Yitris

   Yitris had always been a very special place to leave. The few people that lived there, never left but they lived in one of the best places in the world because it was located in a remote area where no one would go bother them, whether they wanted it or not. Its location in the middle of the desert, made it only possible for the best explorers to reach the city and know its citizens and also, their queen.

 Queen Alina was more than fifty years old and she had been working for her people for at least thirty years. She lived in the top house of the city but her home was not really different than other peoples home. It was only above all others house, all built on top of very high trees in the middle of the green valley, hidden in the desert. It was a very good place to hide but also a very good place to feel free from everything.

 There were less than a thousand people living in Yitris but hey all had access to good doctors, to the only school that was directly handled by the Queen and also to food, that never really lacked in any of the people’s tables. Everyone had to have, at least, some bread and fruit to eat. Only half of the population actually ate animal meat and they were very good at using every single part of the animal’s body in order not to kill something and then waste it all because they only wanted some of the meat.

 People were very trusting and, also, always seemed to be happy. No person of Yitris yelled, unless they were really angry and it was only for one second. The Queen, of course, set the example for the rest, always been gracious when she did her daily tour around her small kingdom. She went from her place, to the jungle floor. There, several people had settled, specially the ones that were hunters or farmers.

 There was a small piece of the terrain that had almost no trees and that had been specially done by the people with the permission of the Queen, because they didn’t have anywhere to grow things like corn and wheat and they also needed land to build mills and kitchens where they would make the bread and so on. So she authorized a rather small piece of land to be used for that purpose. It was so small; it was always the first place to be hit by sandstorms, when they occurred.

 The desert was mostly benevolent, protecting them from the outside. But it’s sand was sometimes the worst thing for them because it could almost destroy everything that they had build. But they endured because it was because of that sand, because of the endless desert, that they had always been protected from exterior influence. Only a handful of people had made it to Yitris and all of them had died there, whether from exhaustion or because they had chosen not to go back to their lands.

 That was until Jack Freeman, a English explorer, and two of his men wondered into the desert and stumbled upon Yitris after a particularly strong sandstorm. The locals were cleaning their homes when they saw the men approach. It was the first time for many to see a foreigner and that’s why so many did not seem to remember that they always had to notify this to the Queen. She only knew about these knew visitors when they decided to ask for a leader and the people, shy but interested, indicated her home.

 She didn’t like, at all, to have people enter her house without permission as they did. Alina knew nothing about manners in the exterior world, but she imagined England and all other lands must have been really awful places if all people did that to their neighbors. They communicated with hand gestures and body language because both of their languages were highly incompatible. Even so, the English sometimes yelled things in their language, as if the people of Yitris had to understand them.

 The Queen, trying to be as generous as she could, decided to invite them for dinner. She had all the best food prepared for them and every single person in the small country, which only consisted of a deep valley, was able to come and greet the strangers in person. Those men ate differently and seemed to have a second skin that made them smell funny. That’s what most of the people thought of them.

 The English, however, thought the people of Yitris were nice but also very strange. They thought it was very weird that a valley like that existed in the middle of the desert. They had been looking for another settlement, an oasis that they had to check thoroughly because it seemed to be located on top of an oil reserve. That’s the kind of explorers they were. Not adventurous men working in mankind’s behalf but just some guys working to get some money like many others.

 When, after the party, they decided to leave, the Queen denied this and insisted on them sleeping on a house that they would give them to be alone and to rest. No one would be there, just them. They took them by a series of stairs and bridges to a lower level where a big house, normally used for storage, had been cleaned and three beds made of thick leaves had been set as well as some more food and water on a table in the middle of the circular home.

 The locals left them alone and the foreigners decided to leave as soon as they could the next day. They agreed that the people of Yitris were very nice but they also thought that they had some work to do and that they couldn’t let down the company for which they worked. Oil was important.

 When they attempted to leave the next day, a group of locals decided to take them, instead, to the mills and fields in the border between the valley and the desert. The men looked at the sand with insistence but the people did not realize that they wanted to leave. Even at the end of the tour, when the English did all signals for them to know they had to go back to the desert, the people appeared not to understand or at least it seemed like they had no answer for that.

 The English had arrived with an exhausted horse and some bags of objects and they went straight to the Queen’s home and demanded their things to be brought to them immediately. Again, she was very bothered by them entering like if it was their home but she decided not to say anything. Instead, she told her aides to bring the objects and, as they did, she told the English with mimic that their horse did not existed anymore.

 She imitated a four-legged animal and then passed a finger over her throat. They understood that immediately and one of the men launch itself at her in rage but two locals grabbed him and stopped his attack. He was yelling and crying and having all sorts of emotions that the people there did not really exhibit on a daily basis. Even for the men holding him, it was interesting to see how foreigners used their feelings.

 They released him and the Queen then spoke in broken English. They were very surprised. She explained that the horse had been killed because in their land, animals were not used for work. Besides, the creature they had brought in was exhausted and wouldn’t have survived another trip. That’s why they had decided to kill it and use its meat and insides in different things in order not to waste anything.

 The man crying didn’t really hear any of this but his leader did. He demanded her to explain what that meant and when they would be able to leave, as they had important matters to attend.

 Queen Alina simply said that the horse was in all that they had eaten fast and happily the day before They had eaten all of his meat and the organs had been stored for further usage in soups for the people of the valley.  They expect it to be very nutritious. As for the bones, they could use them to make weapons or instruments for working on the fields.

 The second question was easier to answer: they couldn’t leave because no one left the valley. They couldn’t afford anyone leaving and telling the world of their existence. So, smiling, she insisted on them going back to their assigned home and settling in. They would soon learn their ways and will be integrated in no time, been able to enjoy all that life had to offer in Yitris.

 The English men complied but not because they agreed but because they knew when to stop fighting. In their minds, Queen Alina was now an enemy and Yitris had to come out to the world and be destroyed. Only because of a horse and the secret of its existence.

Tragic triangle

   It all happened so fast. People crossing the pedestrian bridge above were able to see it all. But who couldn’t want to see all of that, you would like to see how lives end and how tragedies happened?

 The SUV was driving extremely fast. Eileen, the driver, was worried about so many things. She had just received vey bad news and just wanted to head back home or anywhere she could feel safer, loved and appreciated. She had been crying and was in no state to drive. But there had been no one to tell her that, no one that could stop her from making that mistake.

 On the other side were the Martins. Joanna and her husband Matt were in a small car coming back from the hospital. They had received troubling news: Joanna was pregnant with their fourth child. Normally, a couple would be happy and celebrating. But in the Martin’s car, there were only long faces and sighs. Raising such a big family was very hard on them. They had stopped doing all those nice things life has to offer to invest them in education and diapers and food and so on. Their children were too young to understand but they really needed that time off.

 But they had been silly and that’s why they were pregnant again. If they didn’t want more children, the solution would have been really easy. Well, apparently not easy enough for Joanna and Matt who kept having unprotected sex just because they had been together for over fifteen years. Actually, that was the other thing. They weren’t really that attracted to each other anymore. They didn’t feel anything when the other got naked near them in the mornings or even when they showered together. That’s what Matt was thinking when he got distracted, let the car go a bit to far to the left and then it was chaos.

 Eileen was so furious, so sad and so broken that, at first she just let gravity do its job. Her body was propelled out of the window just after the two cars had crashed against each other, done several circular turns and then hit the side of the road. When she was conscious of what had happened, Eileen realized she was on the ground, probably bleeding and not really able to move. She could feel the wind caused by the passing cars and felt suddenly even lonelier than ever before. How could people be so mean, so awful, that they wouldn’t even stop for an accident?

 Joanna and Matt had been wearing their security belts and that was good because their car had been flipped over. The baby chair they had in the back was one against the roof of the car and they were both bleeding but still breathing normally. Matt was the first to wake up and he was so scared the first thing he did was liberate himself from the belt and they try to get out. In his attempt, breaking the window with a kick, he realized his wife was there. Of course he had known this all the time, but it was as if his survival skills had made him forgot about her, at least for a minute.

 He then screamed and Eileen heard him, far away, but clearly. She then knew there were more people involved but, somehow, she couldn’t care less if they felt as miserable and broken as she was. Because even with so much physical pain, Eileen’s heart was the one that hurt the most. She even began to cry right there in the pavement, not even trying to lift a leg or an arm. She just lay there and cried her eyes out, thinking about how she had run into her long time girlfriend with another woman. And they weren’t kissing or touching. She even felt disgusted, truly sick about it and she vomited.

 Joanna was bleeding. She had hit her head during the accident and Matt was worried he couldn’t be able to move her like that. He decided that it was best to get out of the car and ask for help or see if there was any police coming or ambulance or whatever was available. He cut his hands with the glass but tried to ignore the pain and just stumbled out and suddenly passed out. He only did for a few minutes but during that time he dreamt about the time it was only him and Joanna. He remembered their first date, how they had planned to eat in this fancy Italian restaurant but then had problems with the reservation and they ended up having some tacos in fancy outfits. They really loved each other that day.

 After crying so much, Eileen opened her eyes and realized she really needed to start thinking about what was happening and decided to try and stand up but the thought of Erika and that woman together were like a film in her head that she wasn’t able to shut down. It hurt her badly because they had been together for a long time and they were doing all these things together like looking for an apartment and even planning to get a baby through adoption. It had been Eileen who had met Erik when she was a girl afraid of the world and with no knowledge about anything. She had been the more mature woman that taught her everything that she may need to know and apparently she had learned it all too well.

 Like trying to scare some flies away, she moved her arm a bit and finally tried to stand up but realized she couldn’t. She could only see forwards because of her position but had a feeling there was something wrong with her legs. Having been so worried about Erika, she had not realized that her legs didn’t feel as before. They did not feel at all.

 Matt woke up from his dream and realized there was a man running towards him and asking him so many questions. It seemed to be a policeman but he really had no idea. He answered what he could, not even knowing if it made any sense and then heard an ambulance and a fire truck.

 He stood up by himself, trembling and with pain all over his body, and saw that there was another car that had been involved but he couldn’t see anyone in the driver’s seat. Maybe that person was also trapped or maybe that person had fled the scene. His mind was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Thinking hurt him but he couldn’t stop doing it. He walked to his car and a fireman asked him to remain away for the moment. He nodded and decided to wander off in the opposite direction. He didn’t care about the voices that spoke to him, policeman and people on the bridge above. He couldn’t hear them and felt everything was slowing down so every single sound made no sense to him.

 The paramedics picked up Eileen first and she remained awake during the whole trip to the hospital. However, she wasn’t able to speak. She really wanted to answer the questions, she really wanted someone to know that it was all her fault and that she had been cheated on but nothing came out of her throat. Her heart was still hurting to much and, with morphine, she felt a little bit better and then fell into an uneven sleep in which she would imagine entering several room and in some of them Erika was with the other woman and in other she could see her parents or herself when she was just a little girl. She recalled her past times back then and how much she loved horses.

 The second person to get into an ambulance was Joanna. Her husband nowhere to be found, she had to board the ambulance alone after several men were necessary to pull her out of the car and then up into the ambulance. She was bleeding internally, as determined by the instruments used by the paramedics. The driver was ordered to rush to the hospital but only two minutes after that they told him there was no real emergency anymore. Joanna was stable but she had lost her child, so they didn’t have to be fast to save anyone.

 Matt kept walking until a distracted old man run over him. The car lifted him and pushed him to the side of the road. The old man didn’t stop to see what he had done. Matt lay there and then came back to his body for a while. And realized how miserable he was, he realized how sad he had been for so long and it was all because his life had failed to be what he wanted. He loved Joanna and the kids but he wanted so much more from life, so much more than responsibility.

 In the hospital, Eileen was put in the room next to Joanna, who got better quickly but got almost insane when she was notified about the baby. Then she learned, through a nurse, that Eileen was in the other side of the wall, so she tried to choke her with a pillow, because the nurse had told her it was Eileen who was to blame for the crash. It was the only way Eileen came back to the real world and the only way Joanna could realize how ready she was to be a mother again, when she couldn’t be one anymore.

 Meanwhile, Matt lay there in the pavement. And cried too.

Ballad of the dead

   A couple of crows flew by, landing next to a large mausoleum, belonging to a general who had died long ago, in a battle no one remembered, in a country no one cared about anymore. The crows turned around on their dark feet and gazed at what appeared to be a shadow slowly walking up the hill. But the shadows was not such, she was a beautiful woman all dressed in black, walking slowly, trying not to make a strong effort climbing the hill that served as a cemetery in this region. The place was beautiful but grim and grey because of the many storm clouds travelling through the sky. Rain had already fallen and it would possibly fall again soon.

 The woman passed the general’s mausoleum and also a small patch of grass where several small crosses indicated the presence of bones belonging to several unidentified soldiers. But they were not marked as “unknown”, they were just marked with white crosses and some dead flowers. She only glanced at them, putting then her hands inside her pockets. A gust of wind had swept through the hill and she had received it full on her face. She was trembling and apparently had the urge to go back, because she stopped and turned around and looked at the town, which could be seen perfectly from there. She had been born in that place long ago and had left soon after. She didn’t know the place like her father and her grandfather before him. She was just there to see them.

 Finally, she took a left on a row of tombstones and knelt at the end of that path, were flowers and grass grew large and beautiful because of the soil that was so rich in nutrients. She caressed the tombstone, cleaned it with her hands covered in gloves and read the name of her father, slowly, as if she had no idea who he was. Almost instantly, a big lonely tear ran down one of her cheeks. And then, another one. Finally, she really cried, she allowed herself to do what she hadn’t done in all these years. She cried because she hadn’t been there when he had died and she cried because she had left home so young and had put them all at bay, fearing they might convince her to make the same mistakes they did.

 She wasn’t scared when a voice, a very cold and raspy voice, asked her not to cry anymore. She said, out loud, that she couldn’t bring herself to stop, because she felt guilty and needed to get it all out of her system.

   - So it’s all about you?

 The voice was right. She was crying just to cry, just to make herself feel better and free of any guilt from having been responsible for her father’s death. She knew she hadn’t been there, that she had been missed and they had asked her to return so many times. But, to her, that town was death itself and tried not to go back for many years.

 The woman had finally decided to do it, to confront her life and just do what she had to do.  But apparently it hadn’t been enough. Because now she saw him, her dad, standing in front of her, judging her choices and thoughts and actions. He was silent and wouldn’t say a single word about anything. He had always been like that, even when she was a kid, he would just look at her and she could know what he thought of her just by paying attention at his expressions.

 It was his fault too and that had to be proof. He had always been so far, so private and cold. How could have he asked for more from her when she never saw anything more at home. Her mother was not much different. She would always get busy doing something, just in order not to be depressed. She had some sever episodes when she couldn’t even see other people but she couldn’t be alone either. Besides, she suffered from migraines, so things where always charged with a level of tension no kid should ever have to bear.

 So the daughter stood up and followed the image of her father, that had stopped looking at her and was now just walking through the graves as if he had know the place like the palm of his hand. They didn’t have to walk much to find the grave of the mother, where the woman pour some more tear and realized how unfair she had been with all of them. She sat down on the damp grass and just touched the stone, the letters of her mother’s name and asked her why she had been so distant, why they had been so judgmental when they had raised her to be exactly who she had grown up to be.

 The woman had a nice boyfriend, a good job and a home, where she was happy most of the time. She had come to this town to be miserable, as miserable as she had ever been in all her life away from them. And now they looked at her as if she was the one who had been wrong, as if she had been the one that had caused the rupture between all of them, causing her to flee that life that was unbearable to any living person.

And then she remembered little Roby. His death had occurred six months after she had left to the city. Of course, she heard they had blame it all on her. They said he had been heartbroken that she had left because he had lost his big sister but that was just another lie, another attempt to make her feel worthless. The kid was too young to even notice he had a sister. And he had been born with so many problems. She cried for him to but they were tears of anger that she shed all over the graves of small boys and girls that had died long ago, Roby among them. She dedicated all those tears to damn, as they needed to know how wrong their parents were.

 Her parents, on the other hands, started talking and talking, and she was not interested in hearing anything they had to say. She stood up and ran up the hill, as fast as she could until she fell to the ground, having stepped on a large rock covered in moss. The fall had hurt but not as much as it hurt to hear them accusing her for so many things that she hadn’t even been there for and for other things that she didn’t even remembered. Her mother’s voice was especially annoying, very loud sometimes, the voice of someone who doesn’t speak too much.

 The woman slowly stood up and cursed her parents, told them to burn in hell or in heaven or wherever their real souls were. She yelled at them, saying that she was tired of having to carry the weight of a family that had been crumbling own for so long. Her father was a worthless maggot and her mother a crazy bitch.

    - There you have it! Now leave me alone!

 They did stop talking but they didn’t leave, their images still standing by, waiting for her to say something more. And she did. She told them it had been their fault that Roby died and it also had been their fault hat he existed, that he lived for such a short period of time suffering every single day. It was because of their sick minds and bodies that he had been born with so many problems and it was that that killed him, not her or anyone else for that matter.

 She walked the remainder of the hill and when she was at the top. She noticed the son was filtering through the clouds of rain. She felt its rays touching her skin, making her feel like she had finally done what she had to do, what she hadn’t been able to do when they were all alive. But then, they reappeared and several other figures like them. Their faces accused them of being of the same family, generations and generations of unstable people that had been raising awful families for children to turn into maniacs themselves. She had seen the light beforehand and she had been so grateful for it.

 They grew closer and closer and she just felt her body give in, kneeling there, being caressed by the cold wind of a region filled with people that were more dead than alive. She raised her hands to the sun and begged for peace and calm in her life. All the images of relatives looked at her and only one came closer and touched her head softly. She looked at the ghost and realized it was her grandmother, the only one that she had talked to during her exile in the city. She understood why she had fled and she didn’t judge. And now, even dead, she was on her side.

 That same night, the woman drove back to the city and she never heard or saw anyone again. Her prayers had been answered and she would never have to be a victim of her family anymore.

The earring

   The wedding was over and now Christina had to supervise the removal of every single table and fork from the premises. The castle was a very special place to do such celebrations but they always asked for the place to be cleaned thoroughly after each party. It was very late and everyone was not very eager to clean anything but it had to be done. Christina supervised the men and women and checked every room where people may have wandered off to in order to see if it needed cleaning or if thee was something left behind. She found a scarf in a bathroom and even a high heel stuck in the grass in the garden. Another employee found a tie on a tree and a baby bottle beneath one of the tables. But the most beautiful thing Christina found was on a fountain in the garden.

 The water seemed tainted with something but she ignored that and just grabbed the earring that lay there, beyond the surface. The design was very simple but beautiful: an orchid made of metal with a center formed by a large purple precious stone. Christina saw every detail on the earring and realized she had never seen such a beautiful thing worn by anyone in the past. She decided to keep it and look for the owner herself. Maybe that way she could be able to ask where the earring was made so she could herself a pair. When everyone was done cleaning and leaving the place as if nothing had happened there, they were allowed to leave. It was almost four in the morning and everyone just wanted to get home and sleep for as long as they were able to.

 Christina wanted that too. She entered her car, sat down and pulled out the earring from her pocket to put it in her purse. But when she did that, she pricked her finger with the tip of the earring, which fell beneath her seat. Somehow, that had made her feel a little dizzy and her head felt big, like if it was a balloon or something. Christina inhaled deeply many times until she thought she was able to drive. She opened and closed her eyes, turned on the engine and drove in the night. But the truth was she couldn’t see much. She knew she was tired but not as much as she know felt. The car slid off the road a few times but she was able to control it but she knew that couldn’t be done for long.

 On a long curve, she finally succumbed to what she was feeling and let go of the car which when out off the road and into a tree. The airbag was the thing that killed her. The police discovered the car hours later and several members of the staff of the party said that they had seen her drive off after the cleaning was over but really no one knew about the earring. A detective assigned to the case, just in a routine way, discovered the piece of jewelry beneath the scene and he too fell in love with its shape and beauty, so he grabbed it for himself, even if it was evidence from the case. He took it home at night and left it in the kitchen counter.

 In the morning, it was already too late. Her youngest daughter had touched it out of curiosity and pricked herself too. Like Christina, she started to feel groggy. They were able to take her to a hospital but she was slipping away until she died. The doctor couldn’t give a proper explanation, as the child appeared to be falling asleep to very deep slumber but then died. The parents were crushed and stayed home to do the paperwork but they had forgotten about Marta, their housekeeper. She had keys to come in to do her work, so she did. As she mopped the floors, she found the earring and found it to be just marvelous. She had the idea to get it praised and maybe get some money out if it. She had never seen any of the women of the house wearing it, so it shouldn’t be an issue.

   However, Marta lost the earring on the bus. Fortunately, it fell off her pocket and just rolled under a seat, where it wouldn’t be found for some days until a driver checking his transport found it. He took it home, as they had all done. He told his wife it would be a nice pin to wear, in order to give his attire a little bit of class. His wife found a piece to put in his husband’s jacket and she was successful enough, she didn’t even prick a finger. And the jewel looked simply beautiful against the blue suit he had to use for work. He used his jacket like that for many years, been praised by many people when going in the bus.

 Those kind words made his life very happy. But one day, as it was destined to happen, the safety piece his wife had put behind the earring fell silently when he was driving. It was the same day a car crossed his path incorrectly, so he when he stepped on the brakes, he leaned forward violently and pricked his chest with the earring. The crash was blamed for his death. His body was transferred to a morgue, where they would fix him to look perfect. But a young mortician named Lidia fell in love with his pin and took it for herself. When he was buried, his wife thought he was wearing the pin, looking handsome as always but he wasn’t. The pin had a new owner, one that did something the other didn’t.

 Lidia had gotten several piercings and tattoos and she knew what was right. She got home and there she cleaned the earring carefully, avoiding pricking her fingers or damaging in any way the integrity of the piece. Weirdly enough, once she started cleaning the piece the pointy end started to turn purple, just like the jewel it had there. Lidia found this to be very strange so she decided to grab a small plastic bag, put the earring there and go to a friend that worked in a lab. Maybe he would be able to explain what was wrong with it because it was obvious she couldn’t put it on her ears. Maybe it had an infection or some other kind of disease and it wouldn’t be surprising if it had been on a dead man’s suit.

 Larry, Lidia’s “scientific” friend, worked as an assistant in a pharmaceutical company where he worked with various compounds and many advanced machines. When he was able to take the earring to the lab where he worked, he noticed something strange. He asked Lidia if he could damage the piece a bit, specially the tip and she agreed. She wasn’t going to wear it, so no one cared. Larry broke the tip of the earring and a soft purple dust tainted a small plate he had beneath. He had the dust checked and the machines couldn’t tell him exactly what it was but he was able to know what was, chemically, in there. So he did some of reverse science and discovered the dust was some kind of poison.

 But it wasn’t just poison. The earring, apparently, had been dipped into it and then left alone until the metal, and even the jewel, had absorbed the poison. But who would want to do something like that? It was a very complicated way to poison someone but Larry then realized that, looking at the compounds of the poison, it would be unlikely for medical scientists to even know they were dealing with something like that, mainly because the poison seemed to disappear from anywhere in a few hours. Larry told Lidia that maybe a lot of people had been killed by it and no one would ever know as the poison was untraceable and only they knew about its existence and about the earring.

 But then envy made its appearance in the form of a rival to Larry, who just happened to be very good at his job and had found many ways to make the pharmaceutical company win even more money. So this person, this enemy if you will, discovered the ring and thought that if Larry was working with it, it was because it meant something important. So he grabbed it and took him for himself. He took it home and checked it there with a microscope he had but he found nothing and he wouldn’t because the poison was not made to be found. In time, he pricked himself with it, enraged because he couldn’t find something to steal from his rival. His father found his body the next day.

 After that episode, no one really knew what had happened to the earring. Larry always thought he had just lost it but Lidia knew him very well and she knew he wouldn’t just loose something. More deaths happened but, as the people before Lidia, no one was curious or careful enough to handle it. They all thought that the beauty of the piece meant it was made to be worn, to be shown to the world and to be an icon of status and recognition. But it wasn’t. It was just a way to lure the people, the large crowds that believed that beauty was as simple as they were. They didn’t understand that beauty can also be lethal and should always be handled with the uttermost respect and curiosity.