Early

   Gustav had been waking up early for year. Since he was a baby, he had a thing for waking up his parents very early in the y day and not been able to sleep until it was later in the day, so late that their whole morning routine was disturbed by his actions. They didn’t need a clockwork because his timing which was always perfect. Every single morning at nine o’clock he would start crying and would do it for about two hours until he stopped and resumed later that day, in the evenings.

 After that, in preschool, he was considered a very different little boy. He woke up before his mother and his father and was able to serve himself a glass of orange juice which he drank as he waited for them to wake up. The bus picked him up at seven and he woke up at six every single day, no exception. As he got older, he was able to dress himself and work the shower in order to have the water in the right temperature, the one he preferred.

 In his preteens, he was teased by all the other kids because of such things. As per usual, they didn’t like him because he was so different. He wasn’t a genius or anything like that. His parents thought he would demonstrate at an early age his remarkable brain and that they would have to homeschool him because of how special he was going to be. But the truth was much different: he was only different because his eyes started to bother him from an early stage and glasses were needed sooner than expected.

 Gustav knew he needed the glasses but he was sure to take them out whenever he was able. He liked to take them off in the bus back home or in class when he was sleepy. Most adults didn’t like when he did that but the truth was he had never grown accustomed to sing them. Sometimes, on weekends, he wouldn0t use them at all, instead playing around the house like a normal kid having no problem with his vision.

 As a teenager he was still harassed by his classmates, pushed around occasionally, especially after gym class. It was the favorite moment of the week for jocks who were eager to prove themselves more important than everyone else. Even then, he was the first to arrive to school and that granted him with a special knowledge of everyone’s ways to do things.

 He realized the people that annoyed him had a really bad problem with sleeping so what he did was just avoid them in places they would never go on and if that wasn’t working, he would always know which classrooms were available to tell them in order for him to be released and them to have a nice nap or even for kissing their girlfriend. Whatever it was, Gustav knew it was useful information.

 Even in college, living away from his parents, he woke up very early in the morning to read the notes he had taken the way before. It was his technique for remembering stuff. The other good thing was that he always had a great seat in the earlier classes of the day and sometimes they did put up the most interesting ones very early.

 Different from high school, Gustav became one of those people that everyone knew in college. At first, he didn’t really have any friends but every single person knew who he was. He soon made real friends and in no time he was going to parties and drinking and smoking and doing every single thing teenagers do if they want to defy the authority out up to control them. After all, Gustav was only special in so many ways and, sadly, not really in a significant one that can save anyone from anything.

 Even after weekend long parties, he found himself waking up drunk or with a huge hangover very early in the morning. No one ever did that so that made him very notable in his group of people. It wasn’t that they made fun of him but rather that that they seem to be really captivated by how strange he was. And he knew they were all looking at him so he decided to be more interesting and started changing his clothes and doing more interesting things with that extra time he seemed to have every single day.

 He started to smuggle drugs into the campus the second year he attended college. Some guy he had met at a party told him about the huge amount of money he could get just buy passing the product from one person to the other, he didn’t really had to sell anything, he just had to help the product get to the real buyer. He never really knew who that person was, but he was very excited about being involved in such a thing.

As he woke up so early, he could easily grab the packages from one site and put it in the next without anyone saying anything. The only people that were awake so early were the members of the cleaning crew and many of them were also involved in the network of drug handlers. He was proud of himself because he had proven himself to be useful in some way. He had never felt that, not in his career and not before at home or elsewhere.

The smuggling business lasted for two whole years until some idiot was busted with a large pack of ecstasy pills in a park, at night. Apparently, she had the stupid idea of trying to rob one pill from the package and when she opened it every single pill jumped out of the small bag and fell into the grass in the middle of campus. The police was notified fast by some older woman and the girl was arrested and possibly sent to prison fro drug trafficking. The thrills ended for everyone that day.

 He knew he was lucky that he never got caught but, even so, Gustav was kind of sad that part of his life was over. Soon, he would graduate and he would have to confront the real world on his own. The truth was he didn’t feel ready to take on anything by himself. He used his morning time to walk around, to get to the roof of his dorm and lay down looking art the sky and watching the last stars of the night disappear. He thought of his decisions and his possibilities in a world that asked everyone to be exceptional, special in some way but no one really was.

 When he received his diploma, he came back home for some time. It was nice to see his parents again and feeling they were as proud of him then as they had been years before, when he thought he was the most special little boy to live in the planet. They were really nice people, honest and full of good principles that they had tried to put into his son. But they had failed and that’s why he couldn’t be in their presence for long. It could get very exhausting.

 Soon, he got a job in the city so he moved to a small place and started making a life for himself. He was lucky enough to land a job that required him to be very early every day so he didn’t really mind. He was a cameraman in a morning show and that always happened very early. His coworkers were always very tired in the morning, having to drink two or even three cups of coffee to actually work. He didn’t need that.

 His superiors realized that and decided to assign him to a reporter that was in charge of all the “night stories”. He went all over the city in the darkest hours to report on what was happening like road accidents, cases of violence, curious occurrences and all types of things that happened really late or early in the day. Gustav felt he was in the perfect place, being able to do his work in the best way possible.

 After his first six months, his boss was so impressed with his work that he decided to assign him the job of reporter after the one they had decided to drop out because of the “difficult job schedule”. Gustav was very thankful because he had never thought of being in front of the camera instead of behind it. He got some classes on how to speak properly and he documented himself on the city. By the time he started, every person looking just fell in love with him.

 For that work, he received a lot of praise including several awards that made him kind of a famous personality in TV. He eventually got married and received many other proposals for similar jobs and he would consider them all because he had finally understood he did have something that made him special. It was just it wasn’t the most amazing thing ever.

Two of one

   Used. That’s how she felt the moment she arrived home. The idea behind all of it had been to prove herself stronger than she thought she was. But maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was just the frightened girl she didn’t wanted to be. The idea of being fearless had been a nice one to imagine but it had been highly unrealistic. This was, mainly, because she was always terrified. Every step she took into the world made her feel as is she had stepped into the mouths of hell. And though she forced herself through the most difficult things, she knew she was much more affected by everything than what she recognized.

 She sat on the bed for a while. Blinds and a curtain covered the window, which was good. She didn’t want to know a single thing about the sun out there, about light or life in the world. She wanted to stay there in her room for a while, a long while. After fifteen minutes of staring at a point on the floor, she remembered her clothes and took them off as fast as she can. Once she was only in her underwear, she got into bed and tried to sleep.

 It felt like the hardest thing she had ever done. Once again, her eyes would face the wall and wouldn’t close for nothing. She was too distracted, trying not to think about anything. That thought made her think about every single thing that had happened that night and she found herself repeating the scenes she had been through over and over again, like a movie in her head. She moved around in bed a lot, not being able to sleep or to shake off the thoughts.

 Maybe it was her, or maybe it was the weather, but the room started to feel like a sauna. Everything felt hotter, as if she was trying to sleep in an oven. It made sleeping even harder. She got out of bed and head to the door but stopped there. She wanted to have some water but, to do that, she had to go to the kitchen and that room was surrounded by windows and light. It was everything she wanted to avoid. Yet, she had begun to feel a sore throat and had no idea way.

 It was seven in the morning when she opened the door and practically ran to the kitchen. She grabbed a bottle of water and ran back to her room, as fast as she could. Other four people lived there and none of them were friends or anything like it. She barely spoke to any of them and couldn’t trust them with how she felt on that moment.

 Once back in her room, she drank half the water in the bottle in one sitting. She cleaned her mouth with her arm and decided it was time to try again. Only covered by a thin sheet, she finally fell asleep after finally deciding not to think about anything. She just put her mind blank and it worked. She fell asleep but it was an uneasy sleep.

 The poor woman moved around, her arms from one side to the other of the bed. She talked in her sleep too but it was hard to properly hear what she was saying, it was almost as if she was whispering to someone. That way, thrashing and whispering, she got to sleep for five hours. Around lunchtime, she woke up and decided that small rest had been enough. Her body wasn’t tired enough to keep on sleeping, although her mind certainly needed more time to get used to every single thing she was thinking about.

  Once up, she moved the curtain and raised the blinds. Her window led to an inner yard but some light came through it.  She had no intention of turning on her artificial light. The idea was to have natural light come into the room and feel a little bit less aggressive. After that, she decided it was time to have another expedition outside, this time to the bathroom. She ran quickly to it and did what she had to do as fast as she could. She didn’t want to stay there long enough to be greeted by anyone outside. Avoiding them was the idea for the day.

 When back in her room, she looked around in her closet and found something she had thought about in the bathroom: cookies. They were the ones she used to eat as a little girl. They were really thick and covered with chocolate chunks. She took the box to the bed and grabbed her laptop. The idea was to eat and distract her mind from the night before. She still felt dirty, she still felt she had transformed into someone she wasn’t and now she had to live with that other person.

 The best thing she could find was a cooking show, so she watched it in silence while eating about seven cookies. Once she was done, she put the box on the ground and covered herself entirely with the bed sheet. The food had helped her to feel tired again, maybe even sleepy. But then she realized there was something she needed to do before that, before anything. She put the laptop on the floor too and just stayed there, looking around the room.

 But she wasn’t only looking. She was recreating her night in her head, from the moment she had decided to step out of her house to the moment, just five hours ago, when she had come back feeling as she was feeling. The idea had been to have a drink or two and then head back home but she knew it had been then when the other woman had taken control of her.

 It was funny to talk about herself like that. She even smiled thinking that, after all, no matter what she told herself, she was that woman too. It was really another person, a dark figure in the night or something like that. That other woman with no scruples was also her but somehow she didn’t want to recognize her. She was scared to look at the mirror and realize who she was.

 Her sore throat was still there. She blamed the smoke in the place she had ended in but also the people there, the men especially. She had gone to that dark world to loose herself and, she realized, she wasn’t ready for it. The place was very dark and filled with all kinds of people, at least all physical kinds. Because, in their minds, they were all exactly the same. They all seek pleasure beyond anything they had ever imagined; they wanted to experience the extremes.

 She had used her cellphone to get to that place and she used it once again to get out of there. She stayed for about two hours and then ran out, leaving someone inside waiting for her. The nice girl that showed her face most of time, had appeared suddenly and had taken control of a body that had been through a lot during those two hours. She had done things she had never done before and that she probably would never do again.

 That’s what she wanted to ignore, to forget, to stop thinking about. But, after eating her cookies, having food in her belly, she realized the best way is always to confront ones fears, to look at them in the eye and see if they are really scary, if it’s worth it to be afraid of them. Because some fears are useful but others are just there to be in the way, they have to be defeated or at least jumped over to go on with life.

 She thought of all the kisses every touch, and also tried to put faces to all of that. It was good that she was able to do that. It made her feel less stressed, less like some kind of failure. She remembered everything, even with the alcohol and the drugs. Because it had been her who had done all of that. It had been her who had been inside the belly of the beast and had gotten out. It wasn’t some other imaginary woman.

 She turned around on her bed and decided the subject was closed. The past has to be left aside, always in our minds but not in our way. She closed her eyes for a while but did not fall asleep. She just wanted to be quiet and in peace with herself. She wanted to feel less like a something and more like someone. With her eyes closed, she heard the world and decided to think about how she perceived it all, how she could imagine a whole universe only by the sounds.

 It was a silly thing to do but it was the best game she could come up with. She was tired again and, as she played her game, she fell asleep. This time, it really felt like she was resting, not having to battle anyone or anything inside her mind. It was only her. She had been the one making every decision and she had to realize that was the way it was. She was the one calling the shots and she had to realize that wasn’t going to change.

Rollercoasters

   The end of the lines was just next to a Mexican food stand, were many people ate, unaware that the line that was getting longer and longer had nothing to do with the food they were eating.

 The last two people to get to the line were a couple, a woman named Mel and a man named Jon. They had come to the park because they wanted to ride The Abomination, a very tall and long rollercoaster, built out of steel and wood at the same time. It was one of a kind and had landed the best reviews for a rollercoaster in a while.

 The couple had come all the way from another country just to have a go in the rollercoaster. The ride was supposed to last for a whole minute but the expected time in line was a bout two hours. That’s why the people from the park had to relocate some garbage bins and benches in order to put up a special place were people could make the line. It extended all over the park and it was cut at some places in order to let other visitors to the park move around with ease.

 In every place where the line was cut, there was a supervisor checking that every person in the line had a decent behavior and that no one got in line out of nowhere. If they discovered someone left or cut in front or behind their friends, there were taking out of the line very rapidly by the security agents of the park. So it was a very tense place.

 People would also have food in there. As many had backpacks, they brought everything they needed as they waited on line. The only thing they took care about was the amount of liquid they drank. It was hard because the sky was clear and the temperature had begun to rise dramatically. Yet, they didn’t want to have to go to the bathroom and then lose their seat, so everyone took very small sips and only if they felt really thirsty.

 Mel and Jon had drunk a lot of water before going to the park and had also eaten all that they could back in the hotel. They had complimentary breakfast so they stuffed themselves with everything and even brought some food in Mel’s purse in case they had the urge for something with sugar or to eat something after the long wait.

 They also had cards and videogames in their cellphones, which many were playing. Others decided to just chat with the people they had come in or they would simply eat because they had left their hotels early in order to be the first group in line. Needless to say that the first train that day had left with people that had camped outside the park, something that was supposedly forbidden but they had found the way to do it without the police arresting them or something.

 Jon was the one that had taken her girlfriend into the world of rollercoaster. Since being a young boy, he had been an enthusiast because they lived in a town with many rollercoasters, where people fro mall over came to ride them. So he thought there had to be something great about those structures and he eventually discovered there was, when he was finally able to ride all of them. The day he turned eighteen years old, he rode a rollercoaster called Dragon slayer. He was so happy that day that he celebrated his birthday right on the park with all his family and friends.

 Mel had never really been a fanatic of rollercoasters. She had rode some in her younger years but she had never really seen the interest of riding rollercoasters. When she met Jon, it was obvious he was a fanatic and, at first, it seemed there was going to be a problem about that because he was too obsessed the subject. What she did was taking him a away of all of that, at least for some time a week, in order for him to know there were other things in life he could be trying.

 That’s how she got him to try a variety of food they had never eaten, especially very spicy food. He got really hooked on that, to the point he bought a bottle of Tabasco every single time he went out to a supermarket. His parents noticed right away and asked him if he was ok and he answered that he was very happy with Mel. Instantly, they blamed her for every change his son showed in the next months, something she had to live with every single time she visited their home.

 Eventually, she got to convince them, by actions, that it was their son that had a problem. Everything obsessed him with an incredible ease. He grew attached to things in a matter of minutes after knowing them. It was amazing the amount of foreign food he brought home, the amount of sports he tried to be involved in and the way he got involved in every single thing.

 When Mel convinced him of playing volleyball with her and her friends, he grew extremely competitive after a single match. Even after hurting one of her friends after hitting her face, Jon’s enthusiasm wouldn’t go out. By the following week, he had already bought a net to put on his family’s backyard as well as an official volleyball and the proper attire to play the game. He started watching matches in TV, surprising his father who had never seen him enthusiastic about a sport.

The same thing happened to him with rollercoasters, with other sports such as basketball and softball, with spicy food, confectionery and even with the grooming of his dog Mordo. He grew to be obsessed with every single thing, driving people around him mad.

 Mel was the first to talk to his parents about it and, surprisingly, they agreed with her. It was obvious there was a problem to be solved and it had to be addressed before Jon was older, before he had to start working somewhere or prior to someone taking advantage for those obsessions, because he was sincere and innocent in some way when he had that uncontrollable rush to be into something. They all agreed they would help him overcome his problem.

The first difficult thing was to actually speak to him and tell him what they thought was happening and what they thought could be a good thing to do. He wasn’t really convinced but he listened to Mel when she asked him to go to a therapist she knew very well. It was the father of one of her best friends and he was a very well renowned professional that helped various types of people to improve their mental health by doing exercises and talking a lot.

 Not surprisingly, Jon got really hooked up with going to the shrink. He would be there thirty minutes earlier and would try for Dr. Bernstein to let him stay longer, as he thought it was very interesting how he dug into people’s minds with his knowledge. Mel was very disappointed at first. It was then when she realized it would probably be for the best if she ended up the relationship, no matter how much she loved Jon. The situation could drive her insane and she didn’t want that for her life.

 But then, something happened. As Jon had to talk about his problems, had to really dig deep into his past, his present and his thoughts on life, his enthusiasm begun to dwindle down after a full month going to visit Dr. Bernstein. When he came back from there, he would never talk a lot and would prefer to play his videogames or work to get his degree in engineering. He grew very quiet around that time and his parents got very worried and, again, blamed the girlfriend.

 Eventually, she was invited to join one of the appointments. It was the first time she saw Jon cry and the doctor explained him they had found the cause of his obsessions. It was simply because he needed things to be trustworthy, he needed to trust into objects that would always satisfy him. It was not a surprise, as he had always had problems dealing with people. He had few friends and he had met Mel practically by chance.

 So they visited the Abomination as a way of atoning all of those awful feelings he associated with people and with objects. The idea was for him to say goodbye to his obsessions and just live a life where he could like something without it becoming a huge thing in his life.

 After two hours in line, a bit hungry and dehydrated, they entered the car in the Abomination. They sat down and put on the safety bar down. Then, he took Mel’s hand and smiled. She hoped that was a good sign.

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.