Mostrando las entradas con la etiqueta mind. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando las entradas con la etiqueta mind. Mostrar todas las entradas

lunes, 18 de enero de 2016

Rush

   What did I dream? What did I eat last night?  What was my last thought before closing my eyes and falling asleep? It’s silly, but I don’t remember any of it, or at least not once. I have to be still and really try hard to remember the answer to every single one of those questions and many more that appear many minutes after I wake up. Does it all have to do with this? Is it all connected, as many people believe? They think that if one thing happens and then another or something else on the other side of the globe, then it’s all connected. To me it sounds stupid and very easily dismissible as a theory but who am I to trump over the delusions of so many of our fellow human beings. Maybe it’s better to let them wonder through the cosmos and just not pay attention to whatever they might have to say.

 Yet, I feel confused, scared and my stomach is rumbling like mad. Did I lose my last meal too, even if I haven’t vomited at all? It feels like I have. My belly really hurts and my body overall feels tired and weak in a very weird way. It’s like something took away my bones for a single second but I can still feel them readjusting to their original positions. It also feels as if the room had been completely moved like a gigantic cube while I was sleeping, causing my senses to become insane. I can’t really tell if up is that way or down is that other way. I don’t know and to be honest I have no intention to help anyone in that department. I just want this very awful feeling to leave me, my heart to stop pounding. It seems it wants out.

 Turning on the light in the room, and I say it in singular because there’s only the one, was not the best idea. Only to see the mess I caused… Well, it wasn’t me and it was, all at the same time. Maybe that’s why I feel a little bit guilty too, like when you’re little and you pee your bed. And you are conflicted between going to your parents and tell them what happen. Or maybe, you think, you can clean it yourself and put the linen in the washing machine and no one will ever know. And when they realize what happened, you feel weak and shaky and you cannot really talk and you want to cry but know it’s not really a moment to cry because, somehow, it doesn’t feel like it.

 My stomach is the worst part. It’s still restless and I don’t know if it’s a good idea to have breakfast. I mean, what if I just expel all of that in an hour or less? I don’t want to be cleaning that or feeling even worse than I feel right now. I don’t want to risk my mental health and my physical one. Besides, the possibility of having to clean the floors (here’s hoping it’s the floors…) does not really excite me at all. If anything, it makes my stomach even more restless, as if I had a very violent electric eel trapped in there and she stings me every time I think of pulling her out of her cozy environment. I don’t feel good, that’s the point.

 Breathing has become harder. I don’t know why, but it feels like this room, filled with freezing air, is running out of oxygen. However, I don’t want to open the window and become a human popsicle. Because even know, seating on my bed, I can feel that damn cold air like a snake going up my legs, through my belly and chest and to my brain. My fingers feel weird too, like they are about to crack. And I still cannot breath. Opening my mouth seems futile and only my nose is trying to keep me alive but I have no idea how skilled my nose is, even less right now when the punch had come from the area. I try to inhale some air and it feels heavy, almost solid. I can almost feel its taste and it doesn’t taste good at all.

 Why is that? Because of the surroundings I guess. I know now I don’t like this student life, or at least not at this age anymore. I sound old but I’m not, I just complain every single second about things that I have decided to be my life, so if you think about it, I should just shut up. And I do. I don’t really use my vocal chords as much as I did back home, although that is kind of obvious. After all, they are your family and you love them or at least I love mine. If you have issues with yours, well, sorry for that. But these other people, the truth is I don’t care for them at all. They could die out there, rammed by a bus, and I would honestly not give a shit. I would only worry for the next person, the next boring and predictable human male to stay in that room and talk about booze and pot, because apparently this is it for humanity.

  Well, that let’s a weight out, somehow. But still feel a bit lost. After all, my awakening today was too fast, too confusing and a little of a low blow. You never know when things are going to take a turn, one of those turns that changes your whole mindset for the day or even for more time. I hate it when it happens because change scares me and it scares me a lot more than I imagined it. I want it all the same over and over and over again and I’m not ashamed of confessing that. Because I don’t see anything over the hill. No green grass, no cute little houses, no beautiful people smiling at me and doggies coming to greet me. I don’t see anything.

 The future scares me and maybe my body had finally realized it. Maybe the war between my insides and my mind has begun and this, whatever it is that’s writing this, is in the middle of the fight. And I know there will be blood and pain all over, there will be losses and gains and my mind is going to spiral down a wormhole that I have made for myself. Because, if we are objective, no one else is guilty more than ourselves. If there’s something happening to us, we probably had it coming and we even knew that it was coming, even if we chose not to acknowledge and just pretend nothing was happening, as we often do.

 That roll of toilet paper is starting to look funny somehow. I guess it’s because it is. Such a funny thing to have around one’s house, when you think about it. It’s shape; it’s function, the one it is built and all the strategic marketing behind such a strange object. I don’t mean that to be funny or make some funny toilet jokes. I’m afraid I don’t know any of those so I cannot be funny that way. Actually, I have no idea if I’m funny in any way. Maybe I’m like the toilet paper, that’s just strange and everywhere and that’s me sometimes. There but not there at the same time, however always out of place, as if I was an extra and I always come in the scene a little too early or too late. I do feel like an extra sometimes and I believe we all do everyday, so I don’t really fell bad about it.

 I put on my socks again, as they slid out of my feet during the night. Maybe that’s the reason why I feel like I feel right now. But I doubt it. What do socks have to do with anything? I just want my feet to feel a bit warm in order for my body to stop trembling and for my belly to calm down. I know I have responsibilities and all that but I’m seriously thinking about staying in bed all day. The idea seems very alluring and a very great one, I must say… Fuck, there they go again with their music and their noise. I don’t care what time of the day it is; you just don’t shove your tastes down people’s throats. It says a lot about someone, music and how they behave with it and how they consume it or however you want to say it.

 My pillow was spared, mostly. I want to lay my head on it and just close my eyes because I start to feel a little dizzy again. I just want to rest and not have any of that annoying noise around me. I don’t want to feel more than the warmth of the bedspread and the smell that I leave in my pillow. That may sound a little bit self-centered, but I guess it is the only way to calm me down, to make me realize all of this is real and that I’m not imagining anything strange and crazy. Actually, I do want this all to be my imagination and I don’t mean this morning, I mean this whole part of my life. Because it doesn’t feel right and I’m just holding on, trying to make time pass day by day.


 All the blood I spilled this morning… It tells me it is real and that I still have to keep my ground, I still have to wait and endure for more time. I’m not a good person but I don’t think I’m bad either. I’m in between. When I woke up to a rush of blood coming out my noise, successfully avoiding everything to be tainted in red, I thought it was a punishment for something, I thought it was because I had done something wrong and now I was paying for it. Maybe through just the bleeding, maybe through something more. I don’t know that for sure and to be honest I don’t really want to know because my head is spinning. Although that awful music might have something to do with it… Sometimes I do hate people.

jueves, 26 de noviembre de 2015

Thanks

   Blood was always difficult to clean off. She grabbed a sponge from the bathroom and put it under the water with some soap. She then grabbed the sponge and started cleaning her boots, as they were covered in red. The sponge, that used to be yellow, got heavily tainted and it was almost impossibly to clean it after having removed almost every trace of blood from her boots. As she walked the bathroom, she grabbed the sponge and walked with her footwear on the other hand.

 Her name was Linda, which means “beautiful” or “cute” in Spanish. But that had nothing to do with her. First, because her parents had no idea of another language and they would have never bothered to learn anything about a world outside theirs. Second, because although she had a nice body and all the curves men would like to stare at, she didn’t found herself all that cute.

 She put on the boots in the living room and then went to the kitchen to throw away the sponge. She grabbed a yogurt, cheese and an apple from the refrigerator and ate them all practically at the same time. She hadn’t had a decent meal in a while and she had to take that moment to eat something recharge batteries. As she gulped down the yogurt, she realized her hands had lots of little cuts and she had blood under her nails. When Linda finished eating, she tried to clean it off but failed.

 It was time to go. Linda took out a cellphone and checked her messages. She had told Marlon to only text her and never to call her. Apparently he had gotten the idea because she had not received any calls, only one text when he asked if she was ok. She answered by only writing “yes”.

 When she walked out the house through the back, a gust of very cold wind hit her directly in the face. Maybe rain or some kind of snow front was coming. But that wasn’t important right now. She just closed her jacket the best she could and walked towards the car that was parked just on one side of the garden. It was one of those houses where everything looks perfect. But what was inside was not perfect, unless you were a homicidal maniac with a thing for order.

 Linda dismissed the thought of it all and got in the car. She had found the keys in an ashtray inside, as if the person that drove the car was always very careful about them. Linda drove faster than the previous owner, getting to the highway in no time. She tried not to speed in order not to attract any attention but it was hard. Her only wish was to be very far away from there, and that had to be done fast or they would link everything that had happened the last few days to her. And she couldn’t face that.

 Night came fast and also a thin rain, which was more annoying than anything else. She kept driving, remembering the faces she had seen recently and putting tags on the ones that she would never see again. Many people had died violently because of her lately and it was something that, although not honestly shocking, she did want it to be left behind. She wanted to be free from those awful memories and sights; she wanted to be left alone.

 However, as the “gas” sign on the car’s dashboard started beeping, she knew that wasn’t going to be possible. Right now, many cops, many people in general, were thinking that it was all her fault, it was all because of her and it was her who had done it all. And they were right, at least partially. Because she did have blood under her nails, because her body did ache because of the struggle and because she had seen what no one else had seen that week.

 Seven hours after departing the house, Linda pulled over a gas station. It was self-service, so she used the cash she had found on the house to fill the tank and hope no one would catch up with her there. She entered the store to pay and realized a table had been set up inside and, before she could walk back, the family having dinner there noticed her and smiled. Somehow, they were happy to see her, even if she had no idea who they were or what they were doing. Suddenly, people got up and smiled and she saw food on the table and remembered.

 It was Thanksgiving Day. She had forgotten all about it as she had been too busy dodging life. She walked closer and asked to pay for her gas but the family invited her to a plate. She insisted on paying but the mother replied they had all decided to celebrate the day there because the station was family property and they couldn’t close it down so the best way to celebrate was to do it in the store and give any costumers a plate to share the joy of the holiday.

 Linda insisted many more times, looking out at the car, but every single one of them kept insisting. They then put a plate on her hands and she had to do something she had almost forgotten how to do: act. She forced a smile on her face and went around the table putting various types of salads and vegetables and turkey on her plastic plate. She then thanked them all and told them she would prefer to eat it in her car, as she didn’t want to interrupt.

 Then, Linda heard it again. She froze right where she stood as the voice, which was not feminine or masculine, invaded her head. She didn’t understood how it had found her again. It had to be close. She asked for it not to do anything to her or to the people there but, when she realized it, she had dropped her plate of food and was now holding the knife they were using to cut the turkey. Her arm moved and she was inside of her body, unable to control anything. But as she was about to slash one of the attendants, a bullet entered her leg and she lost balance, collapsing to the floor. She lost consciousness right there.

 The woman had some awful dream, were voices in different tones told her what to do. One wanted her to poke her eyes out, another one advised to grab a knife and cut her legs off. Another, deeper voice, ask her to just drop dead. And then they all stopped talking and she heard a beautiful female voice. It was someone she knew or at least she seemed to be very familiar to her. But that didn’t matter. The voice told her, in words that felt like a medicine, that she had to fight back, not letting them in.

 Linda woke up, panting and sweating in a hospital bed. She had wanted to move but two things stopped her: she was tied to the bed, as they did with mental patients, and her leg was hurting too much, so she could barely move properly. She tried to fight her restraints but it was useless and she tried to scream too but her throat was dry and she would only hurt herself. Linda couldn’t cry either, as much as she had wanted to do so many times before. Somehow, she couldn’t.

 Two men then entered the room, a policeman and a doctor. The agent started talking about how she was going to be incarcerated due to her having murdered over twenty people the past few days and her attempted murder of a family that had been seating about to have dinner. Linda just shook her head, unable to speak. The men ignored this. The doctor then spoke, telling her that she apparently suffered from a condition in which illusions and voices were very present so he had recommended the police not to put her in jail but in a psychiatric ward.

 Again, Linda tried to scream, but couldn’t.

 She was transferred to a psychiatric hospital two days after they had extracted the bullet. There, she wouldn’t be isolated but she would remain for life. They had deemed her “incurable”, so she was just left alone with her thoughts.

 As much as she tried, for several years after her demise, she never regained the ability to speak. However, people understood her all the same. She had no idea why and she had no need for an explanation. The voices, both the crazy ones and the beautiful one, disappeared from her life. So she was just a regular girl living in a place filled with the most criminally insane people in the world. And all because of what some voices had told her to do, controlling her mind and body.


 As she got older, the clinic used her as the patient that welcomed any new additions to the madhouse. It was then when she realized how it was possible that people understood her. And it was amazing no one had said anything, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Maybe she was manipulating them too but realized that was too far fetched. Linda could only be in their heads, that was it.

viernes, 6 de noviembre de 2015

Secret of the woods

   The last day they saw each other, they didn’t say a word. They just stared and finally left, each own his or hers on way. They were six people and they had all been there as the war had happened. They had been useful servants, slaves if you will. They had done everything they were ordered and even then the ones that ruled over that place had beaten them with sticks or solid rods. Everyone was cruel and sick during the war and the secret that they all shared was proof of that. When it happened, they all shared that moment but they never really spoke about it. First, because there was no time to do so and, second, because it was extremely hard for them to do it. The war then pressed on and reached its desired end; they were liberated one morning and found themselves to be free.

 Clara was the youngest of the group and the first one to leave that horrible place. She noticed, as she left in a truck filled with liberated people, how the surrounding forest was still dark and scary and how it had no life inside of it. It had been rendered lifeless by the atrocities of war. Eventually, Clara made it to the nearest town and there she desired to get to a port and then away from that forsaken continent. But she never got to do it because she had no money. She decided to work in the town, doing small chores all over. It was doing so that she met a nice young man, a baker, and she fell in love. They eventually married and had a very large and happy family. She was almost seventy years old when she received a phone call, one she never thought she would get.

 Robert, the youngest man, left in the following truck. Its destination was another place like the one he had come from, which made him sick. He vomited several times and made the soldiers think he was sick with something. They left him in a provisional hospital, not too far from there. He wasn’t sick, just nervous and scared. In the hospital, one of the doctors asked him for help, as nurses were very scarce. Eventually, Bob followed the medicine man to a big city in the south and there he paid Robert’s studies to become a doctor. The man turned to be a second father who loved Robert as his own son had died months earlier in battle. Bob turned himself into a great doctor, getting the call too after one of his lectures.

 The oldest was Irina, a woman that didn’t say a word and that left the place by foot. She was not that older but she had seen more of life than Clara and Robert. She was hunted by the violent deaths of her family, which she couldn’t forget. Feet bleeding, she collapsed and was rescued by a group of women, who nursed her back to health. They were also escaping violence, so she joined them. The group eventually settled in the east and became of the first feminist groups of the area. They were adamant in their convictions and Irina proved to be a real fighter. She did good things for women all over the region and was in a frail state when she got her call.

 Next was Alexander, who was the first one that talked publicly about the atrocities he had seen. He became a renowned writer after been able to travel abroad and reunite with his family. He was member of an aristocratic family who had disowned him but now that everything had change, they recognized him again and even more as his fame grew larger. Alexander published books about the war, all very successful. He did novels, and documentaries and short stories. He even sold his rights to make movies about the subject. By the time he was an older man, he was one of the richest persons on that side of the world. Privately, he had grown tired of the subject but as it was his life, he couldn’t drop it. His call caught him in the middle of the night.

 Marissa was the only one that had been transferred from a proper prison camp. She had seen other atrocities and when she was transferred she thought she would have a better life but she didn’t. After the liberation, she had to be institutionalized because of her mental state. She received shock therapy for several months and was even the subject of several dissertations about paranoia. She was finally released to a resting home when she was a woman in her forties. She had no skills and had been permanently damaged but that didn’t stop people at the home to make her clean floors and bathrooms, use her as many had used her before. Then, one morning, someone came and took her away.

 To complete the group, there was Louis. He had been a musician but after the war his fingers were not the same ones. He couldn’t play anything and he did not have any other skills. He tried finding a job as a waiter or as a chauffeur, but he would always ruin it by having awful breakdowns that involved hitting himself repeatedly. His guilt always showed itself to others, and it couldn’t be controlled. He was violent and unpredictable so, when one day he shot himself in the head, no one really made a fuss about it. So many people that had been liberated were committing suicide, so it wasn’t a real shock. When they called Louis, trying to locate him, the news hit hard and deep.

 The person who called was Clara. She had started to contact everyone else for one simple reason and that was because she had received a call by a state officer who was investigating the events that took place in that place in the woods all those years ago. They had identified her as a resident for some time, as well as some others. They wanted to talk to them in order to know exactly what went on there because there were these rumors and it was necessary to know if they were true. Clara just hung up, asking her husband never to pick it up again. When the government came to her doorstep, she chased them away.

 For her, it was too much. Her children and husband didn’t understand, but for Clara it was all a disaster. She was an older woman now, someone who had already done what she had to do, and someone that was already planning to come to terms with her existence as a human being. Clara was almost ready to meet her maker and she had no intention to face the human justice. That was when she had the idea to track all of the people that had been there with her, in those basements with rooms with no windows or proper lighting. She looked for them and after some time she had called them all. They had all agreed to meet, no questions asked, in the town where she lived.

 It was fun, at least for a while, to see how different everyone was. Clara had been a housewife all of her life so she did an effort to look good. She was the one who picked up Clara and, with the help of her husband, nursed her back to a better health in order to be more aware of the world. But Marissa was gone and would rather play with the dogs than talk to those people she didn’t know anymore. Bob and Alex looked fantastic. They were all so dapper and successful in their respective fields. But once there, once they got all together, they went back to being young and simple. Irina walked slow and needed to be waited and helped. But her demeanor was strong and resilient, having struggled all of her life for others. They reunited and, once again, just stared.

 But those empty looks turned into tears and hugs and kisses. They had never done that while at the woods, they had never shared a moment of love because love had been outlawed. They only law, the only real thing there was violence and cruelty and they had been poisoned by it. They talked about their lives and about how everything had changed but had stayed the same in some parts. They also spoke about Louis and Marissa was the first one to smile when hearing his name. She had helped him once and they were the only friends in existence in that awful place. They went there and the cold wind that greeted them made all the memories come back.


 The place was now a museum with a park. A young woman came to them as asked if they wanted to take a tour of the place but they told her they knew it too well. They each told the story of how they had gotten there and how they had gotten out of it. They also confessed to have helped to the killing of several people, including children. The place was used as a testing site for several weapons: biological, chemical and radioactive.  They also tortured them with other experiments and them, who were prisoners, were made to watch and help. If they didn’t, they died. So they did. That place had been hell and now they had liberated themselves from it, in order to leave it there forever.

lunes, 5 de octubre de 2015

The forbidden jungle

  The waterfall had always been a lonely place, as it was located deep within the jungle. No one would have ever reached it on purpose, instead stumbling into it by mistake. It was said that the waterfall and its lagoon had the capacity to change locations and appear wherever people needed them to be. Many explorers and escapees from a nearby prison wandered into the jungle and got lost for days. Many of them, to be honest most of them, where eaten up by the jungle, whether it was by the fiery creatures inhabiting it or by the secrets that lay beyond the trees and the mossy ground. There were no natives to the jungle that could tell anyone about what lived beyond the first few kilometres simply because no living being, at least of the human species, had ever been able to come back.

 In satellites pictures, the jungle appeared to be dark green and even black in some parts. And it was all trees and trees, no sign of any waterfall or lagoon, which was only none to those few that had wandered into the jungle and survived. But as said before, these people never left the jungle. Instead, they remained in there, slowly transforming into wandering souls that helped protect the jungle and the secret within it. People that suffered this faith would not suffer or deny their destiny. Once they realized why they should give up their natural lives, they gave it all willingly. After all, those who survived were always the best humans, the examples of what was good and admirable about the human race.

 Such a person was Captain Roma Tennant. When she entered the navy, so many years ago, her peers only saw her as one of the women of the ship. But they had no idea she was far stronger and more capable than any of the men that worked with her in any of the Navy’s vessels. She was always the most oriented and the fastest one, also having great skills for shooting. She was prized several times, always involved in missions of war but far from any real battle. When she was finally sent to it, she became easily traumatized. She saw the few friends she had made in the Navy died, blowing up next to her or simply falling to their knees, a bullet in their foreheads. Her mind, however, got to hold on.

 The bit of sanity that remained in Roma was enough to destroy one of the enemies’ battle stations, thereby giving a perfect position for support troops to launch an attack that would make them win the fight. They did win, after many more casualties and Roma was able to survive, killing even more men and hiding in a sewage pipe. She was rescued by her country and brought back home but the truth was that Roma had been devastated by her, her mind almost broken by images of flying limbs and blood tainting every single drop of water. Her recovery took many months and her family thought they had lost her forever.

 And, in a way, they did. When Roma was able to walk again and use her arms and speak, she told them that she couldn’t live in the city anymore, as the sounds there reminded her of the sounds of battle. Cars and cell phones and planes made her very uneasy, very nervous. So her solution was to go and live by the sea, buy a boat with the money they had paid her for her services in the military, and simply live a quiet life in the ocean. She had to win the respect of her fellow men, once again, by proving she could easily manage to control a fishing boat, a cargo ship and even a small ferry to transport people across a small stretch of water.  She did exactly that at first and then travelled across the globe, working in jobs not very different, trying to bring peace to her mind and food to the table.

 She went to every big port in the world but, as she had realized before, cities were not for her, not even their harbours and marinas. She would settle for smaller towns, where she could be around people that she could recognize every day. But that eventually gave her more problems as she was reminded of the many people she had lost in battle. After one of her episodes, she was institutionalized for several months. This time, she had no family nearby and no one apparently notified them of her state. She remained in her cell, receiving shock therapy, which they still thought would be of any good in the country where she was. Eventually, they let her go when they saw she was calmer, less violent.

 Roma left that country fast and ended up in Indonesia, where she established herself as a fisherwoman. The locals there were not very happy to see her, a woman, trying to compete with all the men. She felt so harassed, that she decided to move upstream, through a large river that crossed a huge jungle. There she would finally be alone and she would be able to have a decent life for the remainder of her days, no matter how many they would be. She then noticed that explorers, scientists from all over who saw the jungle as an incredible source of discoveries, frequently visited the region. They said that a new animal was discovered every six hours and a new plant every eight hours.

 It was hard to believe such tales but Roma decided it was business and she dedicated herself to tour the scientists up and down the river and even through some canals and streams she had discovered. All the foreigners that got on her boat always came back as she was more daring than most people of the region and they knew it was because she had seen more of the world than they had. For a couple of years, explorers became her friends and she would always be there to greet them and take them wherever they needed to do their research. She had fun doing it, as she felt at peace for once in her life and it felt good.

 That changed the day she met Alexander Epps, an American scientist that had heard tales of the forbidden jungle and arrived in the region asking loudly for someone to take him there. Everyone said no, even Roma. She didn’t know all the tales, but she did know that the region of the jungle he was asking to go was very tricky in terms of navigability. She was skilled enough to go, she was sure, but it was difficult to live there and ignore the stories she had heard, about teams of twenty people that left for the jungle and never came back. Boats that appeared out of nowhere in the river and people recognized them as the ones that had transported lost souls to that dark patch of the forest. Roma was an adventurous woman, but she was no fool at all.

 However, Epps was a scientist and his research had also dropped the name of Roma. How it was known she lived there now, was never truly explained. Nevertheless Epps came to talk to her and tried to convince her to take him to the forbidden jungle. He insisted for months and she always said no. But then, as intelligent and twisted as Epps had always being, he tricked Roma into watching some images and footage of the war she had been in. He bombarded her with information, facts and so on. Just as he predicted, she snapped. But before she could lose herself to her own mind, Epps convinced her that the only way to purge herself from everything was to make a good deed and that was to tale him to the jungle.

 The next day, she took his team of ten men in her boat and carried them upstream. As expected, the jungle grew thicker, until it was impossible to keep advancing by boat. She told Epps it was her time to return but he threatened her with a gun and made her walk in front of him. None of that mattered anyways as in only one night; all the men of the expedition would be killed. Roma had not seen such carnage, not even in war. There were gigantic snakes breaking the bones of men, jaguars that destroyed a person in minutes and huge birds with beaks that could poke out eyes in the easiest way possible. The last one to die was Epps, who was impaled by a shadow Roma had seen before.

 Alones and in the brink of insanity, Roma wandered through the jungle, trying to get out of there but knowing one of the beasts was probably waiting for her. She was getting impatient, asking for the jungle to eat her, to destroy her life once and for all. But then she heard the humming of the water and, some steps in front of her; there was a perfect lagoon and a great waterfall where she cleansed herself from everything. Even her memories seemed to leave her as she washed her body. And then, beyond the trees, she saw a light. At first she thought it was an animal but then she realized it had the shape of a human being. Whatever it was, it was asking her to come towards him.


 Slowly, Roma did exactly that. The entity was one of the many souls that lived in the forest, one of the oldest apparently. It took Roma by the hand and took her to a trip where she left her body and transformed into a better version of herself. They wandered all around the jungle until the spirit took her deep within the trees, beyond the killer animals and the poisonous plants, beyond the waterfall and its soothing waters. There, in a space covered by plant life, there was a rock. It was the colour of blood and looked harmless. The spirit invited her to touch it and, when she did, she felt complete. And she understood why no one that wasn’t worthy could ever survive the forbidden jungle.