Almost dead

    A bloody hand found its way inside the cave. Then another and suddenly the while body was easy to see against the weak light of the Moon outside. It was a man and he was barely standing up, visibly shaking, grabbing the rock walls of the cave with every single step he took.  He collapsed as his hand slipped from the wall and his whole body was unable to remain up. He hit the ground with a very loud noise but even that was not enough to be heard over the amount of water that was falling outside.

 The next morning, the man woke up exactly were he had passed out the day before. He first opened his eyes and didn’t move, partially incapable of doing that but also not wanting to risk causing more damage to his very sensitive body. But then he realized, as he moved his hands and fingers, that he was laying on a pool of dark blood. He stood himself up with the help of his hands and a while later he was sitting against the rock wall.

 The pool of blood was almost completely dried and it looked like something out of the ordinary. Especially because, when he touched his stained close, he didn’t feel anything in particular. He hope to know where the bullet holes where, as he remembered what had happened the day before but there was no trace of any of that in his body. He opened his shirt and touched his skin and realized there was nothing in particular happening there.

 The man took a deep breath and looked outside: it was not raining but the weather had not improved that much. It was still very gray and he knew that people would be looking out for him and he definitely didn’t want to be found. He decided to stay in the cave at least another hole day. Maybe that way he would be able to understand what was happening to him. Because he was sure he had been shot several times in the chest and in the back. And now he had no proof of that, no matter how vivid everything was in his mind.

 For water, he decided to crawl to the entrance and drink the droplets that fell from the sky. When the rain picked up, he was able to drink some more and also wash his clothes in the outside, without risking anyone seeing her. He took off his clothes and tried to wash them as well as he could. After that, he just sat inside the cave, his clothes on rocks drying.

 He began thinking about the people that had tried to kill them. They were very vicious and dangerous but not very smart. The cave was not that far from town and anyone would have been there first when it was public he had escaped his death under the hands of real criminals, much worse than he had ever be.

He had actually been a criminal. Nothing too lethal: only robbing stuff and, at most, dealing sometimes with drugs when the times needed it. He knew he wasn’t the cleanest person in the face of the Earth but the only time he had decided to stop his secret dealing, then that day he’s attacked by his enemies who try to kill him but weren’t able to do it.

 And there was that now. He had always noticed, from a younger age, that he never really had problems with scarring or health in general. He had never had the flu after he turned twelve and every time he cut his skin by accident, it cured rather fast. He always thought it was because he ate very well or something like that but apparently there was something really different going on around him. How was it possibly that he survived so many shots? They had him really close, it wasn’t like the bullets missing him by seconds or anything.

 The second day inside the cave, he actually found two of the bullets on the cave’s floor. He wasn’t sure if those too were the ones that had been inside his body but he really couldn’t find another explanation for it. On his skin, he had no scars or markings that showed that he had been the victim of such a brutal attack. He even considered the possibility that he might be going insane. But after thinking it through once and again, he reached to the conclusion that he was as sane as can be.

 By the third day there, he was very hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything decent for a while and he had to go out at night in order to wander around and check if there was something he could eat around there. He was fortunate enough to find a gas station with the corresponding market. The young man that worked there looked at the man in a very suspicious way: the short was still stained with blood and his hair and skin did not look particularly clean. 

 He wandered around the store, grabbing things and also asking himself how the hell he was going to pay for all of that. He decided to be a robber once again because he was hungry. He would have to knock the kid out and just leave as fast as he could. But first, he filled his basket with thing to eat and to drink. There were even freshly cooked hotdogs and he grabbed a couple to eat on the spot.

 The kid in charge did not ask what he wanted as a woman with a pantyhose in her head entered the market right then. She had a gun on her hand and demanded the young man to put every single bill and coin from the register into one of plastic bags he had for anything that people might buy. She did not see the man from the cave, which had been very focused serving all the toppings on one his hotdogs.

 He looked at her fast but had no idea who she was. As the kid opened the register, the man realized he couldn’t let that happen. Something in his mind was opposed to the idea that the place that he was about to rob was going to robbed first by someone else. Granted, he didn’t want any of the money and just all of the food, but it just seemed like that wasn’t something that should be allowed. He looked at her carefully again and, without thinking it through, he launched himself at her, knocking him down.

 She fell to the ground all right but was still holding the gun. She shot twice, the bullets whistling very near the young man’s head. The man tried to submit her but she wouldn’t let herself be dominated. She was very strong and just had a lot of energy that the man form the cave had not. He had barely recovered from all that had happened to him but he still could hold for a bit longer.

 It was then she released herself from his hands and pointed the gun at him. She was about to talk but he moved so she shot twice. The kid squealed behind the counter when he heard the sounds. He was shaking a lot and couldn’t believe this was only his second week on the job. However, he was more surprised when he heard more fighting sounds and moaning and then nothing more.  He was very nervous but everything had apparently ended that night. Thinking of calling the police, he stood up shaking a lot and looked over the counter.

 On the floor, the woman was unconscious, with a big red mark on her head. The man that had come to buy food was beside her, with a can of chili that had been resting in the aisle behind him. He was bleeding from the chest and the young man was about to grab the phone to call the police but then he saw something very difficult to believe: from the guy’s chest, two metallic bullets were coming out as if they were giant pimples. They fell to the ground and then the guy coughed.

 He opened his eyes and looked at the kid, who looked back. Then, shaking too, the man stood up and asked the kid if he could take some of the food for free as he had no money to pay. The young man, surprisingly enough, moved his head affirmatively. The man from the cave then grabbed the basket he had been filling with one hand and the hotdog that was still in the toppings counter with the other.

 Just as he was about to leave, the kid asked him who he was. The man stopped short at the door but didn’t turn around. His answer wasn’t instantaneous, as he needed to think it through before opening his mouth. However, he turned his head around and said “Mr. Dead, kid. That’s me”. Then, he left for his cave. The excitement was so much for the kid, that he fainted. 

The flood

   It was raining as if the end of time had come. For a full day now, dark clouds and water had been all that people had seen outside and it didn’t seem to be ending any time soon. Every single person in the city had decided to stay home and not go out unless it was strictly necessary. Buying food was not considered essential, or going around looking for someone who was lost or anything like that. The truth was that everyone was scared of going out of their homes, fearing the rain would take them.

 It seemed like a dumb fear to have but that was what people thought because it had already happened. In every building, where people now were obliged to talk to their neighbors in order to pass the time and in case of an emergency, they begun to realize that some of the inhabitants of the city had recently disappeared. Since the rain had started, no one had seen anything of them. The police wasn’t doing anything, or the fire department or anyone else.

 Those who were not with their families, were considered lost. No one bothered in having any other thought than the one of death. It was as if, with the rain, a strange wave of negativity had fallen upon the people of the city. Every fear they had, every single worry about life and concern about their well being was now very active in their brain, being the number one thing when they thought about anything, whether it was getting out of their homes or their loved ones.

 Yet, there were always exceptions. By the third day of the downpour, a man called Jim, from one of the tallest building in the city, attempted to do something no one had done yet: he was going to grab his kayak, the one he used when camping, and navigate the flooded streets to the nearest supermarket. His family and him had rationed food but they realize it wouldn’t last that much. They needed baby food as well as dog food and clean water.

 So Jim had the idea of navigating the dangerous waters towards the nearest supermarket and probably just steal whatever he needed. He didn’t thought it would matter if someone committed a crime because no one was really there to ensure it wasn’t being done. The police was not as daring as him and would never notice. And it was to have food for his family, not to steal a bank so he was decided to do it.

 He got to the second floor of his building and threw the kayak through a window. It fell softly into the water in the other side. The storm made the water feel very unstable but once Jim jumped into his transport, he felt safer than when he stayed at home, fearing of everything that might happen if they never got out of there.

As he took out the paddle to start moving around, he realized the rain was strong but more in the amount of water that fell and not so much in the intensity of the storm as it was. There was no lighting or an awful lot of movement in the water. He was very wet, probably about to catch a cold, but he felt strangely at ease as he cruised through the street adjacent to his building. The worries that had plagued him inside his apartment seemed to be far away. He couldn’t appreciate the rain as something beautiful, even if it was that destructive.

 He did a sharp turned thanks to a lamppost and continued for two blocks until he reached the supermarket. There he realized he hadn’t thought about everything: the water level covered the entrance of the market and it was likely to be flooded inside, so every food, except maybe the one in cans, would already be spoiled. He grabbed another lamppost tight and thought for a moment about what to do.

 He could continue rowing along the street until he came about a “dry” supermarket but that was not a very likely ting, seeing how much the water level had risen in just three days. The best plan was to enter the flooded supermarket and try to dive around to find some of the food that hadn’t been spoiled yet by the storm. So he pulled out a string of one of his pockets, which he used to tie his bike on the top of his car, and used it to tie down the kayak to the lamppost.

 Once it was safe to leave, he took off his wet clothes and jumped out of the kayak. The water was cold but he was already wet so it didn’t really matter. Not losing time, he swam towards the entrance of the supermarket and dove in just right in front of the door. Of course, it was closed and apparently damaged, as it was one of those automatic doors. He went up to the surface and tried to think what to use to break the glass.

 There was nothing around to use so he dove in again and tried to pull the door open but it wouldn’t budge. He tried once and twice until he had to go up to have some air and then try again. After resurfacing for the third time, he realized he was just losing time and that he had to go back home before nightfall. It was well known already that the storm was always worse at night.

 So he dove down again but this time to the pavement, looking for something. He found a cane, just by a small yellow car. Someone must have dropped it when the rain started it. Jim grabbed it and used it as a spear to attack the glasses of the door. At his second try, the glass shattered and he cleaned his path with the cane, in order to cut himself.

 The first thing he did inside the supermarket was grabbing a basket to put everything on it. He came back to the surface in order to remember how the distribution was, to find everything faster. He remembered it vaguely because he had always being one of those people that don’t really like going to the supermarket. His wife was always the one to go with the children. Jim preferred to stay home watching a game on TV or reading the news on his computer.

 He decided to swim along every aisle and try to be fast; grabbing whatever he thought was essential. As predicted, the fruits and vegetables were floating in the water, probably rotten already. The air did smell a bit weird. He grabbed all the baby food he could find and also every canned food he could see around there. There were tomatoes and beans and also full meals like ravioli inside.

 Jim felt like a treasure hunter filling his basket with the best things the bottom of the river could offer. Once his basket was too heavy, even underwater, he decided it was best to go back to the kayak and maybe come back the next day if they needed more. No one seemed to be interested in coming out of their houses so they really didn’t need to worry about facing any competition when grabbing food from the supermarket.

 Once outside, he had trouble putting the full basket inside the kayak. He dropped a few cans into the water but most things were still there. Because of the weight now, he had to be extra careful when moving around. He untied the kayak from the lamppost and started paddling as soon as he was able. He didn’t put on any clothes or put away the rope he had used. Jim knew the first thing was getting him safe with every single thing he had gotten.

 He reached the street in which he had to turn and had to it carefully in order for the kayak not to turn around. If that happened, he would loose everything and all of his efforts would have been in vain. He had to be very patient but he was able to turn and head home in no time. Once he got to the window, he decided tie his kayak to the nearest lamppost and just jumped out of the kayak with the basket on his hands.

 His family had a really nice dinner that night and his wife decided to go with him the next day, to find more food and maybe even some other things they could use, as electricity had already failed and now they had to live their nights in the dark. The children were calm and saw it all as an adventure but Jim’s worries came back to him. He feared the future more than anything now. He didn’t know how to live to avoid a catastrophe.

High stakes

   The wind blew gently through the trees. Some pinecones and dried leaves fell softly to the ground and small animals ran to their holes in the ground or in the trees. The weather was getting worse by the minute and they could all feel it. All except for Samira. She was a rather beautiful woman wearing a dress to big to walk around the wood. It had already been ripped apart in some areas and it looked dirty. Some stains on it were because of mud and water but others were clearly blood.

 Samira didn’t stop when the wind got stronger. She kept on walking through the forest, as she tried to make her dress fit between the trees and not get ripped apart more. But that wasn’t possible. She finally stopped when the forest got too dense and it was much darker in the ground that in the upper area of the trees. She just stayed there, in the spot she was, and waited. Sure enough, rain came some minutes after. The trees were protection enough but she got very wet anyhow.

 As the rain poured onto her, Samir began to cry, finally breaking down. She fell to her knees, which was not something very easy to do in that dress, and cried her eyes off. It was confusing to see the rain on her face and also the tears. It was difficult to know what was what but thanks to all that water she was able to finish crying fast and started thinking about what to do next. She had come a long way, or so she thought, and there was no way she would stop midway through the woods.

 Realizing her dress couldn’t come with her, she carefully removed it. It wasn’t easy as it opened in the back and there was no one to help her with that. But after a couple of tries, the zipper lowered enough for her to grab it and pull it down. Carefully she removed the top part and then pulled the dress down her legs. She moved to a side and the dress stood there, as if a ghost was still wearing it in that part of the woods.

 She felt cold and sad to leave her gown behind but life was much more important. So she kept on going. She had been barefoot for a while, as the heels she had been wearing had gotten stood in thick mud not very far from the edge of the forest. Samira decided to keep walking the way she was walking, sure that it was the right direction in order to get away from everything.

 The trees grew closer in that area, which was better for her because rain almost didn’t get to the floor. She was cold and trembling, but at least she could clean some of the water of her body as she walked over pieces of rotten wood, mud, puddles of water and tons of leaves that autumn was taking away from the forest. She didn’t stop until it was very dark and she realized she had to sleep at least a few hours.

 She chose a place between two trees where there was a huge natural bed made of leaves. She didn’t sleep much though, because her brain kept telling her to keep moving, that she wasn’t safe yet and that she just couldn’t get all relaxed and happy yet. Samira had to go on through the forest and then arrived to the fields and, after that, the ocean. At least that’s how she remembered it was. If she had mistaken her route, it would be a major problem.

 After only three hours of sleep, she kept on moving through the trees, in the dark. Sometimes, she had to clean her tears with her dirty hands because se remembered something she had left behind, like her mother and all the beautiful memories of being who she was. Samira had left much more than anyone else had ever left before and the decision had already been taken. And she was sure she had made the right choice. There was no other way around it.

 Finally, she reached the other edged of the forest and, as she had expected, there were fields after fields of different kinds. It was the rural area that preceded the ocean, were most of the food was grown in order for the whole country to have food in their plate. Or at least that had been the idea behind it. Her mother had been the one who had convinced her father to do something like that.

 He always needed someone to convince him, someone to tell him what he should do next. People around him were too kind to tell him that he wasn’t good at his job, at all. But he had advisors and he had Samira’s mother and that could be enough to be mildly successful as a ruler. People liked him but did not love him and it was the same for the family as a whole. However, that worked just fine for everyone. It was the barely minimum, as someone had pointed our once.

 Samira entered the field and hoped the people that worked in them wouldn’t be around for some time still. Because if they saw her, they would ask her why she was practically naked in their property. But after some walking, she realized it was far too early for anyone to be around there. Besides, it was an orange plantation and the fruits were just beginning to grow, so no big masses of people would look after those.

 She walked fast through the small trees until she reached a house. The lights were off. But, most interestingly, the family that lived inside had let a large assortment of clothing to dry out in the sun. Maybe they had forgotten to put it inside or maybe it had been because of the rain. Anyway, some of the things were not really wet so Samir stole a white blouse and some pants.

 The only problem was her hair. It wasn’t that long but it was kind of obvious who she was. She found the solution only a couple steps away, in the shape of some gardening scissors someone had left inside a bucket. She grabbed the scissors, got her head a bit wet with water that had fallen into the bucket and started cutting. It took her a long time to get it even or what felt like even. They had no mirrors on the outside. The sun was rising and when she heard a metallic sound from inside the house, she knew she had to go.

 Samira penetrated the fields again and soon reached another plantation, a cornfield that looked ready to be picked. She had to find a road or something before she got mistaken with a worker or accused of being a thief. So she ran away in a different direction and ended up in a dirt road that seemed to link every single field in the area. There, she could walk down to the sea easier.

 The day began and people were pouring from every single place. Soon, there were carts passing through the dirt road and people working hard on the fields. There were even children playing with mud outside the houses. She thought it was something nice to see, that kind of routine and simple life of the people that worked the land. She even thought about staying but it was only for a second.

 She had to make it to a boat and get fast away from there. She had no choice. Samira had done something she really shouldn’t have and it wasn’t something that got forgiven. Maybe her parents could, but not her promised husband, He had been humiliated in public and soon everyone would know how she ran away form her in the wedding dress, fleeing an arranged wedding with one of the most powerful men in the country.

 What she had done could have serious implications for everyone, not only for her. After all, her marriage had to be fulfilled in order to for m an alliance between different powers in the region: between the wisdom and the strength, or that’s what her father said. But she couldn’t bear to be forced into something like that, out of nowhere. She had not known she was going to marry that man the morning of the wedding.

 Now, Samira looked like a lost boy, asking for work in one of the many ships that made it into the harbor, bringing fish and other goods from other places of the world. Finally, a crab fishing crew accepted her. Their captain happened to be a female, a woman that noticed right away that Samira was not the boy she was faking to be. The girl sailed that afternoon but her adventures were far from over.

Locked

   I woke up very late at night, practically in the morning but it was still very dark. Out of instinct, I headed to the kitchen and drank some water, somehow exhausted after sleeping for a couple of hours. Some of the water spilled onto the floor but I didn’t clean any of it. I was too tired to do it, maybe too lazy.

 Walking towards my room, I found myself looking out the window on the living room. The rain was pounding the glass with an extraordinary force, not stopping for a second. Outside it was still pitch black and nothing could be seen except the light of a couple of streetlights covered in the haze. Somehow, that sight proved fascinating but not because it was extraordinary or something like that. It just reminded of something a long time ago, somewhere else.

  He had been removing rocks and dirt until he found it, a shoebox that didn’t look like much but had a small treasure inside. The directions he had received had been correct and now he could finally complete his mission, a very strange one that had been commended by someone he loved deeply. He put the box on a bag to protect it from the rain and ran towards his car. At first, the machine wouldn’t start but it finally did and he was en route to his lover, prepared to see the look on his face when he received the box.

 He called the man and arranged for them to meet on a restaurant. After all, they didn’t really want their families to know and it was going to be much more fun to do it in a public place, with a some eyes looking at them and not even knowing what was going on. He arrived at the restaurant first; a little too wet, and decided to ask for a tea to warm up. The bag with the box was next to him and he had decided not to open it to see its content. He wanted to see Lee’s face when he showed it to him.

 Time went by fast. He ordered another tea and then something to eat and finally the check. He had been waiting for three hours and Lee had never arrived. He felt sad, a little bit betrayed, and knew that all his effort and, a very probable flu, had not being enough for him to show how much love he had for Lee. When he got home, his mother asked him where he had been all day but he didn’t really answer, only grunting and heading straight to his room. He even put on the lock and turn off the lights.

 There was no way he was going to sleep well that night. He hadn’t received a call or a message or anything from Lee and he was determined not to do anything because he was the one who had made a great effort to make Lee happy so at least he deserved to receive a call explaining why he had alone at the restaurant all night.

 The next day, Lee went to work and there he did receive a first message. It was an audio message so he had to put on the headphones he kept in his backpack and try to listen to the message fast, before someone came in to annoy him. At first he didn’t really understood anything. He raised the volume and tried to hear but then someone came and scared him, making him drop his cellphone, which got disconnected from the headphones and started yelling the message for everyone to hear. He was very fast, grabbing it and turning it off, but not fast enough as everyone in the room was watching towards his cubicle. The person that had come to ask him something, left without any more words.

 The message was short. It was Lee crying and telling him that he loved him and that his parents had discovered their pictures kissing on the computer. He didn’t explain how that had happened but he was crying a lot and that was why the message couldn’t be understood in a lower volume.

 He was sad to hear that Lee was sad and even thought of visiting him but he knew his family would not allow that. After all, they were the kind to go to church every Sunday without fail and they celebrated every single day of the Holly Week and Easter and the days leading to Christmas. They were really obsessed with their children having a religious education and strong background. They believe that it gave them a strong moral compass. So that’s why discovering those pictures had been such an awful thing for them. It mean they were failing.

 So there was no way to see Lee. And, ironically or not, he missed his kisses and his hands and his body. He missed the fact that he was a little more sensitive than he was but also much wittier and he didn’t even know it. He was the kind of person that would be ashamed if someone else called them “smart” or “funny”. He didn’t like to be in the spotlight at all, preferring to be the one behind the scenes.

 That phrase is actually pretty accurate because that’s how he met Lee, behind the scenes. He had gone to see this play a friend had recommended and he had never been a big fan of theatre. It bored him deeply every single time so in the intermission he decided to explore around and just look for something fun to do. The exploration served him well as he found a very busy Lee trying to fix some problem with a prop that wouldn’t stand up. He helped him put of boredom and at the end he was already enthralled.

 He had liked his kind face, his voice that was very soft but not acute and the fact that he was there, on the background, all alone. He knew only someone really interesting would be there. They exchanged phone numbers and that was it.

 They only talked many days after that, when he found Lee’s number again and decided it would be nice to have someone to go to an exhibition on a museum he had to attend because of his work. The idea was to have someone to have fun in a place where he knew he would get bored. But Lee was a box full of surprises. He was actually very interested in the subject matter of the exhibition and explained him how everything worked and what it all meant. So it was much more interesting that he had thought before hand and he was able to know more about the guy that kept entering his brain when he wasn’t aware.

 They met several times in the following months and then he asked Lee If he wanted to be his boyfriend. Lee accepted but explained his family situation to him, which didn’t made any difference at all, not back then in any case. They had been together for some months until the parents found four innocent pictures of the two guys kissing and then they treated their own son like a prisoner, not letting him out. He worked from home, writing for a magazine, so he kept his work and they kept paying him but they didn’t know what was happening with him.

 Lee did not have many friends but those few he had tried to enter his house several times and they succeeded on some of them. They were able to tell him what had been going on outside and ask him if he wanted something from the outside. His parents had removed any device from his room so he took the chance to write a letter to him and give to his friend for her to take it to him. It was the only way.

 She was a very kind person who he did not know very well but one day she called him and arranged a meeting. She told him everything about Lee and what he was going through and, after some hesitation; he gave the letter to him. After he read it, he was crying profusely, not knowing what to do or where to go. He felt very lost and insecure. He felt nothing made sense anymore. He wanted to fight everyone himself and let them see what he was capable of but the letter had been very clear: nothing would work.

 The relationship ended and Lee transformed into a faceless god that I see every single time this kind of storm unleashes all its strength against the world. I remember wanting to be like the storm, going against everything in order to get what I wanted. But Lee is a part of my past. Almost a year has gone by and I don’t know anything about him and I think its better that way. Maybe he hasn’t been freed or maybe he was sent somewhere else. Or maybe, just maybe, he’s now free and doesn’t want me to see him ever again.

 I don’t care. He had a special place in my heart. And his treasure is still there, in the top shelf of my closet, waiting to be opened.