Hostilities have ended

   From the hospital, we could see the city burning. Several fires had been lit up by the crowd. It was an expression of happiness and revolt, of fury and a desire for the future. The people out in the streets were happy that such a long war had finally ended, after so many had been assassinated and others just disappeared as if they had walked into another dimension. Everyone knew they had probably been killed by the government and then buried somewhere far, but people didn’t want to think that. They would have years for that.

 We saw it all from afar, behind a glass that protected us from the outside, in a building that had been designed by and for our enemies. However, we needed care and when our group was finally able to enter the city, we were able to secure that hospital and its resources for own. Of course, the patients that had been left there were tended too by the doctors and the nurses of our team, but some of them were placed under “house arrest”, as many were involved with the military and the horrors of war.

 I decided to leave Mark, who was very tired, and just wander around the hospital. I thought I could hear someone talking about what had happened in the city or maybe some other information. There were many screens all around the hospital but none of them worked. Television had being suspended almost a year ago, as the prior government thought it was a misuse of money and electricity. They removed all permissions to broadcast and forbid anyone from broadcasting anything in any way.

 Even with the success of the rebels, television would take its time to return after such a long period of silence. It would take a long time to get the country running smoothly, if that was at all possible. Everyone had things to do and they all seemed to be much more important than television or things that people in general missed from the older times, before everything had gone to hell. I missed candy for example, but sugar had not been used to make candy in at least five years, by government decree.

 I walked all over the hospital, checking out every abandoned ward and every silent corridor. The place was sunk in a blue haze and the fact that the day was getting brighter did not improve the general mood. When I finally got to the reception, the lady tending to the only active phone line seemed to be on the verge of collapsing. I was afraid to ask her anything but when she saw me she just signaled me to go closer and she then handed me a paper. I read the only few lines that were written on it: “Call General Ford. Urgent.” And then a number underneath it.

 She had no chance to explain the message and I didn’t have the need to have it explained. After all, we knew exactly that our time in the hospital was going to be short. I was kind of sad for Mark, even thinking about how to tell him the news. When I got to the room, he was up. He smiled at me like he always did and I just got closer and kissed him softly. He smelled a bit bad because of the long way we had to go through to get to the hospital. I was sure I smelt exactly the same or even worse. But who cares?

 I then told him about General Ford and he understood it all in a second. We look towards the window, were smoke from one of the fires had grown pretty big and was almost covering half the city. It was obvious they were still burning things. That place was our destination. So I helped Mark with his clothes and into the shower. He insisted I should join him, so I did. We had a nice little time together, as we had never been able to have. It was so nice and incredible; I wanted to stay there forever.

 That wasn’t an option. We dressed up in new clothes that we had found in a closet, in the room across the hall. They were a little bit big on me and short on him, so we laughed for a while. It felt so good to be able to laugh, to have your ribs hurt because of happiness and not because of violence. We finished preparing and I helped him walk down to the reception. Once there, the woman in the reception was still busy but used her hands again to point at a couple of crutches I hadn’t seen there before. She was good.

 Mark went out first, followed by me. The surroundings looked safe, so we entered the car we had used to get there, a stolen piece of property. I turned it on and in a short moment we were already on the main road towards the city center. Through the windows, we could see some of the fires that were burning. There were no stores in flames, no residential buildings. Only government offices where people had entered to burn every single record in existence. It was a way to say we had to start over.

 No one out there seemed dangerous, but they did stop doing their things as we passed by because there were not too many cars being driven around the city at that time. Only the rebels, the winning faction, were operating any kind of vehicle. That kind of scared me. Mark must have thought the same thing because he just put a hand on my thigh and pressed gently. I was so lucky to have him there. For a while, I had no idea if I would ever go back to that city, the place where I had been born. After so much, it was pretty much a surprise to be there, as if nothing had happened.

 We finally got to the main fire, the one from where a huge plume of smoke was rising to the sky and across the city. It was the presidential palace that used to be white and was now some shade of grey. A large amount of people were gathered there, some staring and others carrying stuff to throw to the main pyre. We stopped the car and got out, in order for them to know it was us and no one else. Yet, no one really noticed us. It was only when we got real close, that a few guards stopped us.

 Mark started explaining who we were but he was interrupted by a scream of joy. Sophia was there and she ran straight for Mark. She was obviously happy to see him alive and I have to confess I couldn’t blame her for being so excited. After all, she had been promised to him in marriage for a couple of years before the war. However, the wedding was never performed because of all the fighting and the fact that her family wanted her to be safe, somewhere very remote. So she had no idea who he really was.

 I smiled at her and she smiled back. She had no idea I knew her from a photograph he had in his wallet, she had no idea who I was. But that wasn’t important. The guards left and, before I could ask for anything, General Ford walked straight to us and pointed to a building on the other side of the square where the presidential palace was located. People applauded when they saw the general, a woman that looked so strong was the cause the government had finally fallen and they were free again.

 We entered the other building and then a room that was very nicely arranged. There was no food or anything, only other people that had fought the war with us. We all knew each other, because we had met in the battlefield, in the camps where they had interred us and in the mountains we had to hide for so long. Mark hugged half the people there and I waved and smiled a lot, more than in any other occasion in my life. It was nice, after all, to see them there. It was like having a family again.

 General Ford informed us about our particulars, our real families. Some of them had died, others like mine had fled the country and a few had somehow survived the ordeal. It was a sad, solemn moment but we were thankful to her. It was then she invited us to take part in the first televised event of the new era. We were a bit surprised by the proposal but she gave us no time to say anything. Apparently, she was going to be the first one to use the airwaves again to properly announce the end of hostilities. A television camera was brought and several microphones. I just took Mark’s hand and thought it could never get worse than the war.

Our necklaces

   The necklaces came in different colors. Actually the only choice we had in the whole matter was to choose the color of our liking. Of course, we couldn’t make that choice the moment we were born. But once we grew to be five years old, they accepted our requests for colors. That way, kids would compare their necklaces in school and change them every few months during the puberty. When that was done, the change was done every two years, in order to download some content and replace it if it was needed.

 Nobody really remembered when the necklaces were put into place. Some say, the reason we don’t know the exact date is because they have wiped out our brains of memories. Not all of them, of course, but the ones that are important to the government. They say the necklaces are there to ensure our safety and, to be fair, even top officers use them. Of course, theirs are much more beautiful than the normal ones, some even made of different materials and adorned with jewels or other beautiful things. But in the end, same as ours.

 It has been like this for a long time and we just live alongside the whole thing. Our necklaces record our daily lives and all of that is passed on to the government in order to decide who is loyal and who is not. We are taught that’s a good thing because we cannot have rebellious people around. The yare the ones that could hurt us the most and they sometimes do. The explosions and attacks that happen sometimes are all of their doing and its because they don’t want us to keep living like this.

 To them, this system is wrong and we are also wrong because we let it exist. But the truth is that most of us don’t make our lives being like this at all. We just wake up in the morning and then go to work and then comeback to our families, like every single person has done for thousands of years. The necklaces don’t make any difference in our lives; it’s just an accessory that we have to carry from the moment we are born to the moment of our death. Not more than that and we accept it.

 Rebels, people say, are people that want everything to be as it once was. We are taught in school that the world was chaotic in the past, filled with war and poverty and hunger. We don’t have any of that to today and we fail to realize why some people would like all of that to come back. Back in the past, people fought for everything that we have now, so why would we even remotely agree with a rebel that just wants us to fight and fight and fight, with no end in sight? They are crazy people and they have to be detained by the government, the only ones that actually care about us.

 Once a year, there are public showings of a movie shot by drones that fly away to other areas of the world. Our country is large and prosperous but some others were actually destroyed in the wars of the past. They want us to see all of that for ourselves because the truth is more important than anything. The footage is always different but the message is always the same: we cannot keep rising because when people do that, other people, less fortunate people, suffer all of the consequences. And that’s what happened.

 None of us remember the wars. None of us remembers when the bombs were dropped from the skies and from the blackness above us. What we do know for sure is that some of the people, those that survived to create the government, they hid for years in deep caves, eating only canned goods. Nowadays, we have all the fruits and vegetables that we would ever need. We don’t buy them, because they are delivered to our houses and distributed equally among the populace. We don’t have to suffer anymore.

 Rebels, apparently, say that the government keeps most of the food for themselves. But they don’t understand that we don’t really care. Because we are able to eat what we want, we can ask for it and it will be delivered. Only a few things are commonly rejected and it’s due to the low amount of some resources. But we understand that. We have learned that oil and coal and so many more things became almost extinct after the wars. So we have learned not to ask for any of that. Actually, we have mostly replaced it all.

 Complaining and complaining. Not wanting to fit into a society. That’s what’s wrong with those people, with those rebels. They just don’t want every single one of us to be happy. They want to create chaos because they are the kind of people that love to kills others and see the world burn. They do what they do because the amount of order in this world makes them mad. They cannot bare to think that we have peace, that we finally have a world in which we can be ourselves, just by giving up a little bit.

 And yeah, we do. We give the government access to our lives; we keep our necklaces because we have agreed to live in peace with everyone and everything else. And they cannot understand it, they are furious every single day because a bomb hasn’t killed a whole family or a soldier has not been slaughtered with a knife. They find chaos amusing and they thrive in it, as if they were flowers fed with blood. Deadly flowers that have nothing pretty about them, they are only poisonous and looking to kill us all, slowly. Rebels are that type of scum and we don’t want them here.

 Sometimes, not too often, a billboard is raised to announce the number of rebels leaving the country to be sent to a specialized facility where the government can take care of their kind. Some people say its located on one of the caves that our ancestors used after the war. Some others say it’s an island just a few kilometers from the capital city. Well, of course most of us don’t know where it is or what it’s like because we are not rebels and we haven’t done anything to deserve that kind of punishment.

 The idea is that rebels are stripped of their ideas there and then the yare sent back to the country, in order to be valuable members of our society. Most of us think that’s a great idea but we know it doesn’t happen very often. The few times the military makes raids, they kill all of the country’s enemies and we celebrate it by applauding for a whole minute at home. We do it to make our boys and girls in uniform for their fantastic job. Without them, it is quite possible that the world would be lost.

 It’s not common to see one of those rebels that have become a member of the community once more. They are rarely seen in the cities and, people say, they are mostly used in the large farms that feed all of us daily. It must be a nice change of pace, from carrying weapons and killing people, to milk cows and planting rice in the fields. Maybe they don’t deserve it, or maybe they don’t, but the government gives them a chance and that’s a lot more than they deserve, that’s for damn sure.

 We also partake in an event called the Games, every four years. In the Games, we face each other in different sports. The idea is that every single member of society should have an ability to exploit. The Games are most important for teenagers; because that’s the way they find out what their jobs will be in the future. Adults participate too, but it’s more like training and a gathering of different people to share experiences and get to know one another. It’s not something we do a lot and its fun sometimes.

 Something curious is the moment we loose our necklaces, when they are being replaced for one reason or the other. It is then when we all change a bit. It is a very short moment, a glimpse in time. But we all react differently when we are disconnected from our government. It is a very peculiar thing.

 Some of us scream, as if we were staring at a monster. Some other start crying profusely and others even laugh their heads off for a few seconds. We all do something. Or at least most of us. They are some, not many, that do not react to loosing their necklace. They don’t move or make a noise. They just wait.

On the rubble

   At first, the sounds were like thunder. Once and again they repeated themselves, a little bit louder each minute that passed. People were hiding in their basements or in any other structures below ground but were still very close to the bombs. They normally fell for hours, at least two, and then they would stop for another two hours until they came back. It was particularly awful at night, because people had no electricity and they feared something worse could happen in the dark, even worse that a foreign force dropping bombs on their heads. They just stayed there and prayed, if they believed in something. If they didn’t, it was a lot harder to imagine a way to go back outside alive.

 Every single person, even children, now knew that the world had been crumbling down for at least fifty years but no one had really noticed. That was until, all of a sudden, the most powerful country in the powerful got very extremist and started killing their own. People around the world saw it happening and they couldn’t believe their eyes. But as many times before, they did nothing, as they were scared they would get a blockade or some sort of attack just because they wanted to defend the lives of so many that had been massacred. And what the TV showed was only the tip of a very bloody iceberg. If people had known, they wouldn’t have feared, they would have done something. But that didn’t happen and it was only two years after that that the war starter. Ironically, it had nothing to do with mass murders but with a fishing boat.

 Since that happened, the world had seen five awful years of fire, misery and death. People talked about safe havens around the world but they all sounded so perfect, so ideal, that the general population thought they were only a fantasy created by those who didn’t want to realize what their reality was. They were prisoners in their own country, having to eat whatever they could find and surviving as animals, as rats. Some escaped to the countryside but things were supposed to be worst there because of the open spaces and the use of more horrible weapons that one could ever imagine.  The country was dead.

 Besides, they had been cut off from the rest of the world, so heading to the borders was useless as they were all under surveillance. And the truth was that even beyond those fences, life was exactly the same. So why bother in running, escaping and hurting the shitty body one had only to be in a place where things were exactly the same or maybe worst? People survived and they openly welcomed death, but on their terms. No one died of old age anymore but it was the objective of many to die that way. Most people died in the streets, with a shot to the head and probably not even fired by enemies but by other hungry people.

 Rumors were always heard. People had begun a rumor, maybe based on the truth, that a group of rebels had been working before the invasion had happened. You see, before the country was attacked daily, there used to be what people call a “puppet government”. A crazy military man, as they all are, had formed an alliance with the extremist nation that attacked them. He sold the country to them in exchange of letting him live and rule. And they did let him do that but only for some years until he was killed and the occupation really began. It was during that time that several “terrorist” attacks took place. It was them, the rebels.

 But now, it seems, the rebels didn’t existed anymore. Apparently, the government killed them all and then the government itself was killed so nothing remained from the past. News came every so often, from people that had managed to salvage radios or television sets. They said they had heard other countries been taken or an uprising somewhere very far. But even if all those things were true, people knew that they weren’t enough. Those things were happening so far away that they would never get any help. They just knew how their lives would end and they didn’t want to do anything about it. Why change what is inevitable? They just waited for the end and that was it. No more believing in miracles, or in any fantasy about rebels and war on the other side of the world. They were dead and that was the only truth.

 People survived eating small rodents that they found among the rubble after the airplanes had stopped bombing. There was no building standing and it made no sense for them to keep bombing them but they did it anyway. Some people believed that they didn’t want to use real soldiers in order to keep in line people that were already scared and enslaved, in a way. Another rumor was that soon they would come and build factories and that all those people in the basements would be made to work there, making uniforms, guns, helmets and so on. It was the normal thing to do by any foreign oppressive power, or so said the elderly. But no one knew and no one cared enough to think about it.

 A person’s day consisted of hearing the bombing all day, trying to sleep at least two hours and then go out of the hiding place in order to find food. That was it. There was no entertainment or time to be happy or joyful. Those things had died with the war. Any kid who laughed was severely spanked by their mother and learned, the hard way, that there was nothing to be happy about in this world. Some people moved around the city, trying to get more food and it sometimes worked. Some of the ponds and lakes still held water and some fish so it was only a question of how to get them. That would have been a nice way to spend an evening but these people saw it as a way to survive so there was nothing nice or good about it. It was just something they had to do.

 Suddenly, one day the bombing stopped altogether. It was not that they had decided to do less bombings; it was that they just stopped. People were scared then, more than ever. The invasion, the full scale one that they had feared for so long, was finally at their doorstep. Mothers decided to teach their children how to be obedient and how to lower their head before the foreigners. They wanted them to live, even if they had to be submissive and enslaved. Nothing could be worse than been a human rodent. They waited, and waited, and waited, but the invasion never came. They never saw a single soldier come their way but that didn’t make them calm down. Maybe they had decided to test a new weapon on them… Maybe they were going to be destroyed for good.

 But that never happened. A year after the bombings stopped, when the grass started to grow again, as the trees and crops, a battalion arrived to the ruined capital city. People were scared and ran away but they soon noticed those soldiers weren’t wearing the flag used by the extremists. They were wearing a white patch only which many remembered as a sign of peace. That week, five battalions arrived to help the people and teach them how to rebuild and feed themselves. The community was alive again and people, for the first time in many years, felt good about smiling and dreaming. The children were especially happy and their parents could finally have a calm heart.

 Many bodies were buried in huge mass graves. And it was then that they realized that their liberators were locals. Not all of them but many and they told them their story. Apparently, they were the ones called rebels back in the day and they had to flee the country before it went to shit. They said that many stayed behind but were killed. Those who remained hid in boats or planes bound for other parts of the world. Their stories were then so different and fantastic but they untied again at what they called the Big Battle. It had happened about a year ago and it had been the turning point for the war. The extremists were cut off of their resources and then their capital was taken. Their leader was hanged.

 That’s why the bombings had stopped. For all effects and purposes, the war was over. The rebels talked about the sacrifice that many had done in order to get their freedom back and that’s why now they wanted every country to stand up again and become a better version of themselves, to become something that people could look up to in the future. War had to be a thing of the past, something only mad men would think about and those mad men had to be put away, their freedom taken before they could take anyone else’s.

 The world had died but then, it’s heart started beating again. Will there be another chance? Will we survive again to our own demons and stupidity? Let’s hope this time it sticks.

A princess in the woods

   Inside the coach, the princess stood still, trying not to move a lot while being transported from her kingdom to the one she had been promised to. A marriage of convenience had been settled and her parents were thrilled to know that the prince that had requested her as queen was a very wealthy and powerful person. His kingdom had recently won new territories over a weaker enemy and because of that he had many presents waiting for the princess. But first she had to end her five-day journey over mountains and forests. The road that connected both kingdoms was rarely used and no coach was prepared for such a bumpy ride. Neither was the princess or her escorts.

 Inside the coach there was only one more person: her handmaiden. It was the only person there who could interact with both the princess and the men that were in charge of her safety. The young woman was not allowed to show her face for any reason while traveling to meet her future husband as it was deemed bad luck for any other man to see her before the wedding. So when they stopped for her to go and relieve herself, she was accompanied by her handmaiden and would wear a thick veil in front of her face. She looked strange but those were the customs people respected and it was better to respect them because no one ever knows who takes them very seriously and decides to punish those who don’t respect tradition. The kingdom that they were heading to was a very traditional place and known also for its violent ways.

 There were two guards always riding by the sides of the coach, the driver was also trained as a swordsman and the only footman was also very handy with the sword. When stopping at night to eat and rest, they would always form a small circle around a fire and would talk about women, battles and their work for the kingdom. They also discussed food and their own strength. And every single night, the princess would hear their discussion from the coach. She had to pretend she was fast asleep but the truth was she was fascinated by what men talked about. It seemed that, whatever it was that they talked about, it was real and natural and they weren’t tied down because of tradition or anything like that.

 In the mornings, the handmaiden would bring her breakfast. Every meal had to be consumed inside the coach and they could only stop the transport if she couldn’t relieve herself easily inside the coach. Her handmaiden threw piss out of the window but that couldn’t be done with the rest. For the men, it was funny when they had to stop for the other reason, as with all the rules the princess always seemed like a creature of myth but then they realized she was as human as the rest of them and that amused them but they only talked about it at night, when the women were asleep or at least that’s what they thought.

 Midway to the king’s castle, they realized they had to go slower. The road was full of rocks and very narrow in some points, especially as they got closer to the ocean. So the following days went very slow. The princess was bored out of her mind and the men were thinking about the moment they had accepted to be the escort of the princess. Of course, it was an honor, but the regions they were crossing were far from nice and safe. Many merchants said that the route was extremely dangerous for anyone who transported goods around and that’s what they were doing. Transport someone that was now owned by a powerful king. It was awful to put it like that but that’s how thing’s were: wives were not a companion but an asset of the man.

 One morning, what they feared happened. The pointy rocks managed to break one of the wheels and the two women were asked to descend in order to fix the problem. The handmaiden took the princess by the hand and they sat down on a rock, facing the opposite side of where the men were working. They had a spare wheel so they put themselves to work but then they heard something strange. Or better, they didn’t hear anything. There was not a single sound in the whole forest. Only the ocean on the distance could be heard. They decided to accelerate their work and try to leave the place immediately but that wouldn’t be possible. Very slowly, a group of men emerged from the trees and bushes.

They all had paint on their face and most were pointing an arrow to each one of the travellers.  One of the strangers walked up to the women and tried to get them to walk towards the coach. But the handmaiden started speaking fast, explaining whom she was with and what the traditions were for. The stranger kept moving his hand, trying for them to move but it wouldn’t work. Then, he got close to the handmaiden and she just launched herself onto him, fighting and trying for them not to touch the princess. But then the sound of an arrow put an end to it. It had pierced the head of the handmaiden, who was left on the ground before they grabbed the princess and threw her towards the men.

 The strangers surrounded them but lowered their weapons. They only looked at the people that they were preying on and were apparently trying to decide what to do. They spoke in a strange language and pointed to the princess often. Then, one of them got near the woman but the footman cut his walk. He tried to explain who she was but they pushed him aside and grabbed the girl. They pulled off the veil and revealed her face. One of the strangers, apparently the leader, seemed pleased with himself and grabbed the girl, pulling her towards the forest. She tried to resist without screaming but there was nothing to do. The man was string and pulled her to a place no one could see them.

  There, she knew that she was going to die or worse. She tried to prepare herself in order to fight as well as she could but there was no need because the man that had pulled her to that area of the forest just stood up there, looking at her. She did the same but didn’t know whether he was getting ready to do something or if he was just looking at her. Time seemed to have stopped and she was tired of waiting. If she was going to die, she wanted it to happen fast and soon. But the man just looked and her and finally pulled a bottle from a bag in his waist. He put some water on his hands and started washing his face thoroughly. She didn’t understand what he was doing but then she realized the paint was falling from his face and that, when he finished, he looked like a different person. To be honest, he looked like a person she knew well.

 The man just looked at her and then she asked: “Thomas”? Thomas had been one of her best friends when she was little, they had been best friends until she became a princess and a woman and he just disappeared. He walked up to her and told her that it was pleasure to see her again, more beautiful than ever. Her cheeks turned red and he just got closer and hugged her. She felt nervous at first but then she remembered and everything was ok. It was the person she remembered, the first man that she had loved. She held him strong for a few minutes until she decided to ask him what he was doing in that forest.

 Apparently, she had stopped seeing him around because he had been expelled from the kingdom, as well as his family. The princess wanted to be protected and they wanted a better husband for her in the future so they decided to disappear every single man that had any contact with her up to the moment when she became a woman. They were all sent to other kingdoms, towns, left to die of starvation because they used to be rich people that did what they wanted when they wanted and suddenly they had nothing to survives with.

 But Thomas was stronger than that and he had formed a group of rebels that protected the good people from the bad ones. They protected peasants from their kings, who only wanted them to work and die, so to be replaced easily afterwards. They also fought against traditions and once they had heard about the princess been promised to the cruel king to the north, Thomas personally decided to kidnap her and free her from burden. But she didn’t know what to say or what to do. She realized she was going to become a slave or worse but Thomas seemed too violent, not much different than what they said the king was. But then, again, the sound of an arrow ended it all. Thomas body stumbled down and the princess screamed, watching as the king she had been promised to smiled as he held his crossbow.

 Her life had just begun and it was going to be a hard one.