Hospital

  I wanted to get out. I wanted to scream too. But I couldn’t. My mouth couldn’t open so, of course, no voice or sound could come out. I cried though, that was one of the things I was able to do. My tears tasted funny, salty but weird. I got tired of crying after a while and then I just feel asleep. When I woke up, some doctor was poking at the machine that was connected to my body. He didn’t even look at me, as if I wasn’t there. He just wrote some things on a note pad and then left, leaving me trying to ask what had happened.

Because, no matter how much I tried, there was no way I could remember what had happened. I was certain I had been sick for a couple of days at home, some kind of flu or maybe a virus inside the stomach. It was awful but not strange, nothing out of the ordinary. And suddenly, one day, I woke up in that hospital feeling as if I had been beating up by someone. From the first moment, I wasn’t able to speak and whatever the put in my veins was making me doubt every single thing that I thought when I was awake.

 My body always felt awful. I was hurting too much every day and it felt there was something strange. One would think I would feel better as the days went by but I didn’t. I was feeling just as bad on day one as on the other ones. I don’t even know how long I was there. One night though, I heard something odd. Someone was crying very loudly and then she began to scream. She screamed for a long while until the voice stopped. Somehow, hearing her had made me feel a bit better, as if I could finally step out of that bed.

 But I didn’t do that. I glanced at the machine that was connected to me and realized it was probably telling the people in that place how I was feeling and maybe even what I was doing. If I disconnected it, maybe they would notice it in a few minutes and I would be caught before I could imagine a plan to get out of that place. I had to be smarter than them; I had to really think of a good plan to run away, to escape what was most likely some kind of prison or mental hospital. An awful place in any case.

 They kept injecting me with the same drugs but, luckily, I realized they really didn’t work anymore. My sore legs and arms where fighting the poison they were pumping in my veins. I felt better by the hour and they had no idea. I was tempted to smile but I still couldn’t do that. For some strange reason, I wasn’t able to speak yet. I couldn’t make any sounds but I had grown accustomed to that. In my head, there was only the idea of escaping that place and talking had nothing to do with that. I had already come up with a plan and didn’t even care if it could be successful.

  That very night, I stood up for the first time in a long time and I grabbed the machine to avoid getting disconnected from it. I then peaked through the nearest window, which was almost impossible as it was a bit higher than me. I had to stand on the tip of my toes in order to look down at a large yard made of stone. It had been raining. There was no one outside and the place looked as if it wasn’t precisely populated by many people. By the look of the place, it seemed to be far away from any city or town.

I then walked to the down and realized it wasn’t locked. They didn’t have a reason to lock the doors as they kept me, and probably all other patients, too drugged up to even walk around the room. I have to confess that I wasn’t feeling perfect right then, but I had to do something soon because I didn’t know why they were keeping us there. Maybe the final step in their “care” for us was to kill us. So waiting forever was not really the best choice. I just had to do something, no matter the result.

 I opened the door a bit, enough to look outside. It was very dark and even colder than inside the room. I couldn’t hear any sound, not a voice or anything else. I closed the door and faced the biggest problem I had: the chord in the machine was not long enough for me to parade around the hallway outside without the nurses and doctors noticing I wasn’t in my bed anymore. So I had to make a choice. It didn’t took me very long to decide to rip off the thing that was loading drugs into my system.

 The moment I did it, my body felt a little bit weaker but I had to go out soon and run down the hallway, hoping the nurses and doctors were kept away from the rooms outside of their working hours. It seemed I was right, because I didn’t see any of them as I descended to the ground floor. It was only when I got to the yard I had seen from above, that I actually saw a group of them running up the stairs, probably going to my room. I hid in the shadows for a bit and then stepped outside, in order to find an exit.

 It seemed nature wanted me to be successful because a storm begin brewing in a few moments and then rain came down hard. The water and the mist caused by the cold was enough to hide my body from my captors. I stepped out into the garden and tried finding a way out. But there was a tall brick wall all around the compound. So I had to make an effort, I had to make myself feel like shit once again, swallow all the pain in order to finally escape. I jumped many times until I finally got a grip and then my muscles ached as I hoisted my body to the other side of the wall.

 Everything hurt, but I knew I couldn’t just stay there complaining. I ran through some fields of wild flowers and then deeper into a forest. I had no idea where I was; I wasn’t able to recognize anything about my surroundings. But I was certain that no hospital of that kind could be too far away from some town or city. They probably needed a supermarket for groceries and pharmacies to get some of the drugs. At least I hoped that’s the way it all worked, because I had no other thing to do.

 The forest was rough and I had to stay there overnight. It was too dense and there was nothing I could grab to eat, but somehow I felt much better there than in the hospital. I felt all the drugs coming out of my body as I peed and sweated, feeling much better by the next morning. I walked even more that day and was lucky enough to find a small village. I got there walking by the road. I hoped not to look too scary, but there wasn’t a lot I could do related to that. I just needed to do something, to take the final risk.

 The first person that saw me was a little boy and that wasn’t probably the best thing ever. He got scared and called her mother, who came by very fast. I tried to talk again, but I couldn’t. She screamed and said things and I felt very dumb for not realizing that it would be very hard to communicate with others without being able to talk. So I just knelt in front of them and tried to show them how defenseless I was and how much in need of their help I was. I stayed like that for a while, until they left.

 I thought they had been scared and had just run away, but they did come back in a few minutes with a policeman. I was glad to see someone that could actually help me. I knelt again and put my hands together, trying to make him understand that I couldn’t talk. He apparently understood. He asked me to come with him and I nodded. He put me inside his car and we then rode for a while, until we got to the police station. There, some doctor checked on me, which made me feel awful but I knew it was necessary.

 Luckily, I still remembered how to write. My hands were not very ready to do it, but it was clear enough for the cops to understand. They sent patrol cars to the hospital and freed many people that were being submitted to experimental drugs of many kinds. None of them could talk either.

 I eventually realized I wasn’t in my own country.  I couldn’t remember everything from my past but it was clear I was completely out of my element. I had to learn to be unable to speak and it took me a while to get to the memories that would help me getting back home.

Every day is a raining day

   Every day is a raining day. Or at least that’s what it seems like these days. A storm follows another storm, which follows one more after that. There are only a few hours each day for people to get from one place to the other without being drenched in water. The rest of the time is almost impossible to look beyond oneself. There’s this mist that accompanies the rain, a strange vapor that seems to set in whenever water comes down pouring and those are the things some people thrive in.

 Not most but some. Some like to live in the dark, in alleys and dimly lit corridors. They even fear the light and what it brings, the people it lets into their lives. They’d rater stay in the shade with the other creatures of the darkness, as it is more comfortable for them and for the dealings they do with others like them. We all know what happens in those places, in those corners of the world we never really see but that we can imagine, with the distorted help of media, such as movies and television shows.

 The truth is that the darkness is way darker and grittier than we think. It’s not just about ugly people doing ugly things. It’s about every single kind of person doing things that we cannot even imagine. It’s about their lives, taking a turn for the worse and having to head for those shadows in order to survive, probably doing things that we think we would never do. But we haven’t fallen to the darkness, not yet anyways. We don’t even fear that happening because we feel it will never happen to us.

 But it does, all the time and everywhere. There are people right now; doing things they have to do in order to survive the day, maybe even to get some money to have something to eat. It won’t be a nice meal, a complete set of vegetables and proteins. It will most likely be something not very sanitary but cheap enough to sustain a body and a soul for a little longer. It’s what they have and what they can afford. And most of the times, they don’t even care. They just need the fuel to keep going.

 Eating is not a priority in their lives. Some of them don’t even do it often and they have lost all taste for things that they may have loved in their past, their better past. Food is a luxury to think about and to have. They go seeking other stuff, harder stuff; in order to be able to stay up all day doing whatever it is they need to do. Some of them sell drugs, some others sell themselves. Some kill and some are escaping people that want them dead. It’s the lowest and grimiest circle of life, one that barely exists and its filled with the worst this world can produce, which happens to be more than one would think.

 Once they hear thunder in the distance, they run to their hiding spots. These creatures, these people if that’s how you want to call them, they don’t really have a home. They have places to stay and the most fortunate ones amongst the unfortunate have a room somewhere that they can call their own. But it never feels like a proper home because most of the things there are not really theirs, the place is not theirs and they can never stay there for long. It’s just a place to go if they need such a thing, and a storage room.

 Everything is different in the dark. Not only you have to be stronger than in most places, you also have to be a bit smarter than the rest or at least more intuitive than in the real world. People will want to deceive you and there’s not really someone to trust fully. There are no friends or family, they are just people that are ok in one moment and then enemies or strangers the next second. It changes that fast because it has to, because it is a world in a never-ending flux.

 They also feel, like us. That’s not really different. The thing is they have to mask those feelings and even make them harder to manifest. They will love someone if the proper situation arises, they will also hate them with ease. But feelings can be dangerous to have in such a place because they are a weakness others can exploit. So you have to be tough, you have to be a rock even if you do feel like any other human being. Because they’re also humans, just ones that have ran out of any luck.

 Luck is not only about being fortunate enough to have a loving family and the right set of opportunities in life. Luck is also that thing that always seems to help you in moments when nothing seems to be able to give you a proper hand. We are all lucky, up here. In one way or the other. But down there, there is no luck. You actively have to know how to survive; you have to think your every move. One misstep, and you are out. And when you are out in the darkness, the consequences are much more serious.

 The darkness feeds on those who inhabit it. It’s a symbiotic relationship that is very tense and can break in any moment. That’s why those who live in it have to be careful. They don’t have one second to stop and think about life and feelings and how everything around them happens or doesn’t happen. They don’t have that luxury. They have to keep moving, keep doing things in order for their head to stay above water level. Because if for only little moment they forget where they are or who they are, they will drowned in the deep darkness of the world.

 And there’s nothing or no one that can help after that. In this world you are on your own and that is even more of a reality down there. Things may hurt and be scary but the real trick is to adapt fast and use who you are to stay in the most advantageous position you can be in.

 It’s not always easy and many; actually most of those who live in the dark, die without anyone else in the world knowing what ever happened to them. And that’s sad but its also not surprising seeing the kind of species we have become, one that is more than carnivorous but does eat one piece of meat.

Took me long enough

   It hadn’t really been a nightmare. I mean, my body hurt and the things I saw didn’t made me jump of happiness but it actually wasn’t a good dream either. It was just a very strange dream in which I had seen people that hadn’t been close to me for a long time. In the dream, we even slept in the same bed, we spent a long time together, sharing moments that only really good friends would share. I don’t remember, but it felt as if I had been dreaming about work but we did not work once during the dream, we just moved around, not worried about anything in the world. It felt so strange.

 It was even stranger when I woke up and tried to make sense of it. My body was actually tied, as I had really been running around my room the whole evening. Those kind of dreams also made my head hurt because the involved an especially big investment of memory and all the imagination I could use. Besides that, my body tended to get very tense when I dreamt about something so tense. Once, my teeth had been grinding so hard against one another that one of them lost a tiny part that I probably swallowed or something.

 I have no idea why it is that I dreamt such a weird scenario, but I did. We were all in a bed, the biggest bed ever I believe. And then this guy that wanted to have sex with me kept insisting all night, even after I had given him a reason to stop insisting with it. I had helped him, if that is the correct expression, but he wanted more and more, touching me and trying to get closer and closer and I pushed back as strongly as I could because, after all, I didn’t wanted to wake everybody up just because that guy was been such a dick.

 But then he tried to do it without permission, almost forcing me to have him. So I pushed and directed what he was using to annoy me towards the guy that was sleeping on the other side. I have no idea what exactly happened, but the other guy almost jumped out of bed and they had some sort of argument that I couldn’t clearly hear. Surprisingly, some moments later, no sound could be heard in that room, except for my breathing and the tossing and turning of the guy that he had directed the annoying guy towards. He realized he was a friend from college.

 Maybe friend was a bit of a stretch because they had never really been friends in the traditional sense. We did study together but that’s as much we had in common. He was from another country and he tended to be always in a mood that would be more appropriate to a rich intellectual. He was always musing about poems and writers. That was in the real world though. In the artificial world, he seemed to love attracting looks to his face. He was annoying in real life; of course he had to be it too in that weird dream.

 However, in my dream, I tried to talk to him the day after what happened and he does talk but he doesn’t say anything about what happened. He really seems like a douchebag but I know the real one is not really like that. I mean, he doesn’t get that far from that description, but I always told him that he was so kind and smart; he could be whomever he wanted with all that knowledge. But that’s who he was, a guy that love to attract attention to himself and that’s fine because at least it’s real, that’s really him and that’s how people should love him.

 The rest of the characters in my weird dream are a little harder to point out. That’s because there were only two that kind of behaved like protagonists and all the rest were just filler, floating around with no real purpose. The other guy was someone I was sure to know but that I couldn’t really place anywhere. I know there is someone like that close by or at least I have met someone exactly like that but I have no idea from what world I drove him out of. All that dreaming and nightmares and so on, made me feel kind of tired.

 I stood up from my bed, and soon realized how early and dark it was. I hadn’t woken up at that time for a while, since I was in high school to be honest. The world outside same to be drenched in a storm made of the color blue. It was just my imagination, I guess. I decided to step into my shower and get cleaned and presentable in order to start the day, even if that day happened to be a Sunday. I had the whole weekend to think about what had happened in my dream. I thought I wanted to let it go, but no, I just couldn’t stop thinking about it.

 Especially about that guy that was basically harassing me. He was really coming forward to me as if we had met before. I was sure we had but I couldn’t remember when and that had really happen or at least I was almost certain it had. The warm water in the shower helped me realize that I did know that guy but only by sight. He was one of my followers on the social network. We hadn’t met or anything but we wrote one another very frequently or at least that was some months ago. I had no idea what had happened to him.

 Maybe he was so very well inscribed in my subconscious that my brain decided to be turned into that villain that we see throughout the movie. Or maybe I actually knew how much I liked him and just wanted him so much that I decided, in my dream, to try and have something with me. Of course, that would make me the one to blame for whatever happened during that whole strange experience. I was fine with that. I just wanted to understand it all.

 I think I wanted that to happen. I mean, not what happened with my college friend in the dream but rather what the other guy was asking from me. After all, it wasn’t everyday that I found someone that wanted me so badly. It had a very bad side to it, of course, but somehow, in a very very sick way, it was a very attractive thing to happen. That’s why in the dream, even there, I was willing to have sex with him once, just to enjoy the feeling of how I would love to have someone that actually wanted me and no one else, even if I was only for sex.

 I got out of the shower and dried myself up pretty slowly. It was a strange dream, just a very weird dream that I should leave behind but I just couldn’t because it was so vivid in my head. I went back to my room and let myself fall into my bed. I was in a towel and kind of wet and even so I didn’t really care about anything else than that feeling that I really was in conflict over something that shouldn’t entail any kind of conflict. It was just a dream and that’s that. I had to learn to let go of things that weren’t’ there to help me but to disturb me.

 I actually fell asleep for an hour or so. When I woke up, I was bit shaken because it was very cold and the towel had fallen to the ground. I was almost freezing so I put some clothes on and decided to go out for a bite, in order to remove his face and presence from my head, from both the good and the bad part of the dream. I couldn’t keep trying to make head or tails of it, so I just wanted to have some peace, at least for a little while. Going out was a good idea.

 I first went to a fast food place and I thought I had seen him there. And then I thought I had seen him in a bookstore and so on. He was everywhere and my mind was obsessed about a person that I didn’t even know who it was. I decided to go back home and just try to relax and distract myself. That worked just fine because I decided to simply not think about it any of it, not what happened or how it had felt. It was all out of me for the time being and I truly hoped to be able to have a normal sleep know that I had gotten over it.

 But then, when I fell asleep again, he came back and he was clearer this time. What I mean was that I could see his face in something very similar to high definition. Thank to that, I realized I had never really met that person. But then I realized something else: as I got closer to him and raised my hand, he grabbed it and caressed his cheek with it, and then he kissed my fingers and looked at me straight in the eye. What happened was that I had fallen in love with someone I didn’t know. How was that possible? Was he real, somewhere or was he just an illusion I had built for myself?

Mirrored

   The ship gently settled on the ground. It made no noise, it lifted no dust. Everything was very quiet and, for a place were rocks floated all around you, there wasn’t a single sense of danger. The crew of the ship, consisting of only three people, were checking the final numbers in order to decided if it was really safe to go outside and take a look.

 The planet was a gas giant and it had been discovered many years ago by traders trying to built faster routes into the worlds of the Core. Actually, according to the charts and many calculations, the planet was located exactly between the center and the edge of the galaxy. It was also a rare system, as the sun was potent and such have been the center of a very active neighborhood but the truth was that no creatures, no matter the type, lived in any of the planets.

 However, and exactly four months ago, a signal had been detected in the gas giant. First, it was thought to be a mistake but the signal persisted. Then it went mute. The traders and even the smugglers told the authorities that they hadn’t lost any ships and no other ships had been lost in the area. So who had activated a very strong signal on a deserted planet?

 The three-person team had been sent to collect data about the planet and check if there was a reason to believe anyone could be stranded on the planet. Upon arrival to its orbit, the team named the planet as Cotton World. It was not an official name of course. It was just a way to identify it and feel more comfortable while talking about it. The name, of course, came from its appearance: the world was covered by huge pink clouds that made the world look like a massive cotton candy. As they descended through the clouds, they realized that the name had been very accurate as the clouds were not only pink in color but were also kind of solid.

 The first to go out was the biologist on the team. Her name was Yarra and she came from a very different world, a world she deemed incredibly boring and that’s why she decided to have many adventures by joining the forces of authority that ruled the galaxy, Besides, she had always been interested in life and in all the shapes and sizes it took all over the galaxy. She had been working for the State for four years and she loved it: she traveled a lot, got to meet lots of people and made good money out of it.

 Yarra was half human but even her other half couldn’t breath on this planet, so she had to use a special suit to be able to walk around without fear. She only took a couple of steps before returning to the ship and telling the other two crew members that the rock seemed stable and that it was urgent that they began the search for the beacon that had been detected. After all, that was the reason they were there.

 The next one to step out was a big, yellowish creature. He wasn’t human at all but had many features that one could identify as human. The only things that really differentiate him were a horn in the center of his forehead, his large tusks, his four arms and tall stature. His name was Gorg and he always seemed menacing at first but he was the most tender and calm being ever to be seen by anyone. He was happy by just helping and had joined the force almost seven years ago. Granted, he was very strong and could fight any kind of danger physically, but he was first and foremost a physicist.

 Gorg was simply in awe of the Cotton World. In all his travels he had never encountered something quite like this place. The fact that sound didn’t seem to function exactly as it did in the rest of the planets, was something he wanted to understand urgently. But Yarra was right and their priority was to explain the origin of a beacon signal that had been detected in far way worlds. In order to do their examinations, Gorg put on his suit and carried a large antenna outside, as well as a special console and computer which they used to detect any electric emissions. No matter the type of beacon, it would leave an imprint in the atmosphere if it existed.

 The third crew member was the captain. He was full human and his name was Ionek. His skin had been burned by many suns so he had patches of red and brown all over. His eyes were yellowish, although they could change color depending on his mood. He was a tall strong man and he had been known many years ago as a military hero all over the galaxy. He had served in the army for many years before having to step out of it due to a scandal that he had to pay for. The only option they gave him was to have his own ship and serve the State with it.

 Ionek did what he had to do but he was always clear that exploration and discovery weren’t his first choices in a world where so many wars and battles were being fought. He wanted carnage and destruction but had to settle to be the pilot of some scientist trying to discover why fire burns. So he just sat down in his captain chair and tried to have a nap as the other two investigated outside.

 After several hours, Gorg and Yarra detected something very weak but still trying to work. It was located directly below them, maybe four or five kilometers. They copied the information on an electronic pad and then packed everything in order to investigate closer. Ionek wasn’t very happy that his nap had been cut short but at least he didn’t have to move too far. The trip downwards was an easy one but it wasn’t deprived of a few scares, mainly because the clouds and the environment got darker as the ship sank into the planet.

 Finally, they detected a rock they could land on and Ionek settled on it, but this time landing wasn’t as soft as it had been the last time. When they came out of the ship to check, they realized one of the landing “legs” had sunk into the rock and was now trapped in there. Captain Ionek wasn’t pleased at all and asked Yarra and Gord to be fast in order to mend the damage to his ship immediately. They then took the electronic pad and walked around the rock, trying to detect the signal again. But what they saw wasn’t a signal or a beacon but something far stranger.

 Below, another kilometer maybe, there was another ship on another rock. But that wasn’t the strange part: the strange part was that the ship looked exactly like the one they had used to get there. Both Yarra and Gord looked below and then their ship and then back again down. They couldn’t believe it at first but then they realized that the model was not that uncommon and that the most important thing was to determine who had entered the planet if it was supposed to be deserted.

 They went back to the ship, where Ionek asked if they could leave at once but they refused, telling him about the ship below and how they had to go down there and check it out from up close. The captain refused to move his ship and clarified that the model was exclusive, or at least that was what the army said when they transferred him from the military. Yarra ignored that last part and told him they were using the jetpacks. Nothing indicated they couldn’t use them and it would be easier for them to investigate that way.

 Minutes later, Gorg and Yarra were floating down to other ship. The jetpacks worked a bit awkwardly, not responding fast enough, but they were good enough to get to the next rock. Once they were close enough to the ship, they started to check for life forms and found out they were three and they were all inside the ship. Gorg turned to Yara and urged her to leave. He had suddenly had a very bad feeling about it all.

 Then two shadows crossed the sky and the whole area became shrouded in darkness. It was as if they had landed on a dream that was about to turn into a nightmare. The team tried to active the jetpacks but they were slow to respond. Gorg’s made him fly but Yarra’s wasn’t working. It was then when she heard a sound coming from the ship and, at the same time, a device in her backpack started to beep. She had found the beacon. It had been put up by…

 She screamed but no one heard it as she was wearing a mask. She did it just as she had seen the crew of the other ship come out of the ship and walk towards her. Her jetpacked suddenly worked and she landed abruptly on the right rock. Gorg helped her up and they both ran to the ship. Ionek used every force the engines had to liberate it from the sink part and he succeeded, only by leave that part on the rock before rushing into space.

As he typed the codes to achieve interstellar flight, he asked them what had happened. His ship was know missing a limb and he wanted to know why. Gorg told him everything he had seen: the other ship and the shadows. But Yarra was shaking and trembling too much. She only said two words “beacon” and “us”.