Going...

“Well, I will just have to live with that, I guess.” So thought Roger, a thirty-year-old singer who had recently released his first album. He had been trying for a long time now to have a record around and he had finally achieved his dream. But a routine visit to the doctor had changed his life forever. It had been the look on the doctor’s face that said it all and nothing, at the same time. He asked Roger some questions beforehand, like “What are your parents like?” and “Do you know of any illnesses in your family?”. He had answered as best as he could but the truth was that those answers and those questions didn’t matter at all. The doctor seemed authentically shocked and sad when he told Roger he was going to loose his eyesight in a matter of months.

 The reasons were very technical. He cited some scientific names and a number of reasons for this to happen but Roger didn’t care about that at all. He just wanted to now if there was a cure or if he had heard correctly. The answer to the second question was obvious but to the first, there was no real answer. The doctor sent Roger to other doctors, specialists, who would now, more about his condition and maybe they would be able to help them. He assured Roger that his condition was very unique and that’s why he had noticed it right away. Maybe if it was in the earliest stages, the disease could be stopped somehow but he didn’t even try to guess how that would be done. He seemed pretty appalled but Roger didn’t notice, right then he didn’t care about anyone but him.

 Roger walked home in order to think a bit about what had just happened. Moments earlier, he had been pretty happy, telling the doctor the name of his album and telling him it was going to be a huge hit. People liked him before, when he started rapping as an amateur and even more when he actually started to train in order to be a proper singer. He had participated in contests all over the place and had dedicated his life to his music for the last few years. All of that was pure joy until that moment. He didn’t cry but he wanted to. He felt desperate and hopeless at the same time and, although he knew it wasn’t it for him, he would never be the same.

 When he entered home, he avoided talking to his roommate, who happened to be his manager. Malik had always been there for him, being his cousin and all, and he knew he could trust him but he didn’t want to talk. He just wanted to go to bed and try to get some sleep, even if the summer sun was high in the sky outside. He didn’t care about at as he secretly wanted to disappear right then. When he woke up, his cousin had ordered some pizza and had left him some on a plate in the kitchen. He wasn’t there anymore, probably because of business. Roger ate and thanked Malik for leaving him alone to think. It was then when Roger finally cried in silence, his tears falling to the ground in complete silence.

 The next day, they had an appointment in Jamz Records. The album had been released a month ago and they needed to have a meeting to discuss how everything was doing and if further efforts to do a campaign for the album had to be done. There were already plans for a national tour but now Jamz wanted to add a couple of foreign dates as the digital download was receiving rave reviews in other countries. Roger tried no to force his face too much to make a smile and he felt that the he was able to do that but it hurt. He was just not into hearing people talking and talking right now. In secret, he had thought of just dying in his room, one way or the other. He was desperate and wanted everything to have a fast conclusion.

 He also went to a couple of specialists who wanted to try some new medicine with him. It was mainly about using natural things to make his illness go away or at least act slower. He was told that it would take months to be rendered blind by the disease but the specialists agreed that they could make it slow down to give them more time to discover something that could stop its advance altogether. This cheered him up a bit, as it was some hope he didn’t think he would have. He took all the medicine, all the eye drops they gave him to take. He just wanted for this entire nightmare to be over soon and just be able to enjoy music like he had before. After all, he was promoting an album.

 Actually, Roger was unable to go to his next appointments with the specialists. Malik toured him around the city, going from radio station to radio station, giving out singles of his most recent release. The idea was authorized by Jamz, as they thought giving the album a personal seal as the artist handing out singles may create a certain myth about the artist that they could use in the future. Roger had a nice time going from door to door as he was asked to sing several times and also talk a bit about whatever it was that they were talking about. He felt important and loved and he needed that more than ever before. So he enjoyed the experience from start to finish, as he felt like a proper rapper.

 The album went on to have amazing sales and then the tour became a reality, with even more dates added to it all over the place. Roger was going to be on the road for at least three months, a very long time which scared him do to his disease. He visited the specialists before leaving and they gladly confirmed the disease had slowed down and it wasn’t advancing as fast as before. They gave him new medicine and begged for him to try to shorten the tour, if it was possible. Besides, they asked Roger to wear sunglasses at all times in order not to force his eyes too much. Hope was very much alive and he decided to be a good boy and just follow everyone’s advice.

 The first date of the tour was simply the best day of his life. People were cheering his name and they all sang the lyrics at the same time he was rapping and singing. He was pumped all through the performance, even in such a small venue (about a thousand people could fit in). When it was over, he signed autographs on copies of his album and posed for pictures with many people, men and women and even some kids that somehow appeared after the show. He celebrated that night at the hotel with a small party, thanking everyone involved in putting him in the place where he was now. He felt like the luckiest man on Earth and he just wanted to share that feeling with every single person.

 The following dates, he used his sunglasses and received praise for that particular style. Many more pictures were taken and autographs signed. He even got to do some press, mainly radio but also interviews for magazine that were specialized in music. He was glad to receive anyone interested in knowing his story, his struggle from when he was just a boy dreaming to be a singer and then having to do something else for a living because he had nowhere else to go but even then still singing and rapping and being who he really was. People liked his story because it felt real and honest and he loved to talk about it because he was very proud of his roots and of his pathway to recognition.

 The following day from that interview, he had his first foreign date. It was on a small venue, so it was going to be familiar and not intimidating. He jumped on stage and started with the most popular song there but then, as he was moving, he tripped and had to stop singing for a couple of minutes. He apologized and kept on going but the seed had been planted. He was nervous because he thought of the reason behind tripping. He kept singing and rapping, but people were not as pumped as in other places. Roger tried to finish but the stress was too much and he just fainted. He felt his body move and he heard some voice but he just surrendered to the pain and to tiredness of his body.

 In the hospital, the first thing he did was screaming. He had woken up but he hadn’t realized it for a while as he woke up blind. When he understood what was going on, he just screamed and almost tried to pierce his eyes to make them work. Some family members and Malik stopped him but he had to be sedated in order to be controlled. When he woke up, very late that evening, he heard his specialists talking with his doctor there. She was surprised about his condition but they were explaining how the disease just jumped ahead due to stress. It had been uncontrollable all along. In his bed, Roger cried in silence and tried to figure out what his life was going to be from then on.

He was just here

   Raymond felt he sand between his toes and just kept on walking, not even realizing he was walking towards the ocean. To him, it didn’t matter anymore. His life was stuck on a loop and he had lived what he needed to live. He felt there was nothing more he could do or that he could get out of life on Earth. He had decided to think things by taking a walk and, unknowingly, his subconscious had already decided that it was time to end it all. The water reached his pants fast, and then his underwear. Then his belt, his shirt and finally his glasses. The current and the sheer strength of the ocean did the rest, taking his body from that cold, windy beach to the bottom of the ocean, from where no one would be able to take it for some time.

 He wasn’t someone people would miss and, although the ocean released the body, the police didn’t identify him for several months, as no one would ask for him. When they finally did identify the body as Raymond Bloom, it happened just because of a casual matter and not because someone was looking for him. The truth was he had no wife, no children, no parents and no friends. According to the information an officer was able to gather, he had lived alone for at least twenty years in a small attic on a very old building. The place smelled awful, as no one even knew the owner was dead. The officer found there some leads on who the man was and, maybe, on why he had done what he had done.

 Officer Jenny Marshall was one of those people who believe the best of every single person. It was strange for a cop to have such an attitude towards life but there she was, trying to cheer people up and making the best of her day every single day. She had been transferred recently and it was only the second post she had held ever so she wasn’t really assigned to the streets or to some interesting investigations. Jenny normally did the paperwork for every case and was in charge of keeping the archives in order, something she took very seriously. Deep down, she knew that her male counterparts loved to see her tie down to a job that didn’t lead anywhere but she ignored that fact and just did her work.

 Investigating the death of Raymond was assigned to her because she requested it. She told her boss she wanted to change her work a little and such a case would be perfect for her. After all, it seemed pretty straightforward and she could even do all the paperwork herself. So she convinced her boss and there she was on Raymond’s apartment, pinching her nose to avoid the foul smell of rotten food and trying to uncover the reason why he had committed suicide. To Penny, personally, it was not clear how a person could do such a thing. For her, life was sacred and no one had the right to take their own, even if they felt helpless and desperate. She knew there were always better options.

 She went through Raymond’s things and discovered that he had been published. The books did not look very nice on the outside but then she decided to sit down on the bed and just read one of the many stories the man had written in them. One was particularly moving; dealing with a ghost that saw how his childhood home was tore down to build an apartment building. She found very interesting but very sad too. She kept on looking for clues on Raymond’s house but she realize the only thing worth looking in there was his books so she put them all in boxes and took them to the station. She would try to find something in them and get to the bottom of the case, that way making everyone realize she could be a great agent and even a decent detective.

 Jenny started ready every single one of Raymond’s stories at work. No one really said anything to her because she wasn’t annoying anyone and she was doing her main job, which was taking care of the all the data. As she did that and on her free time, she would only read and read everything. Months passed until she had read every single piece of writing in Raymond’s apartment.  It was winter now and the last words she read from him where strangely appropriate for the climate: “I feel the cool breeze coming and telling me it’s time to go”. That was a short story about a man radically different from Raymond, with family and love all around him.

 The officer decided to let the case go for a while, so she went home and spent the holidays with her parents and her boyfriend and every other family member that had decided to come to the city for Christmas. She had a wonderful time eating and talking and dancing. She laughed a lot and wished for life only to be like that, full of joy and people whom you loved and who loved you. She realized Raymond’s writing had begun to depress her a bit but her family and all the love and special mood of the season brought back to her the best feelings and that nice warmth that only love can take to someone’s heart. And then, right in the Christmas dinner, she understood what had happened to Raymond.

 He had killed himself, not because he was weak or suffering in a too awful way. He died because he was alone; he had no one to take care of him or to even listen to what he had to say. And that was obvious just by reading what he wrote, as he said everything about anything he had ever thought about in life. It was amazing to read about so many things, but funny and serious, happy and sad, short and extremely long. His writing had been the way for him to externalize every single thing he had bottled up inside, as he ad never had anyone to properly talk and share his thoughts with. He had been trapped by his own life or, at least that’s what Jenny thought. Even if he was to blame, he had no choice.

 When the holidays ended, she wrote her report on the death of Raymond Bloom and decided to properly request her transference to the detective’s unit. She knew she could do more there and when her demand wasn’t accepted, she resigned the police. Jenny had learned from investigating Raymond that she needed to do with her life as she wanted, she couldn’t afford not living and not doing what her heart demanded of her. She didn’t want to end up like Raymond, all alone and talking to the books because there’s no one there. Unappreciated by the world and ignored to the point when, at her death, no one would ever think of grieving her. She wanted more from life and, eventually, she got it.

 Raymond’s books were donated to a public library and it was almost two years later when Jenny saw Ray’s name on the news. She was working with the FBI and now had a partner and was properly working the field. But during the investigation of a case, she saw the headline and bought the newspaper to find out what it was all about. Apparently, a book expert had been investigating the libraries of the cities looking for antiquities and particular books and so on. He had discovered Raymond, who had been an unknown author all his life, and declared he was one of the best storywriter he had ever found. He didn’t know that Ray was dead but he did know something else that Jenny didn’t: Ray hadn’t been as alone as she had thought.

 According to the article, the man had found several letters in the apartment Raymond had lived in, now turned into a posh flat. During the reforms on the place, they had found several letters and the expert had read them, discovering he had owned a dog for a long time and that he had died just about the time the author had stopped writing. Besides the dog, he had been in love with someone he described thoroughly in his letters, every physical aspect and some traits of characters. The letters, with such richness and passion, ended up being edited into a book that sold millions of copies, making the expert a rich man.

 Jenny was sad that Raymond had not been there to enjoy his fame and fortune. They eventually discovered he had committed suicide and that made his letters and all his books even more popular. Eventually, there was no one that didn’t know the name of the author and his tragic story. Jenny had thought, for a moment, that she had known the author but she realized she never did. She realized that no one had ever known him properly. He had been in love, that man who felt so alone and so sad. He had experienced life and life had not experienced him and Jenny felt that he finally understood why he had done what he had done. It was clear as water and she wouldn’t argue with it.

 Raymond became famous, as well as his views on life and his pain, which was painted all over his letters. But no one would ever know him as he was already gone and everyone had lost the chance to tell him “I’m here”.

The mansion by the woods

   The mansion had been deserted for years. No one had seen what was inside, not even the children that crossed under the broken fence and used the front gardens as a place to play the sport of their preference. They had even broken some of the remaining windows, which were not many, but never dared to enter the building to grab their belongings. They knew that the place was haunted or something worse. When they played, they could sometimes hear someone slamming the windows and punching the walls or something like that. It was very scary and they always left when that happened. For them, it meant that the spirits had been having an especially awful day and they didn’t want to have anything to do with that. They just left and wouldn’t go in for a few days.

 Curious people had also come around but never past the fence that still went all around the property. Somehow, adults felt something else than the children or were frightened easier. The thing was that every adult that came in contact with the fence started screaming and left in a huff. The truth was they instantly saw the way they would die in the future. No one knew if it was an accurate prediction but no one really wanted to find out anything about that. They just felt they had to leave urgently after seeing that and just did. Even the children saw and heard more. Adults just wanted to get the hell out before something scarier presented itself or something like that. With time, no inhabitant of the nearby town would go near the mansion, only crazies from other towns.

 Despite its fame, the mansion was not in such a horrible state, not as one would imagine. The place was falling apart in some areas but the rest looked as beautiful as always, with a mixture of different tones of marble that looked beautiful, especially in the summer. The gardens were, of course, all dead because no one was taking care of them but one could see the past beauty just by taking a stroll. Well, if anyone took a stroll around the place. The place did not looked like the typical dark haunted house. It was a very beautiful place that had fallen into disgrace and no one really knew why. Very few people remain that remember what had happened there.

 The people of the town had always been very apprehensive to anyone that wanted to live in the woods or too far from the main municipality. The mansion was constructed over a hundred years ago and even then people watched it, from afar, with disdain. They thought that only crazy people that shouldn’t be trusted would decide to live in such a place. After all, the mansion was in the margin of the forest. No one lived there and the people of the town even tried to stop the construction arguing that it was a national park. But the forest wasn’t so the mansion was built there without any modifications to its initial design.

 Things were strange even from the start. Not only many workers left the building site because they had claimed they had seen creatures coming in from the forest, but also the place remained empty for at least ten years before a family finally came in to live there. People were very displeased by this and agreed in a town meeting that no one would ever help those people, not by selling food or supplies or helping them out of the region. But that meeting proved useless because the people of the mansion would ever come to them. The only time they would come in contact with those people would be when their cars crossed the small town to go from or into the mansion. Everyone fell silent when that happened, as if a hearse had just passed before them.

 The family that lived in the mansion was said to be one of the richest in the country They owned various oil fields and mines all over the country. And somehow, they had chosen such a lost region to come and live. No one knew if that arrangement would be permanent or only through the summer but asking would mean that they cared for them and that wasn’t what they had agreed on. The family did not even realize of the antagonist reaction of the people on town. The truth was that, for them, the mansion was a small piece of paradise that was only for them. They could have built it anywhere else in the country but the grandfather of the lady of the house had loved this region when young so they went for it.

 There was a father, a mother, two little girls and the youngest, which was a strange little boy. Even people in town knew he was strange because some of the people that worked in the house would often come into town and as they had never promised to deny them any service, they would talk to them even if they were there for only a few minutes. The one who talked the most was the gardener and it was them who had told the people about the youngest boy who would never leave the house and was always in a room for only their parents to see him. The girls had a nanny and they would often spend time with the cook but the boy would never join them. They believed him to be around five years old.

 The family came and went all summers, even staying a little bit more some years. They would never get any visitors but would rather stay inside much of the time. The girls would play a lot around the gardens and where the only members of the family that had an actual exchange with the rest of the staff. The two girls were eight and twelve years old and they would always play together. They would hold hands and skip around the gardens in order to smell the flowers or follow insects or just play around. They were cheerful children and, according to the people that worked in the mansion, no one else but them actually smiled. The father was absent and the mother was always melancholic.

 Then, they stopped coming for some years and returned three years later. It was the last time people saw the girls, who were already grown up. They were very beautiful ladies and it was said that the eldest was about to marry to a well renowned banker. It was on their last visit that they decided to visit the town and greet many of its inhabitants. No one asked anything, of course, but they were all mesmerized when seeing the two women. They had nothing uncommon physically or anything but they just felt strange, like something was off about them but no one really knew what it was. After that visit, they would never come back to town or to the mansion. Only her mother would come and her father, but only some times.

 It was obvious that the man of the house had never liked the mansion or whatever it meant for him. Since the beginning, he would come and go so many times that people ignored his car after a while. People thought it was because of work but the truth was, according to the gardener that the man couldn’t stand to be in that mansion or in the presence of his wife. Somehow, and all staff agreed on this, he hated his wife and couldn’t even look at her. No one had ever seen them being nice to each other, not holding hands or sharing a nice moment. No, the woman was always crying or pacing around the house and the man would just leave and escape everything that tied him there.

 Then, one particularly hot summer, there was an explosion in the mansion that could be heard for many kilometers. Apparently it had been originated in the kitchen. The only casualty was the lady of the house. Every person in the vicinity was shocked to hear this but no one was able to go to her funeral. She was buried over night behind the house and that event marked the time when everyone left the mansion and its slow decay began. Some children now say that the tombstone in honor of the woman can still be seen but no adult had ever come that close to check by themselves. Everything had happened so fast that only years later people would start to remember and question: And the boy?

 Where was the little boy that the staff had sworn had always been kept in his room, only contacted by his parents? When the family left the mansion, no one ever saw a child with them and the gardener remembered clearly he only saw the girls and their father leave. So naturally, many people assumed the kid was still in the mansion. People would come to “rescue” him but then the visions started and no adult ever returned to the mansion. Only children that claim that the sounds where sometimes too much to bear. Some even confessed to have seen a face in the windows. But they didn’t saw a child, rather something much stranger and scarier. Something like the devil himself, they said.

What the past is telling me

   I woke up sweating, trembling a bit even. I had just had one of those dreams about the past, but one that was distorted and made me feel even more lost that what I was back in school. I turned around and realized, relieved, that Paul was there. For a moment, I had thought I was all alone and had to calm myself down by myself, which was difficult because I would always go back to what had made me feel so uneasy instead of calming myself down. But with him there, his warmth and even his smell, the task would be much easier. I just moved closer to him and he moved, putting his arm around me without waking up. With only that, I was able to fall asleep again and, this time, I didn’t have any horrible dreams. It was all blank, just like I preferred it.

 Some hours later, we were having something for breakfast and he asked me about my dream. He said he had heard me wake up but that he had been so tired he had fallen asleep again very fast. I told him nothing and I don’t really understand why. Not only were we closer than ever now, he was one of those people that make you feel good just by being there. But somehow, I decided not to say anything, only that I did not remember anything about the dream, which was I lie. I don’t think he bought that but that didn’t matter. I knew he wasn’t going to start asking more and more questions. That wasn’t he’s style. We just kept eating and said nothing more about my dream or anything related to that.

 Instead, he told me that he really wanted me to go to his next performance in a bar not very far away from my place. Paul was a musician and played the bass in a band. It wasn’t a rock band but I don’t know that much about music so every time someone asks me about what he did, I would say he’s a rocker or that he plays the bass, which makes me sound horribly ignorant. But weirdly enough, he has always liked me to say things like that. I think that’s why we got along so well since the first time we talk to each other. He perceived me as crazy and I felt the same vibe from him. The night we met we kissed and had sex, which made me think I would never see him again. I was so wrong.

 Karma has a way of doing things, or maybe it’s meant to be or whatever… Anyway, the thing was that I saw him everywhere. Every time I went for a beer with my friends, he would be playing with his band there or in the next pub or something. We would run into each other and it was very uncomfortable until he told me that he had being wanting to get my number but couldn’t find me online. I laughed at that remark, possibly because I thought that was something very nice to do and I just gave him my number and from then on we have being close to on e another, without labeling our current situation. He’s not my boyfriend or anything like that. We just spend time together.

 Anyway, I kept the dream to myself. At work, it kept haunting me. Different to other dreams, I remembered everything about this one. The faces, what people said, everything that happened. It was difficult to get away from it and I decided to confront it and just tell someone.  So I went to my best friend and told her everything. But her reaction was not what I was expecting. She told me to explain to her what made me uneasy from the dream because she didn’t understand what it was. I explained to her that the dream dealt with many of my high school classmates and the fact that I had pissed my pants out of fear once when I was like nine or ten. She ten became very serious and told me that probably it was something I had never faced and now it had decided to come back.

 But I didn’t want that to come back. I had worked for many years and with no rest, in order to make myself into someone less sensitive to mockery and laughter and such. Back then, people were very cruel and had treated me in a wrong way and my solution had been to become someone tough, lonely and very sarcastic. It worked beautifully because, although people still talked about me behind my back, I decided I didn’t care and they just wouldn’t say a word. When I graduated, I thought that would be a big shell to pull off my back, but it wasn’t. I realized I needed again, because I had begun dating and I had entered the gay world, which is more complex and awful than people realized.

 I just didn’t want to dream about it again. Yes, I had decided not to confront it and maybe that was why things happened but why confront that and how? Yes, I had being laughed at but who cares? Who hasn’t? I refuse to say I was bullied because that feels wrong, it feels wrong to say it because there was never something as harsh as that… I don’t know. That following night, Paul didn’t come to my house because he had worked to do in his. I realized I had to spend my night alone and that made me think for hours and hours before I went to sleep. With Paul, he had sex and then we fell asleep but without him it was difficult.

 The following day, something happened that made me feel that something didn’t want me to forget about those damn times in school. I was in the grocery store, more like a supermarket, checking for jams and just turned my head and so one of the jocks from high school. Of course, he wasn’t a jock anymore, he looked a bit bigger, much more stupid that ever before, but it was him and I could hear his laughter like in the dream. That distraction was worth a jar of strawberry jam that I mistakenly put in the air instead of the shelf. I was so ashamed with the lady that had to come cleaning and with every single member of the staff of that supermarket. I just paid for the smashed jam and left almost running.

 I got home fast and just stayed there for the rest of the day. I asked for some Chinese food and tried to distract myself with a movie but I had already seen it and I just felt like crying, which I ultimately did. I was sobbing like mad all alone on my sofa and the only thing I could think off was about calling Paul, so I did. I sounded pretty congested when I talked to him and he noticed it right away. I asked him if he could come home for a bit but he told me he was still finishing his work and had so much more to do. He asked me to tell him what was going on over the phone but I just hung up on him because I was disappointed. I had wanted to pull my heart out for him and apparently work was much more important so I called my best friend instead.

 When she arrived, I paid for her taxi because it was late and she did not live close by. As soon as we entered my apartment, I began crying again and just told her everything, how bad it felt that I had to hide my feeling just because some stupid fucking kids had been mean to me for doing something that was normal and for being afraid. They didn’t understand that I felt intimidated by them because they were all friends and I was the new kid that no one wanted to talk to because it felt as if had brought the plague to the school. I didn’t wanted to be popular or anything, I just wanted to fit in and they just gave me the fucking finger.

 And it had been like that for years and year afterwards. People always thinking I had nothing to say or nothing to share and they just put me aside. In college, it was so much better but then it was guys, because I had to like them and felt like shit because the gay fucking world is shallow and they only care if you looked good and I just had a low self-esteem and that didn’t help at all. No boyfriends in several years and the only guy I had met that met something had just refused to come to my home and spent some time with me, when I had been the one to go to his fucking concerts and support him every single time. I was disappointed, hurt and confused by it all.

 My friend took my hand and told me that what I was doing was necessary, to vent all my frustration out and realize what was really bothering. And that was that I felt I needed more than what I have been given. She thought that I had tried so hard to be away from people not to get hurt, that now my need for a human touch was greater that it could have been before and the person that I felt something for was just not there. We were nothing. Not that I needed a boyfriend but I needed commitment more than a name. And, apparently, Paul wasn’t the one to give me that. Besides, we were not “exclusive” and I knew there was at least another guy around. And now that I cared for him so much, it bothered me.

 She stayed the night and we watched movies and ate ice cream. Luckily it was a Thursday, so I could get to work late and my friend had her day off. We talk about her life too, her boyfriend and her crazy mother and I realized that she was one of the things I had always wanted from life: a true friend. I just needed to be a better one myself and realize what was else I needed and wanted for myself, because no one else would do it for me.