Forgotten

   I had always liked to stay at nice hotels and now I had the chance to do it often do to my job. I paraded around the globe trying to sell them these products and in exchange I got to stay in great cities and beautiful hotels every so often. Of course, there were not five star hotels and were rather aimed at pleasing businessmen and not film stars or something, but I really liked them.

 One time, for example, I was sent to a rather small town but they put me in a big hotel with all the amenities possible. It was five stories high, had a nice view of the airport and even had a pool. So the first thing I thought, even during my meetings with various people that day, was when and how to get into that pool. I had planned to get to the hotel by six in the afternoon and just run to the pool as it closed at seven o’clock.

However, when I was picking up my things n my room, a hotel towel and so on, I got a phone call. It was someone from work but I decided to pretend I was busy or a heavy sleeper and not answered. Actually, I deliberately left my phone in the room as I left it for the pool, which was amazing. The water’s temperature was perfect and I had all for myself. Possibly that was because the hotel was nowhere near top capacity but I didn’t really care. I just enjoyed the moment and swam across the pool multiple times until I decided it had being too much. Strangely, no one had come to tell me to get out of the pool and I was sure it was eight o’clock, at least.

 I went back to my room and the phone was ringing again. I decided to pick up and realized no one answered. The number that appeared on the screen was from one of my bosses but no one spoken when I answered. I hung up and just lay down in bed about to turn on the TV but somehow I got very sleepy in a second and I fell asleep right there. I had a dreamless night and when I woke up I was slightly startled. I thought I had overslept but it was still two hours until I had to wake up to leave for my flight back home. But I couldn’t get back to sleep so I decided to check on the news. Nothing interesting.

 I decided to shower and use all the little soaps and shampoos I could and those I couldn’t I would put them in my luggage. Again, the water was perfect and I spent more than enough time in the shower but because I suddenly felt sleepy again. I had to close the water and lean against the wall to recover. I grabbed a towel but when I did the world had started spinning and I just fell hard to the ground. I did not pass out instantly. My eyesight was blurry and I could feel a presence and some distorted sounds. Just before I feel into a deep slumber, again, I thought I saw something and smelled a very particular scent.

 When I woke up, I wasn’t in my hotel bedroom. I was in another hotel bedroom, more likely a motel. The walls had stains on them, there was a smell of rotten food or something and I realized it was pitch black outside. I concluded I had been kidnapped and, of course, I had missed my flight. People would already be looking for me, as they knew at what time I supposed to be home. I hoped they were looking because that place really felt off. Something was not right and then I smelled the same scent I smelled before I feel asleep naked on the ground of the hotel bathroom. I realized I was now wearing some kind of robe. I checked it and realized it had the emblem of the hotel I had been staying in. Then, the door of the room opened and that smell invaded the small space.

 The door was close and there he was. A tall man, wearing a black hat and a coat. I had never seen him before but he had this look, like what someone would look like after escaping a mental institution. I decided not to say a word and just wait for him to day or do something. But he stayed there, standing up by the door just looking at him. When I tried to move, I realized one of my wrists and one of my ankles, were tied tightly to the bed. I was tied to them with rope. And I was very week suddenly so I decided not to fight against anything. Was this a crazy guy that kidnapped people and killed them far away or was he going to torture me in some gruesome manner that I couldn’t even understand? The thought made me tremble.

 And it was then that he moved, towards me. I saw his eyes more clearly and they are very red, as if he had never been asleep in his life. He was older than I had thought at first and, to be honest; he didn’t seem as deranged as I had thought he was. Still, he didn’t say a word. However it was me who started asking for him to release. The time for waiting for him to act had passed and now I needed to make him understand that maybe I was the wrong target or maybe I could convince him not to kill me. But he didn’t seem to care about what I said. He just looked at me with those red eyes and it was uncomfortable and I just started to get very desperate. I was weak but I pulled and cried from impotence.

This seemed to work on him because he blinked a lot, as if he had been woken up from hypnosis or something. I took advantage of his apparent confusion and started to beg him. I asked him to release me and I swore I would never tell anyone what had happened in that room and what he looked like. I told him I didn’t know who he was or what he was trying to do but that I respected him and wanted him to know I wanted to be respectful of him. All of this came like a waterfall of ideas that just ran out of my mouth as I thought about them. I was desperate but said anything in a very controlled way in order not to seem as crazy as I thought he was. Then, he turned his head and walked towards a table I had not seen before.

 From the table, he took something and took his time doing something to it. I thought that he was going to start torturing me for sure but then he turned around and I realized he held a needle in his hand. Before I could even think anything, he jabbed it on my leg and, once again, I fell into a deep slumber and only felt him go away, maybe out of the room and the scent of rotten food fill the space in my mind. This time I did dream. It was about my childhood and the first boy I had ever kissed. My mind kept repeating the memory like a damaged DVD player or something. I felt anxious and then I woke up and I happened to be back but not in my hotel room but in my home. The first thing I did, after I realized I was still wearing the hotel robe, was to call the police.

 Sure enough, I had disappeared for a whole week. I almost fainted again when they told me. Apparently, I just remembered one day out of seven he had me in his custody. I told everything I could to the police, all bout the guy’s look, the smells, what I could remember about the motel and about the syringe he had jabbed in my leg. They made me go through several medical tests and so on in order to know more about he had injected in me. It apparently was a very strong liquid that made anyone go limp in a heartbeat. So they thought he might be a doctor of some kind, maybe even a veterinarian. But I had never met either, not close at least.

 My mind was just so full of things, of cut memories and of fear. Because I knew he could’ve done so much more to me than he did. He didn’t kill me, torture me and the rape tests came out negative. I had been kidnapped for some reason and the person responsible had done nothing to me. The police did their job, I can’t complain about that, and they found absolutely nothing. They just couldn’t get anywhere with what I knew and with the other few evidence they had. Not even security cameras had registered him into my room and no one anywhere had apparently seen such a man. I got fed up with it all when a psychologist insinuated that maybe I had imagined all of it. Never trusts shrinks, am I right?

 I decided to go back to my work, my home, my life. I was very scared to be alone at home so I bought a dog and a cat and just tried to get by, without ever thinking about what had happened that day. My trips are less frequent now and I just have fun the few times I leave for business. However, I never sleep well in hotels and I tend to spend a lot of time in the bar area. I drink so I can sleep faster and just make the night go more smoothly for me. Since what happened, I can’t stop thinking that maybe I knew him from something, maybe I had met him once and now I didn’t know. But a hypnotherapist didn’t help, as I thought. I’m just never going to know what exactly happened and why and maybe that’s the worst part of it.

The hunter

   The arrow passed just a few centimeters away from the rabbit’s head. It wasn’t the day to die for him. But a wild turkey and a pheasant had not been so lucky. They hanged on one side of Karl’s waist, dangling around as he marched through the woods looking for more game. But he didn’t find anything else to bring back to his shack so he stopped wandering around and went straight back to his place. It was a small cottage in the woods, just a few steps away from the lake. He had built it there so no floods could reach it but close enough to the water to get his everyday ration to cook and bathe.

 As he entered the house, he left the dead animals in a rough wood table. He took off his clothes fast and, with the sun setting in the distance; he came out naked of his house and walked to the lake. He didn’t even hesitate to jump into the cold water. He plunged deep and then resurfaced, scrubbing his skin with his hands. There was no soap and soap would contaminate the lake anyway so he just scrubbed hard, sometimes with a scourer but he only used that some times a week. He submerged many times, looking at the distance, to the sun, which was now glowing orange. As he cleaned his beard and every hair he had on his body, he thought about that decision he had taken a long time ago, the decision that had changed his life by putting him there instead of in the city, in a job with a family and so on.

 He didn’t regret he hadn’t decided to stay with his family or just make a family of his own. It haunted him but he was sure he didn’t wanted to be one of those family men. He didn’t have what it takes to be one and he didn’t wanted to be one. He had always wanted to be free, as free as any human could be and this was the way he had found to be true to his desires. His family had not thoroughly understood but now that didn’t really matter. It had been three years now since he had decided to live in the forest and he knew it had been one of the best decisions he had taken in his life. Here, among animals and plants and fresh water, there was nothing that bothered him or made him feel like there was something wrong. Everything here felt fair and well done, because it was.

 He had always hated the competition, the killing that people submitted themselves to in the “real” world. People used to use those words together to describe to him were their lives happened, as if hid daily life wasn’t real, just a figment of his imagination. Hunting was more real than any bank job he could think off. Swimming naked in a beautiful lake was more real than worrying every day if someone was going to hurt you or your loved ones in any given moment. His world was very real and he had chosen it because he couldn’t take what the world was anymore. It had been a done deal the day he was attacked on the street, mugged and stabbed. He had become disenchanted with the world so he decided to leave it for good and there was not a single day in which he regretted that.

 In any case, it wasn’t as if he never talked or chatted with another human anymore. Many people came to the forest, in spring or summer, and the park rangers had designated him as an official guide. He got paid a small salary but that wasn’t the important thing, it was the fact that he got to share his experiences and knowledge with visitors which was the best part of the job. He would take them hiking or trekking for hours, compensating them with beautiful vistas, information about every plant and animal living in the park and would usually end up with a small “party” by the shore of the lake. Those who wanted could swim but they would all celebrate with a local meal.

 He came out of the water and waited to dry off for a half hour by the shore. As the water dripped away, he threw small stones to the water, trying to make them skip. But he had never managed to do I correctly. Time passed so he walked up his cabin, showered by the orange light of sunset. Inside the house he cleaned up his feet and put on some warm clothes to feel some heat after his swim in the cold water. He decided to eat first and then skin his animals to be put away with salt to be preserved. He had no electric device, except a portable stove, so it was best to consume everything before it went bad. He would eat the pheasant in the morning and the turkey could last a little longer if he treated it well. He ate some vegetables he had cooked earlier and it was then when he heard the sound. He wasn’t sure he had heard it but there it was again.

 The hunter walked up to the window and stayed there. It was already dark outside and he had turned on a gas lamp he had but he decided to turn it off and wait for the sound to come back again. There it was… It was like a moan or a scream that was silenced. He was worried as there was no one else for the next ten kilometers. Maybe he was imagining things, maybe it was an animal or maybe some people had just decided to come into the park and get busy. It wouldn’t be the first time. He decided to stop worrying and walked away from the window but then there was a scream, a piercing sound that broke the silence of the woods in two.

 The scream came from deep in the woods, in the opposite direction of the lake. He didn’t know very well, but he though the scream was from a male. He decided to take his bow and arrow, a rope and his best boots. That person could be trapped between rocks, in the formations that existed in the park in that direction. Or maybe some animal had attacked him and he needed assistance before bleeding to death. There were a few wolfs and they could be very violent, as well as black bears who roamed around the forest for food. Once he was ready, the hunter came out of the cabin and started marching rather fast in the direction he had heard the scream.

 He walked and walked but he didn’t seem to get anywhere. He didn’t usually come out so late at night and his senses were not as accurate in the dark than in the light. But he was sure where he was going and pressed on, worried for the person that had yelled earlier. After some twenty minutes, he finally arrived to a rocky formation and he noticed, with his solar flashlight, that the rocks were tainted with what appeared to be blood. He turned off his light and decided to be still and hear. There were no screams, only crickets and other animals making sounds. But then, he heard panting and someone else, breathing heavily. He ran towards the sound and, without thinking, jumped right onto one of the persons there.

 Apparently he had done correctly, because the voice that had screamed earlier was begin for him to help him. Somehow, his voice felt strange, as if it had changed in less than an hour. But the hunter was a strong man and he was able to submit the man he was fighting with ease. Once he turned on the flashlight again, he gave it to the victim, who happened to be a young man, covered in blood. He was trembling but was able to hold steady long enough for the hunter to use the rope to tie the hands of the other guy, an older man who had his nose broken and seemed to be in a fit of rage. He wasn’t fighting anymore but his eyes were filled with hatred, filled with blood and pure rage. The hunter made him stand up and he told the young man to follow him, so they could call the rangers who would then call the police of whoever had to be in charge of this.

 It wasn’t long before they stepped into the hunter’s house. The tie man was sat in the hunter’s bed and the boy sat in one of the big chair by the only table. The hunter looked for the walkie-talkie he rarely used during this time of year and started talking into it, to no response. As he waited, he asked the young guy to tell him what had happened but the guy refused at the other one seemed to be preparing for another assault. When one of the rangers finally answered, he couldn’t hear a word because the kid had jumped from his chair, with a knife the hunter had not seen, and stabbed the man in the chest. The man screamed and the hunter realized it was him who had screamed earlier.

 He attempted to grab the young guy from behind but now he flung his knife towards him, cutting the surface of his chest. He took advantage of this to turn around and finish off the man in the bed, who bled out just there, looking at the kid with horror. The hunter avoided the kid’s next attack and just punched him hard in the head. The kid was groggy for a minute, time the hunter used to grab his bow and arrow. He told the kid the rangers would come soon, as they never received communications from here and they would be worried to know if there was something wrong. He suggested him to surrender and let him tie his hands.

 But the kid launched himself at him and he just let go of the arrow that pierced his chest deep. He fell to the ground, where the hunter grabbed him and tried to understand what he was saying. Because as he spitted blood, he tried to say something but it wasn’t clear. Then the hunter lowered his head and he understood a couple of words: “got revenge”. Then he died and the hunter never knew what those words meant.

Torture

   He was tied to one of the tubes coming out of the wall, tied with a very thin but resistant rope. He had attempted to free himself from it the first few days but he realized soon it wasn’t going to break. His clothes had been taken from him long ago an the only thing that reminded him of the past was a scar he had on his left calf, one that he had gotten while playing with his parents in his family’s farm a long time ago. It felt like a whole life ago because every single day memories appeared to vanish, a handful at a time. This was aggravated by the fact that he didn’t know on what day he lived and how much time he had been “living” in that basement, with the vermin and the insects that came and went, probably waiting for his body to finally succumb to starvation and thirst.

 But amazingly, he held on. Someone with a bag with holes in the head came in with dry fruit everyday, just a spoonful of it, and a bottle tap of water. That was all he got for the day and it made him feel each day more miserable. Even more when he remembered everything that he had eaten before, with his family or by himself: burgers, pizza, meat, pork, fish, vegetables, fruit, bread, candy, soup, pasta… It hurt his stomach to think about all of that but it helped him too because if he still remembered all of that it meant that his mind wasn’t all gone yet, it meant his essence was still in that frail and sick body that he didn’t recognize anymore, except for the scar.

 It was that scar that made him go on too. Because it reminded him of things and the only way to take that away would be to chop off his leg but it didn’t seem as if they were going to go to that extreme. What did happen was that once every so often, he guessed that once a week, he was taken from his basement to another basement or some other room in the same basement, and was also tied there and tortured. They would cut him, kick him, punch him, beat him with a stick or grab his head and push it into a big pool of water they had in that room. It was awful because it lasted for a long time and because his torturers never spoke a word, not even to yell at him, so it was even scarier than one would think.

 It was strange but, when he would come back to the basement where they kept him tied, he felt home. Maybe that was because he really didn’t remember what his actual home looked like. He didn’t remember if he had a family of his own or just his parents or even if his parents were still alive. It was like trying to solve a puzzle with half the pieces missing. He just couldn’t remember and that frustrated me. When they tortured him, he sometimes asked for the truth, he asked them to tell him who he was and what his life was like before this happened. But they never told him a word. Not even his name, which he had lost a long time ago.

 Another thing he didn’t remember, unfortunately, was the reason he was being held there, if there was an actual reason and if he even knew what it was. He felt he did knew, he felt he even knew who was behind all of it but after trying for days and nights, he just couldn’t remember. Was it possible that the people that held him hostage were putting things in the water he drank for him to forget everything? Or was it just a natural effect of being deprived of freedom for so long? Another thing he missed was the sun and the wind and the colors. He remembered all of that still but there was no natural light here, no soft wind to caress one’s skin and the only colors were white, black and grey.

 It went on like that for a long time, maybe even years, until one day they just stopped putting the dry food and the water in his cell. After a while, he just knew he was going to die. Maybe they had given up on him giving any information and were just waiting for him to drop dead and be done with it. When lucid, he imagined they had other prisoners and that maybe they thought at least one of those knew whatever it was they thought he knew. He wouldn’t be the last one to be tortured that was for sure. The thought made him feel uneasy but strangely not annoyed nor sad. Because if he died, he would finally be free. He never imagined to go out alive of this one and to know the end was near was actually almost a happy thing. He was trying to prepare himself for it and just concentrated a lot on keeping the remaining memories inside and not give them the satisfaction of taking them

 One day, after no sessions of torture, they took him to the other room and id what they had done before. They even brought an electric device and electrocuted him with it. He finally felt his life leaving him behind but then they stopped and tied him to a chair that appeared from nowhere. He was dizzy and wanted to die soon, he just wanted them to leave him alone and go away. If he died, he wanted to die alone and not with a couple of men besides him with bags on their heads. But then the door opened and another person entered the room and this person didn’t have a bag on his head. It was a tall man, wearing a tailored suit and a hat. He stood in front of the tortured man and just stared, with no expression on his face.

 The hostage was too tired to keep his head up, so he just let his head hang there, looking at the wet floor. This appeared to go on for ages until of the men sat him down straight again and slapped him hard. The hostage opened his eyes but he was to week to stay awake anymore. He felt it was time go but they wouldn’t let him. He was about to protest when the suited man said a word: “Tom”. The hostage felt as if they had sunk his body in ice. That name meant something, something very close to him. He mumbled but couldn’t form a proper sentence. The man in the suit, however, ended the moment by nodding to his men who took the hostage back to his cell.

 Tom. Who was Tom? Was he Tom? That single piece of information was invaluable and yet he had no idea what it meant. But it wasn’t important because no name would give him the freedom that he wanted. To be honest, he didn’t even know if he wanted to free anymore. Death seemed so attractive, fast and good at that point. So he put Tom, however that was to a side, and just lie there to die, closing his eyes and trying to lay on the floor as comfortably as he could. His wrists were bloody because of the rope and his face was bloody from several punches on his eyes. He would close his eyes and just go away, leaving every piece of this shithole called world behind. That was home for him now.

 But then, he heard something in the distance. It felt like a small tremor and he was certain screaming followed it. But maybe he had imagined it. He was in a basement and there was no way to hear what happened far above. He closed his eyes again but another tremor hit closer and then the door burst open. Two men, now with no bags on their heads, came for him. They took him from the armpits and dragged him through a long corridor that ended on a metal door. The door opened to a long staircase that was covered in snow. The men dragged him all the way up. There, other prisoners were being rounded and some men had rifles. They were going to execute them. They had had it with them and they were going to die now. He seemed to be the last one so the man put the prisoners in a circle and pointed at them He closed his eyes and breath slowly.

 But then another tremor. It was an explosion, a bomb. It hit the nearby part of the building, scaring the executioners. They were distracted by the collapse of their bunker, now on fire and breathing black smoke. Bu they remembered they had prisoners and shot a couple of them before some other men came. There was a fire exchange, time during which he really tried to die because he didn’t want to become someone else’s prisoner but the fight ended fast. The new men helped the survivors up and took them to a truck nearby. The truck left the place and they all fainted from exhaustion.

 Days later, the former hostage woke up in the bed of a hospital. It was night but he could recognize, from deep in his memories, the sound of that machine that poured a health serum into his bloodstream. His eyes were not working great but he noticed a window and he saw some lights outside, buildings. Voice could be heard from the other side of the door and then a bunch of people busted in, the lights went on and he suddenly had two nurses and a doctor all over him. They checked every single part of his body. He cried a bit, but they didn’t notice. He cried because he was free and that had been impossible.

 After a while, everyone left except for the doctor. It was a woman. She spoke gently and explained to him what was right and what was wrong with him. But that didn’t matter anymore. He was finally dying, slowly and in peace. He saw the woman leave in a hurry before his eyes closed and he could only hear the sound of a voice. It was a nice, warm voice that he knew he loved and cherished. It was Tom. He remembered. And then, he left this world to see Tom again.