in the jungle. He also did some walks around the trees and discovered many animals that people had not seen by that time, or so he thought. He drew all of them and described them properly on his diary.

 Eventually, he died because a very dangerous spider that lived there, and that he had never seen, bit him. As no one was there to help, he died in the place where the spider had bitten him: his bedroom. So it was quite a shock for many, several years later, when they rediscovered the house, checked his room and saw a perfect human skeleton laying there, as casually as it could be. The first tourists to go to the house had the chance to see the skeleton and that’s how the stories began to develop. Some said he had died because of a course, some thought that sorcery had been involved and others that he had been killed by a mythical creature called a basilisk. There were all great stories to make people come to the island and they all worked perfectly as the tourist numbers rose every year.

 But eventually people that descended from the old settlers, specially those that were related to the man, asked for more respect to the body and asked the council of the island to remove the skeleton from the house and bury it nearby, where he would have love to be for the rest of his life. The relocation of the body was a huge media circus, filled with sensationalists reporters and tourists that had come only to see how they took the skeleton from the bedroom and put him in a hole by the house. Many took pictures and, without proper context people started inventing their own stories even before the skeleton had been fully covered by dirt.

 In some circles, the man was thought to be a vampire, one that had left the old continent in order to survive the extinction of his race. Somehow, he had arrived to Pearl Island and had lived there in the shadows for a long time until he died because he had forgotten to close the windows at night and the sunlight toasted him. Others said the man was a sorcerer that cursed the people that had left him behind. That’s why many of them, according to the story, had developed bites all over the body and why the women weren’t able to bear child for many years. That story ignored that the settlers were not very clean and they had ticks all over their clothes and that women were infertile due to a fruit they stopped eating eventually.

 Although the ruins were not the mot visited place of the island, the beaches were much more attractive, many still visited in order to learn about the history of the place. Eventually, historians discovered that the house of the man that was buried right there was the only one still on foot because of one simple reason: he had been the only one to built it correctly. It was a much less interesting reason than expected, as many still thought of him as a sorcerer, but that was the truth. The first settlers were very lazy people and had not worked hard to build their homes. It was their children who eventually went serious when they decided to build a town for others to visit and for them to be proud about. Only that man had understood that many years ago.

 Even if children still told stories about how his skeleton wondered around the island on Halloween, some scholars wanted to rescue his name and his effort to preserve a lifestyle he deemed the best. He learned many things about the island and its ecosystem, which they discovered when reading his diaries. So many decided to know more about him but they stumbled against a wall as there was no manifest of how many people had first arrived on the island and what their names were. Of course, so many were known because of their descendants but there were a large minority. So it was impossible to know who that man was. At least, judging by his diaries, they learned he was a very intelligent person.

He didn’t seem to be a scientist of any kind but he did the right things when listing animals and plants. His writing was correct but he had made lots of orthographic mistakes, not uncommon for people of his time. Maybe he wasn’t very educated but he had wanted to become more cultured while in the island. The diaries told a very different story than the ones people had created around him. He seemed to be lonely and, at times, a very hurt man. But he was also brave and honest and eager to share his thoughts. It was obvious he had been hurt when people left but he kept working for the future inhabitants of the island and for anyone that would fall in love with Pearl Island, as he did.

 Eventually, a large party was organized were the mayor of the island unveiled a monument in honor of the unknown man from the jungle. The monument was just an eternal flame, that wanted to symbolize the debt the islanders had with this man but also to all others islanders who wanted their tiny piece of land to be a paradise for everyone in the world. People cheered and the square were the monument was built became a hub for tourists coming in and out of the island, as it was located in front of the marina. Some thought of taking the bones of the man from the jungle to the town, but then realized he would never want to leave his home.

Life in the alley

   The club looked larger and even more filled with people from the second floor. I had just being there for less than an hour and I already felt a little claustrophobic, even though the place could fit a large plane inside, without the party goers of course. Most of the people were dancing, or their version of dancing, while some others tried to talk over the music on the second floor. People went up there because it was the lounge section and it was supposed to exist in order to mingle with others and just have a great time only drinking but the sound was too loud, even though it shouldn’t be. Anyway, people did their best to talk but I was too tired of trying to understand anything so I decided to go to the bathroom.

 I gave up to that fast as the line for the bathroom was very long and some people ere saying guys were fucking or something there so I just decided to exit, pee in the back alley and then come back in. I had a seal on my hand to do so I crossed the sea of dancing people on the ground floor and reached the door fast, as I felt more and more the need to go and pee. I finally went through the door, after having to push some guy flirting with this big hairy man, called bear in the gay slang.

 The day had been a very hot one so the night was very refreshing, not excessively hot nor cold. Just a nice weather to go to where the dumpsters were and pee. I closed my eyes for a second; wanting to concentrate on not drinking any more liquids but then I heard something. It sounded like a moan or some kind of complaint. I finished peeing, put it all away and then stopped and made no noise. There it was again, someone sobbing or something. My first thought was thinking than some guys had decided to take a trip to the back alley and have some fun but if that was the case, I would have heard some other moaning or at least two people breathing and I could only hear one. I walked away from the main entrance of the club, to where many bags filled with people, others with other type of garbage, had been put into a large pile. Then, I saw who had made the noises and felt really guilty about thinking those were sex sounds.

 As I had my cellphone with me, I called an ambulance right there. As I waited, I got closer to the guy: he had been beaten up pretty bad and was lying on the dirty floor, sobbing, incapable of saying a single word. Apparently, he was in a state of shock and couldn’t do more than just complain and sob. I tried to pull him out of the pile of garbage but he complained louder so I decided not to do anything. Then, I saw the light of the ambulance behind me and I stood up fast towards them, in order to tell them where the victim was. In no time, they had him on a stretcher and in the ambulance. I was about to turn around when of the paramedics told me they needed someone to go with him to sign papers and son. It could be anyone. So I went with them.

When we got to the hospital, I had to call my friends to tell me where I was but no one answered the phone. Of course, they were still inside the club and no cellphone, unless in front of their faces, would be noticed. A doctor came out to talk to me and told me they had to get the wounded guy to surgery. Apparently, the beating had been worse than imaginable and one of his lungs had been punctured. He had many broken ribs and was now hallucinating, babbling something that no one could really understand. I had to sign some papers saying it had been me who found him and that I had to be responsible for him for the time being. It felt like the right thing to do and, to be honest, it had been too shocking not to be both concerned and pissed about it.

 I stayed in the hospital all night. A nurse called Anita was kind enough to give me a quarter in order to get a coffee from a machine. I talked to her while I drank it, telling her I had just found the guy in an alley and had no idea of who he was. She told me that he wasn’t the first gay guy to come in like that. At least five in the last few weeks and it was rumored to be a very violent gang who also assaulted immigrants and prostitutes. Every victim had survived except for the youngest one, who had died only a week before. I thought to myself that, those guys in the club, most would never live through that. Guess they were the lucky ones.

 When the clock hit six in the morning, I was about to fall asleep right in the waiting room. I had nothing on me except my cellphone and wallet but nevertheless I had always been careful not to fall asleep where someone could take my things away. And after I had seen that night, I doubled my efforts not to fall asleep, even in a hospital. Thankfully, the doctor came out again and told me the surgery had been a success. He had to stay in the hospital to get better but he had been one of the lucky ones: other had been more brutally attacked and had tougher recoveries. The doctor also told me they had tried to locate his family and they had ben successful but they lived far away and, apparently, wouldn’t travel for their son.

When I heard that, my heart shrunk. I felt so bad for the poor guy, all alone in a hospital with a family unwilling to move from home for their victimized son. But, yet again, it wasn’t such an uncommon thing. I decided to go home and rest. Then, in the afternoon, I would visit him again. When I got home, I realized I had no keys so I had no other option than to wake up my flat mate. He was a weird guy and didn’t even say a word when he opened. He just went straight back to bed. I did the same, getting naked fast and into the covers, falling asleep in a heartbeat. My last thought went with the guy in the hospital, broken body but still alive. Was he awake? Was he wondering why that had happened to him?

  When I visited later that afternoon, he seemed to be much better than the night before. And I felt very guilty about thinking this, but when I entered the room I almost choked, as I hadn’t realized how beautiful he was. He had short blondish hair and green eyes. He was tanned and very tall. Maybe that was why I couldn’t really move him from the garbage. He was very nice and thanked me for what I had done.  He recognized, very openly, that his family was not coming and that he was going to try to get better fast in order to go back to his own place soon. He worked in a hotel as a lifeguard, also teaching tourists how to surf. His name was Michael but he told me to tell him Mike, so I did.

 I visited Mike every single day for the following week, until he got better. We chatted for hours, even making nurses come to shut us up. He didn’t share the room but apparently we were too loud for a hospital. The saddest moment came when he confessed me that his main attacker had been a guy he had liked in the club and that he had tried to flirt with him. That’s why they went to the back alley and the other guy surprised him with two more guys and beat him up. Kicks, punches, insults… It all flew towards him and put him on the floor. The really sad part was that he told me that after the beating, the guy that he had flirted with had tried to rape him but that the other guys decided it was best to leave so they did.

 It is very awkward to see a beautiful person sad or crying. I know this sounds bad but that’s what I thought after he told me his story. You just never think about someone that looks like a model in such a situation. Yet there was Mike, a short way from male perfection, beaten up by life. Anyway, we also chatted about nicer things, like our jobs and lives in general. As it happens, we had some people in common and he even recalled having seen me before but I had never seen him, I told him I would remember. Mike went red with this statement and told me that if I continued that way he would believe anything else I said. So we joked around with that and just became friends.

 When he was released from the hospital, I drove him to his house and had him installed. One of his arms was in a sling and he couldn’t walk a lot or very fast but he was alive. That day we ordered chines food and I realized I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing. If it went on like that, I would fall in love with him or become obsessed or something and it would be uncomfortable for the both of us. So I decided to be a friend and nothing more. Sure enough, we did exactly that and in a couple of weeks he was dating some big muscular guy he had met at the beach.  I was happy for him, mainly because he looked really happy, and it was the first time I saw him like that.

 Me, I went on with my life too. No, I didn’t met anyone and no; I wasn’t in love with Mike. That would have been too easy. I just wondered, every time I looked at him, about some many things in life. My first thought was to ask myself why would anyone do that to another person? Is someone’s existence so unbearable you have to kick them and almost kill them? But then I also thought about me, about how alone I was and how easy it was for mike to just get back on his feet. It seemed unfair somehow that life and people favor some over others just because of their looks, for good and bad. My conclusion: it was all a tragedy.