Natalia on a date

   Natalia was trying to listen to every single word that came out of Robert’s mouth. But it was impossible. He talked so fast, so much; that she didn’t even had time to process any of what he had said. The fun thing was that he had just arrived to the restaurant, after she had been waiting for him for about twenty minutes. He hadn’t said “Sorry”, or anything like that. He had just laughed at some stupid thing he had said and started talking and talking like a mad man.

 The restaurant was a very nice place for a date between two people that loved each other. Many couples were sharing some time around them. But as Natalia noticed, all of them were having a much better time than her. Even those who were by themselves, with friends or family, seemed to be having much more of a good time than her. She only looked around and put on butter on those tiny breads they give you before properly beginning dinner. She realized, after several minutes, that she had already eaten about five of ten, after having filled every single one of them with butter. She was supposed to be on a diet, but the hell with that.

 Finally, the waiter was bold enough to speak and Robert had to shut up for the first time in a while. Natalia took this precious moment to stand up, stretch her legs and go to the bathroom. He asked if he could order for the both of them and she said yes, anything to have a couple of minutes away from him. Walking slowly to the bathroom, she reminded herself never to date relatives of their friends again. Robert was a cousin of her best friend Laura and had nothing to do with her. Laura was a funny gal, full of life and color. Robert was just full of life but because he wouldn’t shut his mouth.

 In the bathroom, she washed her face to be a little more awake, and then she applied a new layer of makeup and also peed for much too long. She loved to count something that took long when she was in there, like how many Pokémon she knew or how many colors she could name. Sometimes she would get so caught up in her own game that she would pull out a small notebook out of her purse and start write the names down. Natalia was not really and obsessed person but she was distracted easily and preferred rapid, intelligent exchanges than long and tiring conversations.

 After what felt like forever but ended up to be something like twenty minutes, she went back to the table where the waiter was putting down their food. Apparently Robert thought she loved salad because she could only see green leaves on her plate. As she sat down, she reminded herself that if she didn’t have any meat, she would have to call to the burger place she loved by her house and order the one with the double patty. She was really hungry and that salad wasn0t going to do the trick.

 Moroccan. That’s what he said the salad was. It was on a big plate and had a number of things in it but she didn’t really care. She had already decided on her burger and was already looking forward to it.

 Again, Robert started talking and talking and she began counting Pokémon on her mind again and then trying to remember what she had to buy in the supermarket the next day. She had promised her mother to invite her home for lunch and she had to do something nice. Maybe pasta was the best choice but it seemed so simple, or maybe some kind of steak. But if she ate steak, she couldn’t really eat a burger the night before, it would be too much and, after all, she could only break her diet once. Well, she could exercise more and not do any diet. She wasn’t that fat. Natalia thought she had a nice body, curvy but not like a porn star or anything like that. Just good enough for any use. She laughed at her own joke.

 Robert smiled. She looked at him and smiled kindly, not knowing what he had been saying. Thankfully, he broadened his smile and just told him he loved her laughter and how she listened so attentively to every little thing he said. He told her she was the most beautiful girl he had met and that he would be honored if she could date him again. Natalia’s smile turned into coughing. At first, even she thought it was because she had no intention of answering that question. But then, she touched her neck and knew something was wrong.

 She felt she was drowning, as if some unknown force was choking her. Then she saw her fingers and they were getting swollen. Robert called the waiter and asked for an ambulance. Natalia didn’t want that, but as she couldn’t even breathe, it was not really a time to refuse any kind of help. The paramedics arrived some moments later and they immediately gave her a shot, something to counter the allergy of whatever it was that she had suffered. The paramedics decided it was best for her to go to the hospital and spend at least one night there, under surveillance.

 It all happened so fast, even Robert had no words. He just grabbed her purse and gave the waiter some bills to pay up the meal. He was scared, livid, as he jumped into the ambulance that rushed through the city’s crowded streets. Natalia seemed to be getting sleepy in the ambulance and she couldn’t really hear or say anything. The paramedics gave her another shot and started asking questions but she couldn’t heat them. For some reason, she only wanted Robert to take her hand, to feel someone was with her in that trying moment, to feel some friend was taking care of her. But Robert didn’t do anything. Just as she closed her eyes, Robert turned his body towards the back doors of the ambulance.

 Natalia woke up early the next morning. Her nurse, a very nice young woman, told her that she had had an allergic reaction to something she had eaten. Natalia smiled and the girl looked confused. She explained to her all about Robert and how he talked like mad and how she didn’t even know what she was eating. The nurse understood, with that face that means “Men!” and told Natalia that they would check what the ingredients of the salad were but that it would help if she made them a list with all of her allergies. But she only knew about her allergy to cat hair and she doubted that was one of the ingredients.

 The doctor that walked in laughed and Natalia was thrilled he did because he was very handsome and his teeth were all so perfect and white. She had the best time talking to him; about what had happened the night before and about what she had been through overnight. He was a very nice person and explained to hear that they wanted her in for one more night to check everything was good and to identify her allergy. He also told her that her mother was there and that she had brought all the paperwork from her insurance and all that annoying stuff one has to do to get sick.

 Natalia laughed and that was how the doctor decided to leave, on a high note. Her mother would come some time afterwards. She was really good friends with her and explained the situation at dinner with Robert. Her mother understood exactly what she was saying and advised her never to allow that to happen again. She said life was to short and too wonderful to be listening at idiots talking stupid stuff. It was best to stop things right on time if you realize the person in front of you is just not that interesting. Natalia nodded and agreed.

 The allergy was determined to be related to a certain type of pepper, not the common one used in most dishes (black pepper) but a rare kind only found in North African cuisine. Natalia laughed, as she thought it was at least nice of Robert to take her to a restaurant that served the real cuisine of the country that the dish was from. Even Laura, her friend, laughed like crazy the day Natalia was allowed to go back home. She pushed her friend’s wheelchair to the main entrance and all the way there they laughed at poor Robert, Laura even confessing she knew he was annoying but not at that level.

 Natalia asked Laura If she knew why he hadn’t come to visit her. After all, he had been with her when it happened and it seemed only natural. But Laura told her friend that Robert was one of those men that like to show off in front of women but when they fuck up, they are afraid forever of the person that sees them being real humans. Natalia thought that was very weird but moved on. She had had much worst dates than one!

Messenger

   It was the children that love to look at him more than anyone else. Maybe it was because he was some kind of a novelty in their lives, having seen only their parents all their lives. The man in the bed just lay there, having been unconscious since the day he appeared in the front lawn of their cabin, far into the tundra. They had a decent life there, maybe not very exciting but they it was consistent and it was mostly safe to raise a family and to create values that in the rest of the world we in decline.

 The man they had found had his nose broken and several bruises all over his body, as if someone or something had kicked him repeatedly. He had some older scars and he had a black eye that healed pretty quickly. Yet, he wouldn’t wake up. Mama would try different salts and medicines they had, she tried the fat of the animals they hunted and several leafs and fruits from the forest but he appeared to be oblivious to an of them. Father was a bit more violent and would yell in different volumes to try and wake him up. He would say different kinds of things including asking him if he was a soldier or a spy but it never worked.

 After the first month, they got really worried. Even the children, who love to go into that room and play around the man, were now tired of him been asleep and wanted him to live, maybe even to tell them their story. The kids, boy and girls of around ten years old, jumped all around the poor man and screamed like crazy, hoping it would work but it didn’t. They pushed him hard and were even as violent or more than their father. They cried and screamed and the kicked him and screamed again but eventually they would just make their parents crazy so they stopped.

 Outside, winter was finally over and the sun was beginning to be a little stronger. In this region of the world, winter never really ended and it was cold all year except for some days were things appeared to change. Anyway, the fact was that there was no more snow and the temperature was tolerable so Father took both kids hunting one day and retook the lessons he had been giving them before the winter. He had been teaching them about the bow and arrow and how to use them and how not to scare your prey.

 As the kids and their father bonded, Mother stayed in and cooked some deer meat she had frozen a week before. Deer meat was the best kind of food one could find in the region as it was soft but also rich in nutrients and could pass for cow meat, which they never consumed. She chopped some of the vegetables they grew on the greenhouse and put them in the pot with the meat. She realized she had forgotten to chop the onion so proceeded to do it but them a muffled voice, more of a complaint, was heard all over the house. She turned and screamed her lungs out.

 The youngest heard her and ran as fast as he could to the house, followed by his sister and Father. When they got there, the man that had been in bed for so many months was laying face down on the kitchen floor, now drooling and making a very strange sound. The Mother was livid, shaking like crazy. She was still holding the big knife she used to chop things and only let it go when her husband pulled it away from her. He then checked the pulse of the man on the floor and realized he was still alive and that his pulse was faster than before. He asked everyone to help him carry back to the room and there they tied one hand to the bed, preventing another scare.

 At dinner, everyone ate their deer in silence. They didn’t talk, ever, during meals, but this time Mother started crying and told Father she couldn’t keep living like this, with that man being captive in and improvised room. It was like keeping a prisoner and that didn’t make senses. She proposed to take him to the authorities, even if it meant travelling a full day to reach the nearest settlement. The Father did not respond, not right then at least. He had never trusted the authorities, even if it had been the government itself the one that had gave them authorization to live there.

 He finally said he would think about it. He wanted to know that man wasn’t going to die in the middle of the journey. And he really wanted to know who he was and why he was wandering so far into the tundra. Mother did not insist, changing the subject to the children not eating because of the earlier scare. She was right: they had always thought of the man in the bed as some sort of good elf but after hearing their mother’s tale of how he yelled something she couldn’t understand and then collapsed and drooled making sounds, it scared them.

 The next day, the Father tried again to make the man talk. This time, he didn’t yell or pushed him. He just sat down by his side and started reading the man in the bed the contract the government had given him in order to be able to live there. He started reading from the very beginning, with a normal pace and changing pages with a gracious move of the hand. The document consisted of at least twelve pages, detailing every single aspect the family had to take into account while living there.

 Back when he had signed the contract, it was only Father and Mother. But the contract specified how many children they could have living in that house, the dimensions of he house itself, which animals they could hunt and which ones they couldn’t, from where they could grab the water to survive and which trees they could use for heating and so on. Every single detail about living in that remote region of the world was in those pages and Father read every single one of them. But he didn’t need to as he knew them by heart.

 When he finished, he raised his head and realized the man had his eyes open. Without changing his pace or volume of voice, he asked the man who he was and what he was doing in his land. The man open his mouth but the words appeared to be trying to get out of it all at the same time. He grunted and tried again but nothing came out. He seemed to wanting to say something and he wasn’t happy at all when he couldn’t. He was certainly not happy when he couldn’t move one of his hands in order to complain. He looked at Father with red eyes, grunting.

 Kids and wife looked at Father, how he asked silence from the Man and slowly move his mouth, making soft sounds and then reciting all the letters of the alphabet. The Man stopped grunting and looked at Father. There was something dark, something mysterious in his voice. As he tried to recite the alphabet two, he started sweating and his eyes went very fast from Father to Mother and then to each of the kids. It was unsettling and combining it with the letters of the alphabet didn’t make it any better. Father continued, slowly, by spelling his name. He did it several times, pointing at himself with a finger.

 Then, he pointed at the man and fell silent. The man looked more scared that ever before and tried, again, to talk. At first, the same type of grunts returned to his mouth but then he tried to clear his mouth and a letter came out in a very deep voice. Mother let out a squeal and the kids’ mouths were very open. The letter was “D”. Father asked Mother something to write on and a pencil and she looked for them after snapping out of it. He wrote a big D and showed it the man, who nodded.

 The following letters where “A” and “N”, so they decided that his name was Dan. He started coughing like mad after he had said that last letter; coughing so hard blood came out of his mouth. Mother brought him something to clean himself with but he prevented her from coming neared. He saw the spots of blood in the covers with terror, his eyes also filled with blood. He looked at them, hopeless and guilty. Trying to calm him, the family came closer but he just said to more letters, which Father wrote.

 Something happened then that no one would ever be able to explain mainly because no person alive can really say what happened. Some say the gran began to shake, others say it was the roof that suddenly came off. All agree, however, that sound appeared to disappear for a moment in the world. Many years later they would found that house destroyed and the notebook where Father had written the word “DANGER”. In smaller writing, below, he had also written “deaf”, and that was it. No one ever knew what happened but it was clear the Man had failed to deliver his message.

Hidden

   As the doors of the club opened, Hosni stumbled out flanked by two other guys, not one looking as lost as he was. He had to lean against a wall next to the club and just wait there. The two guys that had come out with him did not ask him if he was ok or if he wants some kind of help. Actually, they only looked at him glaringly and started talking on their phones almost immediately. His head felt very dizzy, he felt it turn and turn and not stopping but his body had no reaction further than that. He wasn’t going to vomit, so he just stayed there, looking wasted.

 The guys finally asked him if he was going with them. Hosni shook his head. He didn’t feel up to any task right now and just wanted to get home as soon as possible. As the guys left, he put his hands on the pockets of his jacket and checked everything that needed to be there was indeed there: the wallet, home keys, his socks and a candy. He even opened up the wallet to see how much money he had and realized he was obliged to walk back home, as he hadn’t enough money for a bus or the subway. And even if he had, he wasn’t in the best state to know where to walk to take any of those transportation options.

 So he started walking, at seven in the morning on a Sunday, through a neighborhood that he knew well as he had identified it as a go-to place since he had arrived in town five years ago. He remembered his excitement when seeing the order and the cleanliness and the coldness of people. It was very different from his home country, in both good and bad ways. The nice thing here is that his parents became a bit less religious and were not as tough with rules as hey had been before. The proof was that he was there, stumbling around corners at that time of day.

 Then he realized he hadn’t felt his cellphone in his jacket. He stopped right in front of a disco and people smoking outside watched as he furiously looked all over himself for the cellphone, only to find it in pocket close to the knee. He was wearing the cargo pants that his dad had felt would make a great worker, being able to carry all sorts of things everywhere. Even as he had studied to be a psychologist, his parents were still looking forward for Hosni to come to the family business, which was fixing all sorts of things, like a plumber.

 The walk was resumed, with Hosni checking out a map on the phone and rectifying his route. The small scare of not finding his cellphone had helped him being a little less wasted, he could see things little bit clearer. Yet, he wasn’t walking faster at all. He thought it would have been funny to go back to the club and make the owner or some guy turn on the lights to look for the cellphone. But then he remembered that couldn’t have been possible because electronic devices were not allowed in. He laughed stupidly, alone.

 After stumbling around for around thirty minutes, he finally got home safe and sound. It took him a while to open the main door of the building and he helped himself by holding the cellphone towards the door when opening the door of the apartment, in order not to wake up his family. He was very silent and when he got into his room he took every single piece of clothe of and just entered the cold bed stark naked, falling fast asleep in a matter of seconds.

 The following morning, the voice of his mother woke him up. She wasn’t calling for him but he could hear her in the kitchen, talking to his sister and father. They were probably having breakfast. He could smell the eggs and his stomach practically belched at the presence of the aroma. He would have wanted to eat but, again, his head was spinning. He was not wasted anymore, sleeping had taken care of most of the damage, but his head hurt and he just tried to fall asleep again but couldn’t.

 Besides, as he closed his eyes, he remembered various scenes from the previous night including many that he thought were not real. So he stayed with his eyes wide open looking at the ceiling, deciding which memories were real and which ones were fake. He knew he had a lot of beer and also some drugs, which weren’t allowed in the club but people still had them inside, when employees weren’t around and that was pretty often. The scent of the eggs felt stronger, so he got up.

 His family celebrated that he joined them and he was served a plate. Then, minutes later, he had to unfold the lie that he had been preparing since the day before. He said he had been in a friend’s house, drinking and having a small party with some of his friends that had recently arrived from his home country. All his parents could ask was what news they brought from home and how they were adapting to the city. They didn’t really care for anything else. It was his sister that asked at what time he had arrived and he had planned to lie about that too: he said he arrived around four in the morning, after helping a couple of his friends get home.

 The truth was he had arrived much later than that, even remembering seeing a bit of sunlight as he entered the building. He wasn’t asked much else, and he was thankful because remembering every single lie that he had planned before that night was difficult and made his head hurt even more. He just ate and enjoyed a time with his family and then went back to his room and tried to sleep some more but couldn’t. Again, he stared at the ceiling and just wandered about every single aspect of last night and how everyone had no idea of his real night.

 Later that Sunday, he took something for his headache and by night he was feeling better. He helped his dad around at the hardware store the family owned, as it opened every day, and just tried not to think about that night anymore. Now that he was better, he felt guilty and kind of scared that someone would be able to really now what he had been doing that night and so many other nights, because that one had not certainly being the only night he had gone out in order to be closer to what he thought was being his own real self.

 Since arriving to the city, he had been going out to places his parents had no idea he went and the thought of them knowing was enough to make the headache come back. He was afraid of the response, not only from his father but from his mother too. Even his sister’s response would be very hard to take in. He loved his family and wouldn’t want them to disappoint them or make them feel like he had betrayed them. But the fact was that he couldn’t tell any of them the truth. Because he knew how they would respond and he wasn’t ready for that yet.

 As if his thoughts had been heard in heaven, his father rolled out his prayer mat and felt in one very specific part of the store. Hosni did the same, just next to his father and prayed for a while with him. The amount of guilt that was piling up in his mind was too great and he seriously thought that his mind would explode one day. But it didn’t, because he was much stronger than he realized. After all, he had kept them out of the truth for many years and was ready to do it for many more.

 A couple of friends told him to be real, to live a more honest life and to lift that weight from his shoulders. But they didn’t understand how his family worked, how his religion and traditions really set a standard in which he didn’t fit in at all. Sometimes he had to go to his room when his parents had discussions over news in the TV that were “immoral” to them. He just couldn’t bear to hear them argue over something he felt they didn’t understand. He was just trapped between the life he had while a kid and the life he had now, after being able to go to college and have a real education.

 So, as always, for the following week, he was the Hosni everyone knew. He worked in the store and then he applied for jobs, some very far away, trying to get into the work world and into his profession, which he actually loved. He was charming with people all around him and loving with his parents and friends. He was just a young man full of dreams as anyone else, ready to take on life and just try to get the best out of it. He really wanted to be happy and thought that lying was part of that idea. It was unavoidable and he didn’t really mind.

 H was back in the club the following Saturday night. He had bought a year pass many months before so they knew him well. They gave him a token for a complimentary beverage and then he moved on the locker area, where he proceeded to strip down and only keep on his sneakers and his underwear. Then, he crossed a curtain to the bar where he drank vodka straight. Five minutes afterwards, Hosni was walking downstairs, to the dark room below, where his dreams did not live and he could be as close as he thought he could to the person he thought he was.

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.