Fireball

   For us, life changed the day we saw the sky on fire. Or, more precisely, we saw fire falling off the sky. I remember waking up by the noise outside, as I always left my window open when I slept, because of the heat at nights. My parents and the neighbors were talking very loud for so early in the morning and my brother, who slept in bed next to mine, was not there but standing by the door, hearing everything. Then, not even having the chance of asking what was going on, I heard mom walking towards our room. Brother ran to bed and pretended he was asleep but he did a really awful job at it.

 She told us in a hushed voice, for some reason, to get out of bed and put on some slippers. She rushed us and we went with her. When we went out of the house, dad was already there looking up. We all looked up too and we saw it: a big ball of fire was crossing the sky. It didn’t look like something that nature would do but, then again, I had never really seen a real meteorite so maybe that was it. I then remembered the many shows I had seen about the extinction of the dinosaurs and thought that maybe it was our turn and that’s why we were all outside.

 I thought it was a little bit weird to go out and then look at the thing that was going to destroy us, our homes and our planet, but when we started moving towards the beach, I found it even stranger. Dad held mom’s hand and she held mine and I held my brother’s. I honestly thought our time on Earth had come so I had no problem walking with everyone side by side and in a strange harmony, crossing the few blocks that separated us from the ocean. When we got there, a crowd had already settled down, many families and old people and kids and lonely folks. They were all looking up.

 The ball of fire was getting considerably larger and it came with a weird sound, like the one a string gust of wind would do but much more annoying. It wasn’t the nicest thing to hear just before dying but I guessed I couldn’t really complain. I was on the beach, which I loved, I had my parents and… Shit, they had left Captain back in the house! I told mom but she wouldn’t pay attention, not pulling her eyes away from the fireball. I wanted my dog with me if I was going to die so I released myself from my family’s grip and ran to the house.

 As old as he was, he was sleeping, not minding a bit about the fireball or the scandal people had created for hours. I grabbed him by the collar and, at first; he was not very willing to come. But after some petting and food, he came peacefully. As we walked to the beach, I felt suddenly very hot and realized it was the fireball, cruising the sky exactly above me. Captain barked at it and then it happened all so fast, as if someone (maybe God) had pushed the “fast forward” button. When I got to the beach, the ball of fire had already fell.

 But it did not destroy us. Actually, my last thought before it fell was that it wasn’t a ball at all. As close as it was, it didn’t have a real shape, not one that I could pinpoint. People on the beach had pulled back as some waves came in but didn’t do much damage. There, on the horizon, fire could still be seen but it was dying. I imagined a monster, burning and dying in the middle of the ocean. It really looked like one, due to the shape of the object. I realized that’s what it was because nature would not do something like that, which such and odd shape.

 Captain barked and growled. That snapped my family out, my dad telling us that it was better to go back home, as nothing more would happen tonight. He was wrong but we went anyway. I slept with Captain in my bed and he didn’t mind. He was a strange dog, preferring sometimes to be away from humans, especially young kids. But that night, somehow, he didn’t mind the attention and care and I was showing him. I even kissed his forehead before going to sleep and he didn’t even budge.

 The next morning, I was woken up again by the sound of my parents’ voices. I asked myself if they weren’t able to shut up, as I really wanted to keep on sleeping. I felt tired and my body ached, as I needed to sleep some more. Again, my mother came to our room to get us to have some breakfast. After all it was a school day. It was too early so I ate my cereal not even realizing I was spilling milk all over the place. I showered afterwards and got my uniform ready. Walking with brother on my side, I was still sleepy but we managed to find the way to school.

 Yet, we noticed something was wrong. Policemen, or at least they looked like policemen, were everywhere. They were in the corner of the street checking lampposts, or asking people questions in front of their houses or running somewhere. Our small town did not have a police department. We depended on the next town for that. So who were those men and women? They were dressed in black and had a small logo on their shoulder but I couldn’t see what it was.

 In school, teachers seemed as distracted and sleepy as the rest of us. They all tried to do what they had to do but it was almost impossible. Kids were not listening and teachers were obviously not interested in speaking about mathematics or chemistry or history. Some yawned several times and others just looked at the window as if they were hoping for it to get shattered into a thousand pieces. It was the first time I saw kids actually sleeping on their desks and the teacher not saying anything to them. I would have liked to do that but when I decided to one of the men came in the school and said the classes were suspended.

 At home, mom explained those men were from the government and that they needed everyone’s help to salvage whatever it was that had fallen from the sky. They needed experienced swimmers and divers in order to help them, as only people from the area would know about the depth and characteristics of the water close to town. Dad had offered to help them, as he was a fisherman, and that’s why he wasn’t there to greet us from school. Normally he would come back early from fishing but he wasn’t there then. We joined mom in order to look the work he was doing from afar but got bored soon because there were no hills from which we could actually see something.

 The rest of that week was all the same. Dad started to get paid for his help but he had to leave early in the morning and would return late in the afternoon. He was always so tired he would eat half-asleep and then just fall into bed like a rock. Mom seemed worried for him but as my brother and I were deemed to young to ask anything, we simply didn’t. But we were worried too. Dad had always been such a joker and he loved to play around after dinner but during that weak he was practically a zombie.

 The third day after the “fireball” had fallen from the sky, a rumor ran across town. Apparently, some said that the thing that had fallen in the ocean was actually a spaceship and that the government was using us to get to them, them of course being the aliens. I found this a little stupid of them because if we helped them many people would know, so how would they cover up that? Killing everyone? No, too many questions would come up. I would make drawings in class of the aliens and the ship. I would also imagine talking to one of them and him telling me were he came from and how sorry he was to have crashed on Earth.

 My brother had nightmares about it, obviously he had been told awful stories about aliens by his friends. After all, most books about them it the library was about how evil they were and how they loved to destroy humanity ever single time they were able to. In some old movie magazine, they were even very similar to insects and I guess that was the image my brother had in his mind because he went insane when, walking to school, we saw a butterfly.

 The men in black left town after exactly seven days. They had taken out all they could from the ship and dad explained they could come back to take the ship, part by part as it was huge. As he seemed a little bit more rested we asked him about the aliens and their technology. But he only laughed and told us that he saw no aliens. Then his expression turned grim and said no more.

 Mother would explain that night that the object in the ocean was a space station, made by men, and that it had failed somehow and just fell off the sky. People had died on it and the men from the government had come for their bodies, to give them to their families. I couldn’t sleep that night. Somehow, I couldn’t stop thinking about those astronauts and how we saw them die.

Secrets & Nightmares

   I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night. I had no idea what time of night it was but I remember the first thing I felt was his breath on my hair. It was warm and soft. He never snored. I knew that because I was very sensitive to sounds and I would have woken up if he was. When I felt his breathing I was relieved, because I wasn’t in the world of the nightmare anymore but on the real one, the one that recently had been very nice to me in many aspects.

 Some people say that if you are successful or happy is because you deserve it or because you have worked hard for it. I think it’s a combination of the two., mainly because I don’t believe in the concept of fighting for everything in life. People who believe that are the type of people that are very competitive and that don’t stop at nothing to get what they want, they believe everything in life is a competition and that’s simply not the way it is or at least not my life.

 Anyhow, I was glad right then that I didn’t woke him up, because I knew he had problems sleeping and didn’t wanted to be the one to disrupt his night. I decided to try and close my eyes again and slip away into a deep slumber, hopefully without dreams. But, again, I fell right into a nightmare, a horrible world filled with the worst creatures I have ever seen, with all my fears parading around, rubbing past mistakes or their simple existence in my face. I had to wake up once again, this time really drenched in sweat.

 Thankfully, he had moved a bit away from me so I just separated my body from his slowly and went to the bathroom, to wash my face with cold water and try to relax a bit. I tried sitting on the toilet, pissing, even going to the kitchen and grab a bite. I also did some simple exercises in the living room and saw possibly five minutes of a TV show I didn’t even like. When I was back into bed, he woke up and asked me, between asleep and angry, where I had been?

 I kissed him in the lips, which made us both very happy and laid there with him. He fell asleep very fast and I stayed up for a long while, in fact not sleeping again for the rest of the morning. At that moment I did check my cellphone and saw it was five in the morning. We had to wake up in three hours and I couldn’t do one more of sleeping. I just used that time to think about it all, checking in my mind if everything was ready and found myself shaking a bit and my stomach growling.

 I grabbed his hand, which he had put over my chest, and squeezed it softly. He tightened his grip on me and I liked that. I felt safe and I guess that’s what I needed to feel.  If the alarm hadn’t gone off in that moment, I think I would’ve slept a bit. But I didn’t.

 The first thing he did when he woke up was kissing me, and then we showered together, hugging a lot and almost dancing beneath the water, When we were finished, we dressed up in silence and went to the kitchen to have breakfast. We both had cereal and talked a bit over it. He noticed I hadn’t sleep and I had to convince him I was ok, only a bit anxious about our day and that he shouldn’t worry. It was clear he was already worried but he didn’t go on with the subject, he just said he had to be at his sister’s in an hour.

 When he left, I cleaned up the place, changing the sheets of the bed to new ones I had bought secretly. I also pulled out some scented candles from a shopping bag I’d hidden beneath the sink, as well as other products that we would use for other purposes. When it was all ready I grabbed my kiss, gave the place one last look and went out the door. I had no car so I decided to walk to my mother’s house, which was an hour away by walking but I had the time.

 He had left before me because he said his sister could handle everything and that we shouldn’t do anything else than just show up at the right time. He was going to her place because that was the closest relative he had alive. His parents had died several years ago and since then his sister had been everything. She was a very organized person and had proposed to help us because she knew that the event needed a woman’s touch to be just perfect.

  As I walked to my former home, I thought about it all. I was nervous, obviously, but I knew the nightmares had been produced by something else. It wasn’t fear that had put them in my mind; it was something else that I didn’t quite understand. I mean, as everyone in the world, I have secrets and thing I wouldn’t like every single person to know, but that had never given me nightmares so what was this all about?

 I used my walk home to think about everything that would happen that day and I realized I was entitled to feel worried and maybe being a little bit scared. Marriage was not someone that I did everyday and it had been a question of “When?” for a long time and that time had finally come. I was sure about my affirmative response to it because I loved him dearly, beyond anything I had ever dreamed of. He was my prince charming and my bad boy, all in one. How corny does that sound?

 Thinking about him made me smile and many people on the street smiled me back. I didn’t noticed for a while but when I did I just laughed and thought that being in love was not as people described it but that it was good if you were ready for the long haul.

 In my mom’s house, my parents were dressing up, as well as my sister and her husband who had just arrived from abroad with their baby. She would have loved to have him carry the rings but he was still too young for that. Instead, my future husband’s youngest cousin was up for the job. She was a very nice girl and a bit mad for a seven year old, so she was right up our alley.  I also changed in a matter of minutes and decided to just wait in the living room for everyone to be ready.

 I dozed off and entered, once again, the dark territory of my nightmares. I recognized the feeling and the images and I could even feel my body sweat. I was in darkness, only able to see a light very far in the distance and the only thing I could do was walk towards it. Trying to grab it. But every single step I took was filled with pain, as if spines or small knives entered my every limb. Besides, and this was the most awful part, I felt hands in the darkness touching me, grabbing me to a place below that seemed liquid in nature. I knew that if I were pulled down there, I would die. And then, as always, I woke up before my head was submerged.

 My dad noticed when I woke up, because apparently I had let out a scream. He said that the best way not to dream bad things was either not to sleep or trying to make sense of whatever the dreams were about. I know my father wasn’t into Freud or anything, he just thought that if something was bothering it would translate into annoying nightmares and it was. I knew that was the case. Bu t it wasn’t just easy, it wasn’t just about letting the air out. It was harder than that.

 When everyone was finally ready, we jumped into the family car and drove towards the venue, a small banquet hall not far from there. When we arrived, every single guest was already there and I could notice he had already arrived too. So I was the one who had to go second, as per the rules. They started right away with the music. Then his sister escorted him to the altar, then me by my mother. I when I see him, my body let out one single tear. I say that because I had no control over it.

 The notary started talking about the law and citing many aspects of marriage that he found funny but also very important, so that the audience and us took it into account. He told us it was a very important thing to sign a paper and say “I choose to live my life with this person”, and that he personally admired those who did. We signed, me crying more and more, and finally kissed to the cheering and joy of our families and friends. As we kissed, I realized it was time, so covered by the wall of sound I whispered in his ear, took him by the hand and walk the carpet back into the main hall were food was being served.

 We didn’t discuss it until after the party, that went on for quite a while. He liked the candles in our room and the new sheets but he went straight to my confession as we sat down in the bed. I started crying and he held me, in love with me. He told me that he would do whatever I wanted, whatever made me happy. I smiled at him and then told him, clumsily, that I really needed to know where my only son was and what he was like. He grabbed my hand and kissed me.

Pilot in the stars

   The rumors were true. The whole colony had been dreading it would happen again, some day, and it had finally happened. Scouts and explorers coming in and out of the Field confirmed the destruction of an entire planet. According to them, the explosion was still visible in the nearby sectors and it was impossible to pass through the area. Many freighters had to take longer routes to rich worlds nearby, as the rocks that were floating around were sampling to big for such slow ships to handle.

 For the colony, this was especially difficult news. After all, it had been established many years ago precisely because a mad man had destroyed their former planet and they had to resettle in an asteroid field. Somehow they were the only ones, or at least had that idea in mind, that understood how real war felt like and how scary fanatics could be. That’s why they knew it would happen again and it did.

 Some of the colonists cried when they heard the news of the destruction, even more when they learned it had been a planet with a very large population and that had no why of responding to an attack of that magnitude. They had just died, with no way of even knowing they were going to die. The small room that served as temple to all religions in the colony was filled with flowers, one for each inhabitant. The guy that owned the flower shop was both happy and sad.

 Younger colonists, like Gregor, were not as hurt by the destruction of the planet as their parents. They understood it was something awful but hadn’t been old enough to feel their planet been destroyed in order to have something to compare the feeling to. Besides, Gregor’s parents had been mining in a far away planet when theirs was destroyed. According to them, it was something they felt deep in their hearts and it their minds, but Gregor was too young back then and did not remember feeling anything.

 Young colonists also worked and had responsibilities like helping around in the cargo area or in the commercial zone. The idea of the colony was that everyone could give something of themselves to make it all better for all inhabitants of the colony. It was a nice sentiment but difficult to handle as many passers by came in their lives for a few days and even a few hours. Ships came and went from the colony, used as a stopping point to refuel or have a decent meal before preceding their journey.

 Pilots were normally very talkative people and the colony was rather closed to the outside world so every piece of news came from them. It was often boring to hear them talking about the same old subjects but sometimes they did have very interesting insights about the other inhabited planets in the galaxy and the power players beyond the Field.

 Gregor was always interested in hearing the pilots talk. There was something in the way they told their stories, something so intimate and also universal, that made him want to leave the Field and get to know the world for himself. Once, sitting around fixing a machine in his family’s quarters, he decided to test the waters and get a conversation going with his parents about pilots and what they thought of them.

 His mother was a bit scared of them, not only because some of them were aliens, and she wasn’t still very used to that, but because they took so many risks when going from one place to the other. In her mind, the galaxy was a very dangerous place, filled with villainous creatures. His dad was, on the other hand, very interested in them but knew that their job was very difficult and sometimes even deadly. Pilots took many risks and not everyone was built to be one of them.

 Silence followed the conversation and Gregor broke it, by announcing he would love to be a pilot someday. His parents reacted in horror, dropping what they were doing, and looking at him as if he was sick. It was the first time they told him to go to his room and stay there doing nothing. They always wanted him to be helping, to be doing stuff, but now they just wanted him to be isolated and locked behind a door so he could think about what he had said and they could think how to counter that.

 The thing is, of course, it wasn’t and idea he had elaborated on that day. Gregor had been thinking of becoming a pilot for a long time. He even discussed it with a couple of pilots that told him that new blood was always needed but that it was essential that he had the courage to do what they sometimes didn’t have a choice of doing. Some of them had killed people, defending their cargo, their crew or their passengers. They were skilled not only in flying ships but also in different kinds of combat.

 It was a difficult thing for Gregor as any type of weapon was forbidden in the planet and any fights meant jail. The colony had gone out of its way to ensure that its inhabitants could live a life better than the one in other places. They thought that by banning violence, they would avoid it altogether, forever. But that wasn’t the case. After all it was a spaceport and fights always broke out and authorities couldn’t just arrest pilots transporting important cargo.

 That night he spent in his room; Gregor used it to think about what he was going to do with his life.  He really wanted to go away, to leave the colony and get to know other places and he was sure he could be a great pilot, even if he had never even tried to pilot anything.

 Decided and realizing his parents would never let him to do what he wanted, Gregor decided to just leave one night and try his luck in the outside world. He knew he could die or something worse but he didn’t mind. He was sick of staying behind, of just waiting for things to happen in his life. He wanted to be amazed by the galaxy and to see all that every planet had to offer with his own two eyes.

 One night, he went out of his room and left home with only a small bag with clothes and other essentials. His parents had not talked to him after their failed conversation and he was still hurt by it so he didn’t left them any kind of letter telling them what he was about to do. He just left and ran through corridor and hangars in order to get to the cargo area, were ships were refueled and taken care of.

 Gregor hid behind some crates containing food and waited until the workers left. It was well known that no ships could leave for some hours in the night, so he just waited there for all the workers to leave. The flight prohibition was only good for a couple of hours but it was more than enough for him to sneak into one of the ships and hide inside it. Once they realized he was there, it would be too late and no pilot would go back just for a kid escaping his parents.

 He entered the nearest ship, a typical cargo freighter, and hid between the tanks it was transporting. As he was not very tall and skinny, he could easily hide sitting down among all those tanks. After some minutes, he realized those were fuel tanks and decided it was maybe not a very good idea to travel near any of that. After all, it could blow it in any given second and his journey would be over.

 The ship next to that one was transporting cages and something made an awful noise inside of them. The third and last ship carried the typical crates and he went for it but wanted to go back as soon as he felt the awful smell in his nostrils. It was really awful, probably some kind of food considered a delicacy in another world but certainly not in the Field. He was about to leave when the ship closed its back door and he was trapped.

 He hadn’t realized the prohibition was over and all three ships departed at the same time. He had to hide there, among the stench, and try not to be detected. But after a while he just couldn’t hold it and started coughing like a lunatic. It was too loud for the pilot to ignore it. The door to the cockpit opened and Gregor was surprised to see a very tall women look at him and say: “You’re gonna die if you stay here. Come”. And he did and that’s how his big adventure started.

Thoughts by the beach

   As I woke up, I felt the soft caress of the sun on my back and feet. I also felt it all over my body: my arms, my thighs, my neck. It was just the best way to wake up and to remember what is great about the holidays and the world. Work and work and work. Who even likes doing that? I doubt anyone does. People should learn have to live for their work; their work should revolve around them. That obsession for perfecting things for someone else, I will never understand. What is so great about being a slave? Why are so many people proud of that? They parade around parties and life declaring to anyone that will listen how much they love their work and how much they do for it. To me, that always sounds pathetic, even if their work is actually great.

 As I turn over and feel the sun on my chest, tummy and legs, and most importantly on my face, I realize that I’m not one of those people. I mean. I don’t even have a job. No one has ever given me the chance to prove my worth as an employee and that will probably never happen as I’m a writer and the game there is a little bit different, although I guess I’ll have to be nice to my editor and my publisher, once I’m finally in that situation. No, I’d rather not think about that right now. Why would I ruin such a beautiful day by torturing myself again with the same thing again? It wouldn’t make sense and I’m simply not interested on feeling like crap just for the sake of it. I have felt like that before and I have to say that I’m not a fan.

 I sit down on the sand and look at the ocean, hearing the beautiful sound it makes. I don’t hear the children playing ball or the youngsters with their music and loud conversation, I only hear the ocean and its beautiful sound that makes any soul become calm. It is nice to think about all the people that have sat where I’m seating and have wondered about life, just as I do. This beach has to have a very big history of tourists and locals that span many years. Many some woman waited for her husband to come back home here. Or maybe, two men realized they loved each other right here. Or maybe a little girl discovered the beauty of the night sky and grew older loving the stars and constellations.

 To me, the world is always amazing by itself, but some people make it a little bit more special. Not every person has that gift, though. Some people actually make some places even less special than before, which is something pretty difficult to make unless you’re a really shitty person. But the world is filled with them. To be honest, I do think the world has more good people than bad people. But it also has more dumb people than clever people. And I don’t only mean according to education, because sometimes a man can be really smart without going to school and another man holding a doctorate can be the biggest moron you have ever seen. Because knowledge and intelligence are two very different things.

 I’ve known my fair share of guys that are just full of knowledge but almost entirely non-intelligent. And no, there’s no relation to stereotypes that people have because there’s always someone that breaks the stereotype. But there other that are walking proof of them, like a photographer who wears sunglasses and a long coat or a stupid blonde. Those are proofs of stereotypes. But, of course, there are many exceptions to all those “rules” and it’s not difficult to find them. People are just not that simple to categorize because they have a way of always surprising you with what they do. Have you ever felt that, that completely confusion sense of aw in front of someone you had no idea existed?

 The sand feels really nice on the feet, especially after walking so much from home to the beach. I touch it with my hands too and realize the grains are very soft, which feels even better on the body. A game of volleyball has started very near and the kids that were playing with a ball are now running around the beach with a kite on their hands. It’s funny to me how some parents have everything their kid might need on their car or, in the case of mother’s, in their purse. It’s like a magic trick although, it saddens me because they bring so many things and it makes me wonder if the reason for it is that they don’t really know what their kids like. Parents have always been oblivious to tings like that but now more than ever.

 I’m not saying that parents before were amazing because they weren’t always or all of them. But isn’t it more and more common to see a couple just ignoring their kids instead of hearing them and seeing what their opinion is of the world? Isn’t that interesting to everyone: to hear what a child, a person that hasn’t been here long, has to say about the world? Of course, kids are biased because they learn by looking and by repetition, not much difference to birds. The difference is that many kids, if raised right, have the gift of doubt from an early age. I don’t think I’m going to have any children, but if I ever do I hope they are inquisitive at all times, doubting everything and asking questions when they feel like it.

 I’d rather have that than some kids that only drool and cry, a reflection on bad parenting I guess. Oh, there they are. It’s those gym guys that always come to the beach to play volleyball after they have been working out in front of everyone. To me, that’s some funny shit. And sorry if I offend you by saying that but, honesty is paramount. People get so obsessed and fixated on something that it can become their whole lives. I mean, yes, the guys are very hot and sexy and attractive but they’re not interesting or at least they don’t look like it. Another stereotype I guess. Yeah, there’s the ball and they have started playing, like clockwork. And I noticed I’m not the only one watching.

 But that makes me turn my head and face the ocean again, which seems a little bit darker that before. I look up and see a big gray cloud, hovering just parallel to the beach. But my head it’s still with the boys playing volleyball. I instantly cover myself by pressing my legs against my chest and by “hugging” my legs. As I put my chin on one of my knees, I realize what it is about those guys that I don’t like. Well, I already know but it is awful to be reminded that I have a way of feeling less than them. Society had made them the model and not me and when I walk around without a shirt the sight is not as… pleasant, I guess. They make me feel like shit and I’m sure I’m not the only one. It’s not their fault but the fault of the media that created ridiculous standards to match our ridiculous society.

  The gray cloud moves very slowly, as a lion deciding whether to launch itself towards the wildebeest or wait there for a better catch. Because of the cloud, the climate has gone colder and the sun cannot be felt anymore. I guess that for me the day is over, so I grab my backpack, put my towel inside and stand up. As I put my backpack on, I glance one last time to the see. That big mass of water has so many secrets and no matter how much I stare at it, it won’t reveal any of them. I guess that’s one of the many things that amaze me about coming to the beach and just appreciating the natural aspect of it instead of looking at people.

 I turn around and walk slowly towards the showers, which are located by the sidewalk made of concrete. There I clean my feet and my whole body from many grains of sad that may have taken residence anywhere on my body. I clean my waist by putting my hand just below my bathing trunks and then I see it. Or rather, him. One of the guys playing volleyball hit the ball too hard and sends it close to where I’m standing. The guy that comes to pick it up, instead of taking the ball, has decided to stare at me as I clean myself. Once we have eye contact, he takes the ball and returns to the game. I do not move as quickly. I move aside and dry myself with the towel and, as I do, I look towards the guys.

 He’s the tallest one playing, nice body and very cute smile as they play. Maybe I imagined him looking at me and he was really looking at someone or something else. But maybe not and that possibility is good enough for me. As I end the drying session and put on some thongs, I realize he’s looking my way again. And he decides to wave, saying “goodbye” I guess. I do the same and he smiles and let’s say I can die after having seen that smile. As I walk towards the metro station, I realize it had been a very good day for me. But it hasn’t ended yet as the night might come with more surprises. As I enter the station, the rain starts to pour. I knew I had to leave fast.