Morning after

   He woke up hugging his pillow and naked. He had no memory of when and why he had removed all of his clothes but a glance to the floor next to the bed proved it was all there, all over the place. Unfortunately, there was also a smell that hit him hard and fast and which he was not preferred for. He was too tired and dizzy to get up from the bed and grab everything and put it in a bag. But he had too because the smell was too powerful and he couldn’t rest in peace with vomit all over the place. Because that’s what the smell was.

 He did what he had to do as fast as he could and went back to bed. He didn’t put on underwear or even a t-shirt to counter the cold morning. He simply covered himself with the thick bedspread and closed his eyes, ready to sleep for a couple more hours. But he couldn’t. He turned around in bed, tried hugging the pillow, tried sleeping on the side, on his back or his chest, but none of the positions worked. He just couldn’t fall asleep and he found frustrating because he did feel tired.

 Apparently when arriving that morning, he had had the time to pull down the blinds on his window and that’s why it the place look nice and dark but according to his alarm clock it was almost one in the afternoon. He had no idea at what time he had arrived but he knew he wasn’t going to sleep anymore. And that frustrated him. Anyway, he stayed there and just closed his eyes, listening to the sounds of the city.

 Suddenly, he heard the vibrating noise of his cellphone but the device was not on his night table. It wasn’t on the floor either and he hadn’t felt it in any of the clothes he had put on a bag to wash later. For a moment there, he thought he was imagining things and that the sound was only in his head. After all, he had a lot too drink and his body was still processing it all so maybe he was just hearing things that weren’t there. He closed his eyes, again, changed the position of his legs and tried to relax.

 But the sound came back. That humming sound felt near but it wasn’t in any of the obvious places, unless he had left it in the bathroom. But he didn’t remembered having been there after he arrived. So he stood up and went to the bathroom and didn’t find anything. Taking advantage of having stood up, he decided to pee and it was there when he realized where the cellphone was.

 When he finished in the bathroom he opened the door of his room, which was unusually closed, and found his boots lying there and his cellphone inside one of them. He couldn’t explain how he knew the device was there but the important thing was that he had found out and that he could happily return to his bed.

 There, he found out it had been a friend who had been calling, causing the cellphone to vibrate. She had called four times and had sent two messages asking if he was all right. He tried to remember if he knew why she was so worried but didn’t really know, although the most likely thing was that he had left the party without telling anyone and as drunk as he was she had been worried for him. He did kind of remember wandering around the streets, feeling the piercing cold of the morning and not even knowing exactly which bus he had to be taking to go back home. He finally got into one and probably fell asleep in it but woke up just a few blocks away from his usual stop.

 He decided to write a short message to his friend and let her know he was a bit confused and still dizzy but alive and well in his bed. She responded at once, telling him she had not been lucky enough to rest all day because she had a wedding to go and had to prepare for it. She was actually really late, even if the event was going to be place late that night. She told her friend to let her now the next time he decided to leave drunk from a party and he told her that if his brain worked that next time, she would get her warning.

 The man left his cellphone on the nightstand and just stayed there. He looked up to the ceiling but he was actually thinking about the party: he had been invited because the people that had organized it knew his friend but he had no real knowledge of anyone there. That’s why, from the moment he arrived to the moment he left, he started gulping down glass after glass of alcohol: wine, rum, vodka and so on. The cocktail he was making in his belly was more dangerous than any of the actual cocktails that were made for people in clubs and pubs.

 No one even looked at him all night, not to say “Hi” or to fake and interest and ask something. And to be honest, he happened to dislike most of the people more and more as the night went on and the alcohol dissolved in his body. They all seemed so pretentious, so full of shit to be honest, that he didn’t even want to be having a fake conversation with them, he though that would be even more excruciating that the embarrassment he felt when someone entered the bathroom when he was vomiting. But he never saw the face of the person, so he couldn’t care much.

 He left the party because, as always, he felt like the odd one out, like the different one even when he knew for a fact that he wasn’t different or special or anything like that. He didn’t have any tragedy in his life, he was suffering from anything like a disease or something and he was alive and well and living. He couldn’t really complain about anything but he left that party because he couldn’t take it anymore.

 It may have been the alcohol but he was sure that even sober he would have been bored even faster that he had been. Because he couldn’t try to join any of the conversations as people looked at him in bad way when he tried to enter one: he would just stand there and listen and try to elaborate some opinion on what they were talking about and then realize that some of the people looked at him as if he was something horrible standing there or, worse, as if he had no right to be there.

 He hated parties and going out and all that shit because of that, because every single time he did it he felt judged by one or many, he felt judged because he never had enough money to spend, he felt judged because he was in silence for long periods of time, he felt judged when he finally gave his opinion and people found it to be wrong somehow and it was very tiring. He realized that he gulped down alcohol when it was free and he could do it because it created a barrier that protected him from everyone being assholes and it kind of worked.

 But he knew he couldn’t do that always. He couldn’t just hide behind glasses and glasses of vodka because he wasn’t really that person, he wasn’t a drunkard because he loved alcohol, and he was one only when he felt the need to escape. And when he didn’t have any money he just left the places where he was because pressure proved to be too heavy sometimes. No one ever tried to stop him or anything but he did dream about that, he wanted someone some day to be finally interested by him, even if there was nothing to say.

 It was his belief that everyone wants that in life, everyone wants to feel interesting and wants someone to be there and be all amazed and dazzled by your life, even if there’s nothing that’s amazing or marvelous or interesting in it. He knew that he wanted that. Even more, he needed that person urgently but whoever he was, because it had to be a he, wasn’t here and with some many people in the world and his way of being and so on, he knew it would be different.

 He was clear too that he wouldn’t change his way of being, his personality, because that would be just compliance and trying to change to make others feel nice and he didn’t wanted to be one of those people. He wanted someone to be happy with the actual him and not with some clever invention that made everyone more comfortable. He actually pitied people that went through physical and personality changes just to please, he thought of them as pathetic little people that lacked the balls it needed to go through life, even when he also felt very weak most of the time.

 He decided to turn around, lay in his belly and just sleep a bit more. He finally felt he could close his eyes and go to a land that was only his and maybe there he would find that person he needed. Maybe they would hold hands and talk or just share a moment together. Then, when time would come to open his eyes, he would just promise to wait patiently until the day they would actually meet.

Smoke and mirrors

   The sound was loud and insisted on staying. For a moment, it seemed they were really ringing at the door but it happened to be all in the dream. The sound was horrible, louder than anything he had heard in the past. He wanted to wake up but couldn’t until he forced his body to answer to his command. It hurt, like peeling of a Band-Aid. The sound then stopped and he felt he was back at his bed but the truth was his own brain had deceived him. Unable to get him out, it had just transported him elsewhere.

 First, he seemed to be sleeping in something similar to a bed but then the feeling fade away and he started falling and falling and falling through consecutive holes in a deep blackness of his subconscious mind. He felt the wind on his face and his ankles but did not worry. Somehow, he knew that he would land softly somewhere, eventually. The area kept changing color, sometimes being red and other times black again.

 Again, he felt he had woken up but this time he knew it wasn’t real. He hadn’t landed anywhere, instead having appeared in a grassy field with small hills and nothing else in sight. Then, the sky changed and it became nighttime and in the ground a forest had sprung up to life. He automatically entered the forest and hoped to find a proper exit to his dreams from there. Maybe there was a door or something special he had to do to end all of this nonsense.

 He felt trapped in a world similar to the one in Alice in Wonderland but the difference was that Alice’s world was at least funny and interesting. His dream world was seriously boring next to it. Having realized he wasn’t able to wake up by his own will, he tried to change the world he was in but all he could achieve was to make some flowers appear. As night had fallen just minutes ago, he could barely see them so he tried to change night back to day but al he could do was getting the sun stuck in the sky, casting an annoying twilight all around.

 Walking became harder as his eyes had to be covered because of the light. He walked as if he had become blind in a second, touching everything he could and doubting every step he walked. Then he reached a cliff and had to stop moving. But that didn’t change anything: he still slipped and fell, again falling through holes and for a long time.

 Then, he actually woke up for a moment and realized he was very warm beneath his blankets, so warm in fact that he had been sweating a lot. He removed his short in a moment and fell fast asleep once again. Surprisingly, he wasn’t wearing a shirt either in his dream. Apparently his subconscious liked the idea of being shirtless so much that it had put him in a tropical setting, which he appreciated.

 People he knew were all around: his family, some of his friends, even people he had never been very familiar with. They were all in the beach, playing volleyball or laughing or splashing water to others. It was a small paradise and the sun felt real on the skin, on his face. He wished the dream wouldn’t end but he knew that wasn’t possible, not even if he died in his sleep.

 He stood up and walked down the beach, smiling at his mother who was attending to a younger him and then watching how many of the guys he had dated were casually talking in a small group. They all smiled at him and waved their hands and he knew it was very strange but still waved his hand and smiled too.

 There was a pier he hadn’t noticed before, made of cement pillars and wood planks on the floor. He walked slowly on it, feeling the wood on his feet and the warmth of the sun on his cheeks. He really wanted this to be real, to be the world he lived in. Not only because of the beautiful setting but because he didn’t feel any worry, he didn’t feel he had to do anything. It was just perfect.

 At the end of the pier there was a man, taller than him and shirtless too, that looked at the ocean. All he could see of that person was his back, which didn’t look bad at all. And as he saw him, he realized he knew who he was and that he had to talk to him, to see his face and to hug and kiss him and share his life with him and cherish every single moment they were able to be together.

 But just when he was able to touch the man’s arm, the scene changed and the guy was behind him, with his arms around him. He had no idea why, but he wasn’t compelled anymore to see his face. Maybe deep down, in some other level of consciousness, he already knew who that person was or at least what he looked like. Maybe that’s why he didn’t mind turning around and stop watching the sunset beyond the perfect blue ocean. It was the first time in his life he finally felt at home.

 As it happens often, his body chose that exact moment to wake him up. He opened his eyes sad, frustrated to know all that had happened was a lie and that there weren’t any arms around him hugging him, making him feel alive and safe. He turned his head for a minute, realizing it hadn’t been his brain that had woke him up, it had been the rain in the window. It was very dark outside and he knew he had some more hours to sleep, after all it was Saturday the next day so he wasn’t precisely going to wake up early for anything.

 This time, it took him a while to fall asleep, as he kept analyzing what he had seen in the dream, trying to remember more about the man in the pier. But his mind finally let go of the thought of someone that didn’t existed and just surrendered to the few extra hours of sleep.

 This time, he ran through some destroyed street. There were bricks all around and graffiti on the wall and he felt he was in some serious thing because he couldn’t hear anything besides his feet stomping on the ground. He finally stopped running and went up some stairs, to the second floor of a typical movie motel. He had never seen one of those in actual life, but he had seen so many in movies and TV series that his brain must have design it from similar memories.

 He entered a door on the second floor and locked it. The room was all done in a clear ‘70s style, with the orange and brown curtains smelling of pot, silky sheets on the bed, furniture in gold and silver and a TV set with no remote control. Everything was on point and he knew, again thinking of himself as asleep, that he had seen some place like this one before. He was sure of it.

Suddenly, someone entered the room and he just had seconds to run to the window and jump towards it. Whoever was behind him had starting shooting and his only option had seemed to jump through a window. He landed on the pool below, which was rapidly tainted with his blood. He had no idea how but he managed to get out of the pool and run down the street again. His body was aching but he had no idea where it hurt exactly. He just ran, preventing more damage.

 Out of nowhere, a neighborhood of tall skyscrapers and perfect sidewalks appeared in front of him. He entered the closest door, which happened to be a department store. He went up one floor on the working escalator and sat down by all the men shoe section to check his body. Only one bullet had hit him, on the right thigh, but it didn’t really hurt. He cleaned the wound with a shirt he grabbed from a table and decided to look for supplies or at least something to eat.

 Common sense drove him to the lower level of the department store. The supermarket was there and he suddenly felt very young and happy. He grabbed a cart and started grabbing various things he had eaten throughout his life: cookies, beverages, fruit, vegetables, cooked meals that smelled delicious, water and even deodorant. He went around with his shopping cart, happy about life and all it had to offer.

 Then, the man from the pier stood in front of him. He knew it was him, even if he couldn’t see his face. The man had been the one firing at the motel and this time he wasn’t going to miss. He had him in his hands and one last horrible thought crossed his mind: “What if I really died here? What if I never wake up? What if this was all a trap?”

The massage

   My back hurt a lot. It started to get on my nerves that every single morning, without fail, I woke up with every bone in my body aching as if I had been practicing some gymnastics routine while sleeping. I didn’t know if it was the mattress or if my sleep routine had somehow been disrupted. Whatever it was, I had to find a solution fast or my spine would be gravely affected and I would have to sleep on the floor. I would have wanted to change the mattress but that wasn’t really an option: I lived in a rented room and the owner might have an opinion about it. Besides, even if I could do it, I didn’t have the amount of money to allow myself to do such an investment. So the mattress, even if it was the wrong one, was not the answer to my problems.

 So I decided to do something for myself. My body was in pain and I needed to make it better, to be able to walk in the morning without feeling hundreds of knives penetrating my skin. So I decided to try some exercises before and after sleeping time but that wasn’t a very good idea. Not only because I had never done any exercise whatsoever, but also because they didn’t seem to be affecting my sleep. Sometimes I moved less during the night but I had the same back pain as always. I was grateful that hadn’t worked because it could be quite an annoyance to workout just before and after you sleep. I mean, those are the two worst moments of the day to do any physical activity, even if I had been willing to do so. There had to be a better idea, more suited to me.

 It came to my attention one day, while I was taking a walk around the neighborhood. I was new to the area so I wanted to know about all the restaurants, supermarkets and stores in general that operated around my building. Two streets over, I discovered a spa. The entrance was quite small and, thank God, there was a list of prices and procedures on the window, so I didn’t have to go in. They specialized in massaged, have all kinds of them. Maybe that was what I needed: someone to undo all the knots on my back so I could sleep better during the nights. And the price was not too high so if I started feeling in pain again, I could come back in a month or two. I was about to go in but something made me think it twice.

 I went back home and, like an obsessive person, I decided to know about all the types of massages so to know the best one for me. Many were Asian and I had read stories about massage parlors there. I doubted the spa I passed by was a place like that. Anyway, they were very complete and did want something that was rather aggressive. I wanted them to “rearrange”, if that’s possible, all my muscles and bones and make me be able to walk again without having to complain bout something. I then stopped obsessing about it and just assured myself I would go to the spa the next day.

 And I did. It was a Saturday so this time around there were two people in the waiting room, a very small space with two chairs. I had to wait standing up, which was kind of funny considering I had come because my body ached. Anyway, it was not a long wait. Each one of us was directed to different rooms and was asked to undress and put on a gown similar to the ones used in hospitals. Not that I had ever used one but I had seen those many times. The woman that had led me there also told me to lay down on the table, face down of course, and wait there for the masseuse. I did as I was told, leaving all my clothes in a neat pile ad tightening my gown a bit. I lay down in the table and just waited there for five, then ten minutes. I was a bit sleepy when, finally, the door flung open and a man’s voice greeted me.

 I said “Hi”, in almost inaudible register. I couldn’t see more than his legs, as I was on the table with my face on a hole, but I could see his yellow Crocs, moving from one side to the other. He was apparently feeling some form and stretching or so it seemed. He asked me how I felt. I told him my story with the bed and my sleeping “disorder”. He was listening carefully, his feet still all the time. He resumed his walking when I finished and just asked me which scent I liked better: cinnamon or oranges? I chose cinnamon, so he walked out of sight but by the sound I realized he used a lighter and suddenly the room smelled like my favorite type of cappuccino. He also put on some music and I had the weird feeling of being in a really strange blind date.

 Then he started, rather predictably, on my back. I could feel he had big hands or maybe they were just very well suited for this work. I have to say I relaxed immediately. He was using my flesh as clay and it felt really good. Besides, the music and the scent really helped to make the room feel less like a doctor’s office and more like a nice room in one’s house. I closed my eyes for a good while, as he worked on my whole back, moving up and own, and possibly helping himself with some oil. I could smell almonds. Then I realized I had thought I was going to have a woman massage therapist but maybe a man was more suited in my case because of the great pain I was in.

 Then he spoke and I just opened my eyes, as if I had slept with him. What an odd feeling… He asked me if the pain was only concentrated on my back or if the rest of the body hurt as well. I told him the pain was all over but that it was stronger on my back. I saw his Crocs moving and his ankles going up and down, as if he was exercising right there. Maybe he thought I was with my eyes closed. He then told me he was going to do a full massage, trying to liberate the tension from every muscle he thought might have been affected by many nights of bad sleep. He said it just like if he knew me and, frankly, I loved that. I closed my eyes and stood still again, waiting for him to continue.

 I gasped when he grabbed the knot I had made behind my back and released it easily, relieving my whole backside to him. For a moment I thought about standing up and going straight to the front desk to accuse him of sexual assault but then he started massaging my thighs and I realized he had needed to do that to continue the work. Anyway, been touched there wasn’t very common for me so it felt very strange but also very good. Apparently, there was a lot of tension there too. He did bot thighs, then calves and feet. He finished by ding my back and my shoulders and spraying some scent I couldn’t identify all over my body. I guessed it was something to do with aromatherapy. When he was finished, he just walked out and I didn’t have the chance to thank him.

 The following days were perfect. My back felt like new and the rest of my body too. I was even able to do some exercise without suffering and had learned how great it was to give myself a foot massage every so often, specially as I walked around so much. Sometimes I found myself trying to picture how my masseuse looked like but it was a very hard thing to do. I just had his voice, a little deep but not to much, his yellow Crocs and his small exercises while at work. It was almost impossible to create an accurate depiction of him in my mind and I just let it go when I realized he had done a great job and that had to be enough for my brain. Maybe if I went back there, I would see him.

 I eventually did come back but this time it was a woman who did the massage and I was too ashamed to ask for the man that had done the massage the last time. Maybe they would think I was obsessed or that I had a complaint of some kind. So I just kept it for myself. To be honest, the woman did a good job but I still felt the man’s hands and thought they had been created for the job. I was thinking about it too much. So just after the massage I decided to go to the market and just relax buying fruit. The place was very big but not really crowded. I decided to buy some apples and oranges. I committed the stupidity of grabbing an orange in the base of the pile, so others fell to the floor. I caught all except one.

 I went after the orange, walking slowly and crouching to see where it had gone. I finally saw it beneath a vegetable stand selling organic products so I just crawled and took it. When I did, I felt relieved. But soon, I felt a mix of emotions I still have no idea how to explain. There, just a meter away, there were two yellow Crocs, moving exactly like that time in the spa. I got out   of there and saw the man working in the organics products stand. Somehow, I felt I knew him so I just waved at him and said “Hi”. He turned to look at me and, surprisingly, he smiled. He waved back and walked towards me. Something happened there and I wanted to know what.

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.