A good day

   Someone spoke, far away. It was a very deep voice, capable of piercing through walls and any other objects. It was kind of annoying because the rest of the world was at peace except for that voice that appeared not to be able to calm down. When Jay decided to get out of bed, the voice appeared to be stronger but still difficult to understand.

 Jay stood up in front of his mirror. Not much light entered his room through the small window there was on the wall, but he didn’t turn on the light either. He just stood there, looking at himself. He observed every inch of his body until he decided he recognized himself in that image. It was a very strange to do but he did it quite often, just to check he hadn’t lost his mind or something. It was his biggest fear.

 He put on the t-shirt he had wore the day before and some sandals. He looked at himself again on the mirror and went out the room. The hallway was empty so he knew he had a good chance to arrive at the bathroom and not find anyone there. He walked rather fast and, when he pushed the door, he was happy to see there was no one there.

 It was difficult to live in a place like that, where almost everything had to be shared. There was one bathroom per floor but sometimes something would go wrong on one of them and chaos would ensue as people from one floor would have to go to the one above to shower or to take a piss. It was very annoying and it happen frequently.

 But that day, everything was good and empty. After he was done, he decided to go back to his room and grab his shower things. It was best to take advantage of the unusual situation and do what he had to do in the bathroom at once. He almost ran to his room, where he grabbed his towel, soap, his shampoo bottle and toothbrush with toothpaste. He ran back out and was surprised, again, not to see anyone around.

 It really was a strange day. He showered for a good ten minutes, washing his hair, getting all his body clean and brushing his teeth with ease afterwards. When he got out of the bathroom, there was someone waiting by the door. His name was Carl, or something like that. It was one of the junkies that lived on the room opposite to his. He just said “Hi” and moved on to his room.

 Trying not to turn around and see what Carl was up to, jay knew it was best not to interact with them too much. They were really strange people and they were always high on whatever drugs they could find. Sometimes it was scary, when they got really annoying, but Carl was apparently on a down mood that day. It was best for everyone that he was.

 Once in his room, Jay noticed a bit more sunlight was entering his room and he realized he was smiling. He didn’t do that often but his day seemed to be having such a good start, it was hard not be optimistic. He put on his regular clothes for a Friday and grabbed his wallet and keys before leaving the room once again. As he put the lock on the door, he gazed towards the bathroom and noticed there was a line made up six people and it seemed to be growing slowly. He really had been lucky.

 Outside, on the street, the sun was even brighter so there was no need for a jacket or anything like that. Spring had moved on to that stage when its more like summer than like winter, which was perfect because Jay only had one jacket and it was too old now to keep using it. He needed money to buy a new one before the next winter, in order not to die frozen on the street or on his bed.

 In the winter, he usually slept clothed as the building had no central heating and his room could feel like a freezer sometimes. But now, he didn’t have to think of that. Next winter was months away and his day was doing to good to be thinking of the bad things in life. He walked block after block, ten in total, until he got to the bus stop that was closest to is home. He hoped not to be late for it because sometimes he would arrive just as the bus was leaving and it could be another fifteen minutes until the next one came into the neighbourhood.

 He stood by the stop and realized there was only one other person waiting: an old woman who seemed to be sleeping. Maybe she had already been sleeping for too long. Jay looked at his wrist, to an old watch he had found on the street, and realized it was a bit earlier than normal. That may have been the reason for his luck so far. Or maybe it was just a coincidence. In any way, the bus would be approaching in any minute.

 As if he had summoned it, the bus appeared on the street and stopped right in front of Jay. He walked towards the entrance and realized the old woman wasn’t moving. He asked the driver to wait for a moment and decided to try and wake up the woman. At first, he thought she might have been dead because she was unresponsive but she finally woke up and stood up slowly to walk to the bus.

 Strangely enough, the driver had waited and he smiled at Jay for his actions. That was something strange but even stranger was the fact that, after paying his ticket, the old woman asked Jay to seat by her side in the back of the bus. He accepted the offer and sat up there, where the seats were a bit higher than the rest. He rarely sat on the bus, always standing up.

 The old lady thanked him for his help and told him she was going to visit her daughter in the hospital. Apparently, she had some problems with her lungs and was going to undergo a complicated surgery so the old lady wanted to be on his daughter’s side through all of it. Jay nodded as she told him every detail of her life, about her husband who had died five years earlier and about her grandchildren that rarely came to visit her. She seemed like a nice person. A person that rarely has anyone to talk to.

 Some minutes later, she asked Jay to help her to the bus exit. He did so and she surprised him with money, a proper bill that was maybe too much to accept. She noticed Jay’s doubt to grab the bill and just put it in his hands. She said she was grateful for all the good people in the world and then pressed the button to let the driver know she was walking out. She did so rather fast, faster than he thought she could move.

 Still confused, he got out of the bus himself ten minutes afterwards. He had put the bill in his wallet but was still thinking about it. It wasn’t a common thing that random people would come up to you on the street to give you money. To be honest, his problems with money were always about not having enough, not the opposite. So he was very confused about what had just happened. As he arrived to work, he quickly forgot about it as the good day he was having may come to an end right there.

 He worked in the kitchen of a fast food restaurant, one of those big chains that makes burgers and nuggets and fries. At first, he loved the smell of it all, even of the ice cream as it got out of the machine. But now, after almost a year of working there, he had become rather oblivious to all of it. He flipped burger some days, some other he had to put salt on the fries or lift boxes with every single product they used in the restaurant.

 His shift began early in the morning and ended around eight o’clock at night. Sometimes he would stay more time because his supervisor would need something but, again, that day was a bit different. He was going to clean the floors but instead his supervisor wanted to have a word with him, He thought that, for sure, that was the end of his very good day.

 His supervisor, a very young man with lots of pimples, had decided to put him on the register. It was a promotion. He would win more money, as he had to learn some new things. He had to start right away so he had to learn fast. All day long, he did great, learning all the codes rather fast from another cashier. He smiled to every client and one of them even told him to keep the change, which was a very big tip. That day was really strange and he was really liking it.

 At night, back home, he counted the money he had made and was happy to know he was a bit closer to what his goal was, which wasn’t really clear. He thanked life for such an amazing day and hope all others would be the same.

Below

   The walk couldn’t be too long. They were allowed to reach a big boulder on the top of the hill and then go back almost instantly. There was no way to really enjoy the moment, although no one got out for a walk to enjoy themselves. They did it because it was necessary to walk, to train for longer walks in the future. The funny thing was that the distance had not change in a year so they couldn’t really know if they were able to do more in the suits or not.

 Helena arrived at the Boulder and looked up, to the sun. The veil that covered the sky was especially thick that day, blocking most of the sunlight from arriving to the ground. The sun appeared to be cold, as if it didn’t care of what had happened. And he certainly didn’t because everything that had happened had nothing to do with the sun but with the planet and its inhabitants. They had always been a real danger but no one ever thought something might actually happen.

 The alarm begun. She had enough oxygen to go back to the Hut and couldn’t waist more time looking at the sun or at the reddish sky. She wanted the oxygen tank to be bigger, she had asked that several times. But they couldn’t do it. They had no materials and also no interest in letting anyone wander to far off. The truth was that the government of the Hut was not interested at all in reconquering the surface, only in surviving for a hundred years or more.

 When she stepped into the entrance and the airlock decontaminated the chamber, she felt sad. The world outside was no different than in the books and the images she had on her computer. Yet, there was death and desolation all over the place. As a team of people cleaned her outfit with a variety of chemicals, she wondered if the human race could ever be what it once was.

 As she removed the suit in the next room, Frank came to talk to her. He was the person that controlled every walk outside and had some questions, the same questions they always asked people. It was some kind of an obligatory test for every single person that asked to have a walk. There weren’t many who did, not all wanted to go back and see what their house was like now or what the world looked like. Some had actually moved on.

 She answered the same as always: there was no plant life, no animal life, the concentration of particles had not changed and the deterioration of the different materials was advancing as scheduled. She was obliged to take pictures but this time she hadn’t taken any. She told the man it was because her earlier walk had only been a week ago and nothing had change out there in such a short time.

 Frank wasn’t happy about the pictures. He wasn’t really the boss and he knew someone else would get all over him because of that. But he didn’t insisted. Helena was one of the few people that dared to go outside and walk around, they needed her more that she needed them or at least that was the way he saw it. So he wrote in his report that the camera inside the suit was damaged and that they hadn’t realized before she had stepped out. That way, the questions would be less.

 Helena thanked him and, walking slowly, she went directly to the food court. According to her mother, that wasn’t the term they should use but it was the one promoted by the government. They wanted people to feel they were in a safe and fun environment, even if it was below ground. And “food court” was one of those terms that reminisced something good, or so it seemed, from a long time ago. Everyone ate there although they didn’t have many options, only one.

 As always, the young woman did the line and the cashier scanned the code on her wrist to check that she hadn’t eaten earlier. She received her tray and some minutes later she had hot food and was looking for a place to sit down. Luckily, her friend Patricia was finishing her meal so she sat down with her. Patricia was alone, as it happened very often. Many people thought she was obsessed with the outside.

 During the following twenty minutes, Helena discussed with her friend every single thing she had seen outside. Of course, it was nothing new for the scientific team but it was new to Patricia, who was not allowed to go outside on mental health grounds. She had always wanted to do it but from the first time she asked for permission, it was denied. And after many times trying to apply, they finally told her why they wouldn’t let her out.

 She loved to hear every detail about the outside and Helena knew how much her friend like her tales so she tried to make as entertaining as she could. The tale ended when she arrived at the boulder and looked at the sun. Patricia was smiling and her eyes were full of water. She told Helena she was very lucky to have seen that because the world, as she knew, was very beautiful.

 Helena did not really know if the world was beautiful. In theory, it was. The millions of pictures available to them seemed to tell the story of a bright world were people were happy and lived very complete lives. Yet, those same people had been the ones to destroy it, her parents for example. So she always had problems processing that. Besides, the world outside was dead and no sign of that beauty remained.

 After lunch, both women went through the Market. It was a large and long corridor filled with different stores. Each one of them sold something different, so there was no competition. And the amount of things each store sold was very limited. Yet, most people loved to stroll around to check if they had pulled out something new from their vaults or something. People still had hope that things would change suddenly, even if they hadn’t changed at all for so long.

 But that day, the fifth store on the left was filled with people in front of it trying to look for something the vendor had put in display. It was the store that sold paintings and pictures and such things. Most of the things the man there sold were made by him or his family. But the little image in the transparent urn he had put on display was something another walker, the people that go outside, had found in a recent walk.

 When they were able to get closer, Helena and Patricia realized the image was very small. It was a black and white photography, probably a very old one. It pictured three baby boys, or so it seemed. One of the babies was crying, while the other two held hands and were apparently playing with some cubes with letters. The most intriguing part of the image was a shadow behind the crying baby. It seemed to be the arms of an adult, or maybe the legs.

 They could only see the picture for a while before those who had just arrived pushed them aside to have a look. They talked about the picture all the way to the dormitories, wondering if the shadow behind the babies was really another person or maybe even an animal. It was a very weird picture too: who would take a photo of a crying baby instead of taking a look at what he needed.

 Patricia concluded that it might have been a fake. Maybe the vendor had taken the picture and he said they had found it outside. That was very hard to do, thought Helena, but not impossible. They separated in a corridor, as Helena lived further ahead and Patricia lived one floor below. They committed to see each other the next day and then parted ways. Not a minute had passed when Helena fell to the ground.

 A very large, very powerful earthquake was shaking every single part of the complex. It had been built for that but that didn’t mean people wouldn’t get scared. It was the first one in a long while. Helena could hear screaming behind the doors, where people lived. When it stopped, she stood up fast and ran towards her home. But she never made it there. A general alarm was issued: the compound had been breached.

 No one knew what that meant. Was it toxic gas or something like that? What did they mean with “breach”? Helena wasn’t sure she wanted to find out but, instead of going to check on her mother, she decided to turn around towards the laboratory. She had to know what was going on.

What was that?

   I don’t know if I hadn’t rested well enough or maybe it was the fact that I was using earplugs to block all sounds coming from my annoying roommates.  I had fallen asleep, like always, almost at three in the morning and wasn’t expecting to have nothing notable to tell when I woke up. But then, nightmares and dreams happen and apparently my brain is very active these days.

I know I had a very active dream first. I don’t really remember what it was about but I do remember when I woke up, covered in sweat, in the middle of the night. Something had scared me or made me run because I was panting and sweating and trying to breath. But, after all, I was still sleepy so I fell asleep again and that next dream I remember very well.

 It happened in an airport, just after I had arrived from somewhere to Brasilia. I have no idea if it was actually Brasilia. I have never been there myself but in the dream it was pretty clear that was the city I was in. I walked around the airport and remembered walking with one bag and looking at the incredible ceiling of the terminal and thinking that not so many people used the airport. My subconscious didn’t really add that much people to the dream, only some background “extras”. I walked a lot on that airport, watching the stores and just enjoying myself.

 Then, after many corridors, I arrived at what appeared to be a hotel reception. There, there was a woman who checked me in and joined me to my room, which had all curtains and blinds closed. Somehow, I didn’t think it was strange or weird in any way. When she left, I immediately lay down and rested for a while. Then, I noticed that it was actually very early in the day still and that I had to take advantage of whatever time I had in the city so I had thought of getting a taxi to take me downtown.

 But this I only thought of. Apparently, I couldn’t’ move from the bed anymore but I really wanted to. I didn’t want to waste any time of my trip, which was short I guess, but nothing could make my legs move. I could see the sunlight filtering through the curtains and somehow that made me even sleepier than I already was.

 I fell asleep in a dream and woke up a bit later, the orange light of the afternoon entering the room.  Again, I got worried I was wasting my time in Brasilia so this time I was able to stand up and go to the bathroom. There, I washed my face and started thinking that maybe I had no money to pay the hotel fee. I worried as I checked my bag and went around the room. But then I remembered I did have money so it wasn’t a problem. Curiously, I thought of a trip I was going to make in real life, as if the two events had some relation with the other.

 I went back to sitting in bed and thought of buying a low-cost ticket to Rio and check the city there, doing a favela tour and taking lots of pictures. But I never got out of the hotel room; I didn’t seem capable to do so. I woke up slowly, still thinking about the money. I was sweating a bit and my covers were all around the place. The cold wind of the night was freezing my feet and I had to fix it all to lie there more comfortably. It was late and I had cancelled my alarm clock, which I put on everyday to wake up early to write. I didn’t write a word that day.

  That day, a Saturday, I decided to relax completely. I didn’t do my daily workout either and showered after 1 PM. The rest of the day was relaxing, except for the fact that an apparently important football game was going to take place and there was people everywhere, including my apartment, waiting for it to happen.

 Decided to avoid that, I left to have lunch and then wander around. I ended up exercising after all when I had to walk eight kilometers to my house just because I wanted to take a stroll by the ocean, which was covered by greyish clouds and seemed not to be in the right mood for anyone to come close. I had thought the weather would be better but it wasn’t. When I got home, my feet hurt and I was tired. That Saturday I fell asleep pretty late too, even though I was tired. Something always distracts me.

 I ended up having another dream. Or maybe it was a nightmare. It had different stages or levels or whatever you want to call them but they were all related: it was about me and my father and how we couldn’t really communicate with each other. We argued about thing I don’t remember in different locations that had absolutely nothing to do with is. I think one of them was the former house of my grandfather and another one looked like a market but one that I had never seen before.

 The dream was exhausting. Even being in it, I could notice my body wasn’t working correctly. I was breathing heavily and I couldn’t help thinking it was because I seemed to run after my father a lot in the dream. We moved around the scene like it was a theatre stage and it made me dizzy but I went on doing it exactly the same way because, somehow, it made sense that I did it that way.

 He was being very harsh with me. He insulted me in front of other family members and we fought and I wanted him to understand something but I don’t really remember what that was. And he called me a failure I think and then I realized I couldn’t speak. I tried very hard but couldn’t. My face felt drowned and I woke up then.

 But when I did, I strangely still dreaming because I kept talking or, at least, trying to talk. I opened and closed my mouth and reached for something or someone that wasn’t there and all of this happened in my bed. I had my eyes opened and I remember it vividly. I fell asleep right back and then my voice did work and I could speak and tell him what I felt but he didn’t seem to care about what I had to say. He was so mean and harsh that, when I woke up for good, I realized he wasn’t really my father.

 I had to recover myself from that dream, trying to slow down my breathing and walking outside to turn off that damn light the idiots I live with always leave on. When I went back to bed I felt my back being very wet and I wondered if wearing pajama pants had anything to do with that. After all, I normally slept in my underwear and without a t-shirt even and now I was wearing it all. Did that made me dream so much?

 It was 7AM, according to my cellphone. I still had some hours to rest so I decided to try and use them to calm myself down and breathe easily. I tried to think of places filled with nature and calm and I remembered two beautiful parks I had been in Amsterdam. Both day I had been freezing but I always liked to go to places were normal people went instead of the ones filled with tourists only.

 That apparently helped because I fell asleep for three hours but when I woke up, I gave myself some more minutes to relax, to keep my eyes closed and to breath in order to calm myself down.

 Two nights in a row my brain had given me reasons to run around and worry and try to solve problems that weren’t there. Or were they? What did those dreams meant, if they meant anything at all? I’ve never really bought into all of that psychological shit that says that if you dream about flying it means something. I don’t think the brain is that smart But I do think you dream from your memory and it curious why your subconscious uses certain memories to play around.

 Waking up in the middle of the night, or morning, sweaty and tired, is something that hadn’t happened to me in a while. Normally I don’t remember what I dream but this time it was like both times I had actually just been in those places. And maybe they were nightmares but I have no idea of telling because there wasn’t something obviously scary about them.

 I just decided to write it all down because I don’t want to forget anything about it. Maybe those dreams will come in handy one day. Or maybe writing them down will make them go away or at least change. Who knows?

It

   Sitting by the windows was probably the only good distraction I could find, the only good way to think about something else and not about… Well, about It. I remember a movie where It is also a monster, but in that case the character is fiction, it just doesn’t exist. Yet, my It does exist and he lives inside of me, more exactly, inside my mind. That’s why the only safe place for me is here, by the window, looking down on the street, looking at people that shouldn’t be out of their home at this late hour. I followed them with my eyes, from the moment I see them on one side of the street to the other and I wonder if they have to be awake because of the same reason I am awake. It makes me feel less lonely to thank someone else understand how awful it is.

 I don’t really know when it began. For me, it’s difficult to put a date on it as I have never been good with handling time. That is an awful disadvantage and, in the past, I tried to fix it by wearing two watches at the same time and looking the hour on my cellphone every ten seconds. But that only made me unstable and people feared me, called me names and, with time, I couldn’t get any work or any friends. I was particular, but not unique or anything. I just can’t seem to understand how to be a normal person and I blame It for all of this. I know, I feel, he has been with me for far longer than I can remember and that It has influenced my opinion and way of behaving in the world. Yes, I’m somewhat insane, but it’s all because of It, I’m more convinced that ever.

 It started showing in nightmares just before I lost my first job. I believe I was working in an office that had to do with publicity and advertising and all of that. I spend long hours doing designs and drawing and writing and would only go to sleep if I felt I had it finished. But that wasn’t very often because I was never really satisfied with what I did. So sleep began to be more and more scarce and that’s why now, I don’t really care about not sleeping all that much. I’m used to now. Back then I drank lots of coffee and I liked to spend my nights in a well-lit room. Not anymore. Light bothers me because it reminds of what I’m not.

 When It first appeared, I didn’t realize it would be a problem. I mean, we have all had nightmares, night terrors. We have all been woken up, sweating and panting and shaking because our minds cannot decide if you have just experienced is true or false. My problem with It is that, every time I wake up, I happen to know it was all true, because it really hurts and because, sometimes, I can see It outside of my head. Some say I have really gone insane and some others beg me to go to a psychiatrist, thinking a shrink could manage what I have inside. But they can’t, they have no idea what I’m dealing with.

   Sometimes, It takes the form of a classical monster. Maybe a huge scorpion or a spider, maybe a creature I had seen when I was little in some cartoons or I don’t know where. Some other times, It is my family, my old friends and many other people that have come in close contact with me. The fact that It can be anyone, that It can manipulate me with my own memories and feelings, is what scares me the most. Once, I thought I was having a dream about my mother, cooking a delicious dessert she used to make when I was little. The dream was just ideal but in a second it turned into a nightmare. It was my mother and she became this hideous version of herself, blaming me for her death earlier that year, blaming me for not taking good care of her.

 Looking at the night rain, I remember that was one of the awful ones. I remember waking up screaming so hard that the neighbors thought I was being attacked in my own home. The police was called and that was the first time I was put in some kind of watch list. They have one where they put all the crazy ones; all the people that have a screw loose and that may just go insane in any second. From that day I was a lunatic and from that day too I became terrified of my own mind. It was inside of him, It was me and It wasn’t at the same time. Because I refused to believe, no matter what shrinks said, that every part of that nightmare had been created by my subconscious. No, that couldn’t be right, I just wasn’t capable of that but no one existed that could say the opposite.

 My nightmares occurred more and more often and after the third time the police came into my house, I decided not to sleep at all. I medicate it myself, buying or stealing what I needed. Sometimes the Internet was enough for me to have whatever crazy medication was good enough for me not to sleep. My quest for peace began there but, I just now there won’t be any piece as long as I have that thing in my head. Because I can feel It plan and think. It’s sickening but I really do believe someone else is in my body with me and it makes me sick and I don’t want to have any part of it but I don’t get to choose.

 It’s early, probably 5AM, I hear a hammer in the distance and I know it must be the downstairs neighbor that cannot apparently get anything right in his house. But that sound, as annoying as it can be, is at least the confirmation that I’m steal alive and well and awake. He could use that hammer all day long, on my head if he wanted too, and I would be the happiest man alive because it would mean I have the upper hand and not It, never It. I eat but not as much as I used to. Those days are quite over because I am quite done myself with everything. Now I just eat to keep on going, although I don’t really know why.

 Maybe it would be better for me, for my head too, to be in a crazy jail. But then, I would be in a cell with It, every single day of my life, and I wouldn’t be able to do it. I mean, I have already thought of ending it all here, not only to stop It from hurting me again but to end every single thing that happens to me everyday. Because, if I’m honest, this is no good life to live. I’m in constant fear of myself, I am afraid of things I haven’t even seen and I cannot control myself ever. My imagination, something that was my proudest characteristic, has been destroyed by this fight that hasn’t gone anywhere. I have sacrificed so much that I don’t think I have anything else to fight with. I’ve become an empty shell and, sometimes, I cannot feel anything.

 Looking at the city at early morning is somewhat relaxing. Even with a huge headache like the ones I always have, it is really nice to see that life beyond me keeps on going and that even if I’m fucked by my life, others are thriving and are finding happiness and hope and all of those good things most people talk about. I cannot feel happiness by myself anymore and my ability to smile has been greatly diminished after hours and hours of not been able to sleep. But I can say I would smile as I have never smiled before if I knew that, with me gone, It would be gone too. I have found myself laughing at that thought and although it makes me feel crazy, I don’t really mind feeling that. I am, anyway.

 I drink lots of coffee and smoke like a chimney, my hands trembling and my skin, that skin that used to be so soft and warm, it’s turning yellow. I am losing everything that I was, one small step every single day and, to be honest, I don’t mind. Because some of these morning I feel that maybe I am winning, even if winning means my death is coming soon. I feel It move inside, I feel It complain and try to make plans in order to survive what I’m doing but, surprisingly, I seem to be much more stronger than I ever imagine I could be. After all, it’s IT that’s inside of me and not the other way around. I control this thing, this body and soul and whatever else I have inside.

 It is mine and, ultimately, I am It. But it doesn’t matter anymore. I am far beyond trying to comprehend any of what has happened, any single part of my life that makes me go crazy. I have stopped looking for answers and trying to feel again, I don’t need to know why he was using them against me and why do I have It inside. I don’t need to know all of that anymore because I don’t give a fuck anymore. I’m screwed, I’m done, I surrender and there’s no shame in that. Because if I do that, It will go away. So I will die and It will die with me and we will burn in hell together and I will smile for the first time in ages because I have finally done something good on this wretched life.