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.

You might go crazy

   Kareem had been having some very bad nightmares. So bad they were, that he had already gotten used to waken up two hours before it was needed to, drenched in sweat, with the sensation of having been screaming for a while. He had no idea if that was the case, but the sensation was more than enough to make him very uncomfortable. He would go then and shower right away, trying to clean away every single corner of his body. It wasn’t the sweat that made him do it, but the images in his brain after he had the nightmares.

 He would see them again, sometimes, as he walked from his home to the bus stop and also at work, where he was supposed to be focusing on sales and numbers. Kareem had always been very good at his job but his performance had steadily dropped from the moment his nightmares had started to the moment his boss called him to his office in order to explain to him how important it was for them all to have their employees focused on the job. It was a way of telling him that they would be many eyes on him from now on.

 When he got home from that, he realized that it was time to deal with the nightmares and, by definition, with whatever was causing them. He hadn’t been sick recently and he knew very well he hadn’t done anything wrong at work or to anyone else around him. His relationship with his family was a bit tense, but that had been happening for years. The nightmares couldn’t have any relation to that, unless his brain was too slow to understand how his familiar bonds were a problem to him and maybe to his way of life.

 He decided the first step was helping himself fall asleep faster and in a deeper way. So he started buying various types of teas and herbs to make infusions with, which he would take religiously before going to bed. Some of those worked and some others were definitive disasters. But even those that worked never did the same good job twice in a row. The nightmares always came back, one way or the other. He also tried exercising, which he had considered for a while but he was too lazy to properly commit to a workout routine.

 Kareem would go to the gym for an hour late at night and try to make himself as exhausted as he could. He would arrive home, shower in a few minutes and then just drop dead on the bed. It actually worked for a full week before, one Sunday morning, he woke up thinking he had wet himself on the bed. Thankfully, it was sweat, but that meant the nightmares had made a comeback. He even tried not sleeping at all but that caused even more problems at work, problems he just couldn’t afford to have. He was even summoned once more to his boss’s office for falling asleep at his desk.

 Kareem went to the nurse’s office located on the office building he worked for. After all, she was supposed to be there for all the employees of the company, which was one of the top investors in the region. So he just made an appointment with her on the phone and visited one day after work. He explained his whole problem to her and she asked for some time to reflect on it, as she couldn’t determine at first sight if there was something physically wrong with him. She also asked him to go to the hospital and get some tests done.

 He spent a whole Saturday doing that, which had to be the worst way to spend one’s weekend. He had to give a blood sample, a urine sample and a stool sample. He was also checked by at least three different doctors and even a psychiatrist appointment was scheduled. Everything was done to know what was going on with him and he was actually grateful so many people took an interest in his life. Actually, they were more interested in him not being able to sue the company, if they happened to be the ones to blame.

 The process took several weeks, in which Kareem still woke up sweating and screaming. He was so desperate and sad, that he started going to bars that closed late in order to have a drink and just avoid falling asleep. At least, he did avoid doing that at home. It was very uncomfortable when he was woken up by a very angry patron at a bar, where he had apparently fallen asleep and then started screaming like a lunatic. That just made him drink even more, which resulted in the formation of an addiction.

 He would go out at night and buy several beer cans and bottles, as well as wine boxes and sometimes other things that he could be able to afford with his salary. But all that booze was only making him fall more and more into an abyss, the same one to which his nightmares had been pushing him to. The day he found himself drenched in sweat, after passing out on the living room, all stained with vomit and alcohol, he knew he had to do something to really fight whatever was happening with him.

 But the doctors couldn’t find one single problem with his body or his mind. Kareem begged them to tell him he was insane or stupid or something, but they refused to do so. They insisted that there was nothing wrong with his and that his problems could be psychological. That was rapidly denied by the psychiatrist he had been forced to talk to, as he explained in a letter that Kareem was only a bit anxious and worried about his future, but that there was no evidence to support any other theory. So he had no answers and he was probably a lost cause.

 As a consequence, he was fired a week after the test results had been sent by mail to his boss. As the company had paid for every single test and appointment, they were obliged to notify his boss. The man treated Kareem very badly, practically ignoring all the good work he had ever done in there. He accused him of being just too lazy to realize and acknowledge that his work was too much over his head and that he wasn’t really able to deal with all of it. Kareem had to hear it all and then receive the letter were his firing was made official.

 He grabbed a box, threw all of his things inside and just left. He didn’t talk to anyone, as no one had had the balls to say something to his boss. Everyone had been able to hear what he told Kareem, as the offices were made of glass and nothing could be left to the imagination. But again, no one said anything and that hurt him deeply. He even grabbed a report he was working on, due a few days after that day, and just took it home to burn in the oven. The company depended on that report but Kareem had depended on them.

 After all of that, one would think the nightmares would have stopped. But they simply didn’t and Kareem dove even deeper into alcoholism. He was so out of himself sometimes that he would actually go out and just become that crazy person that yells crazy stuff on the street. That was how he was arrested one night, after running after a girl who had not wanted to tell him what time it was. Two police officers beat him and took him to the station.

 He was freed days later, because the woman had come and had decided to remove all charges against him. The police wanted Kareem to stay for longer, but they couldn’t do that. So they just threw him out. He was sober but very sad and walked the longest route to his house. When he got there it was very late and he wasn’t interested in all the emails and calls he had been receiving. He would deal with his former boss the next day. He just wanted to fall asleep and die or at least rest for a couple of hours, before the screaming began.

 However, he was woken up by his cellphone ringing loudly. He didn’t even know he had the volume on so high up. He almost didn’t answer but he decided to do it anyway. It was one of the doctors from the hospital with some very important news. He needed Kareem to come to his practice as soon as possible.

 In that doctor’s office, several medics and nurses were gathered. They announced that a very rare parasite had been discovered living inside of him. They had concluded all of his problems had come from the presence of that organism. Kareem stared at them for a while and then just left, in silence.

Today I'm sick

   Today I am sick. Today I feel awful and my environment is not helping at all. The guys I live with only know how to be gross and loud and that has always annoyed me. I mean, what has always annoyed me has been the fact that people are so oblivious of what they do and not do. People are sometimes disgusting but they don’t even realize it and me, as a person who claims to be clean and neat in general, I really don’t like it.

 Every single day those conversations in Arabic. Every fucking day. I don’t care where people are from; I couldn’t care less to be honest. But destiny had to put a person that talks in one of the most aggressive languages in the world just a window away from me. And, apparently, he speaks to every member of his family every single day of the year. That’s nice but couldn’t he do it in a lower volume and just type once in a while?

 Of course, people don’t have to live by what I feel or think but sometimes I know I’m right and I don’t need to test my theories because I simply know how to be a decent person. Other people are used to screaming, yelling whatever it is they want to communicate. I don’t. The only time I yell is when I’m desperate and I always do it with people I feel I know, not with a bunch of people I don’t really know nothing about.

 The same thing happens when I have to hear that same guy masturbate or do I don’t really know what. He’s apparently oblivious to the fact that he is really loud and that he has his window open every fucking day at every hour. The climate now is colder than some months ago. What is he thinking?

 I am sick but as in ill. My head hurts a lot, as if my brain had detached from the cranium and now it just moves around in there. My jaw also seems to pulsate with pain, my cheekbones and my throat. Passing saliva hurts a lot and I just want this to go away.

 I know this is my fault, I made it happen. I was silly enough to sleep one night with no socks or a t-shirt and that is suicide when temperatures can get very low at night. I assume all responsibility for getting this virus but I want to get rid of it too, I want to make it go away and feel good again. I hate to be sick and feel defenseless and confused.

 It hurts even more because I’m alone. There’s no one here to help, there’s no one who can even care about how I feel. I don’t have the things I need close to me because I am always distracted and never focused on what I should be focused. I miss them now, as I miss them very single day of my life. I miss my bed.

Damn it… My belly hurts now and I don’t even remember what I ate yesterday. Nothing “dangerous”, that I now off. But it hurts a lot and also does my back and my chest and, again, my throat. I think I just want to lay here in my bed for the rest of the day but I have a problem with that and it is the fact that I need to get out and by some medicine so this can go away quicker.

 Sadly, I don’t live in a normal place when pharmacies have delivery to your home or even online service. No, apparently the XXIst century hasn’t reached this so-called “first world country”. Which, in many aspects, it’s a shame.

Again, loud noises. Again, doors are being slammed and steps been walked with those shoes that looked donated from a war. Yes, I am the kind of person that just people for how they look in general. Call me an awful human being then and move along.

 It hurts too much and I have no idea why I decided to write something today. Maybe it’s guilt that I didn’t write last Sunday or maybe it’s because I feel I need to prove myself to people I don’t even know every single day of the year. But not today, not anymore.

 I don’t feel good so let’s leave it here, half the normal size. We will see each other tomorrow, I hope.

Hate

   They all hate him. I know I do. He acts all perfect and many people around here think he is just that: perfect. I bet he hide so many thinks beneath those stupid smiles and acts of kindness. No human person is like that; we all act of cowardice or shame but never just because we are good. We just want to be it so bad we go to great lengths to transform in those idiotic beings that just spit positivity.

 He’s a fake. I just know it. He gave everyone a present on his floor last Christmas and even organized a party for them, dressed as Santa Claus. And people danced around him like dogs under the hypnosis of a really good trainer. It was disgusting how they looked, as if they were in the presence of God himself or at least one of the many saints. And he even acts the part, always helping and doing and being all over the place.

 Was he fat as a kid? Or did his parents maybe hate him? No, of course not. That wouldn’t have happened to him. People said that he would speak of his childhood often, remembering how it was all easier. Ha! Easier than now, when almost every single idiot in this office building treats him like his a deity? I doubt it. He must have been one of those insufferable jocks, full of himself, with everyone cheering around just because he looked like some guy from a magazine.

 I always try to get away from people like that. All they do is treat people like the stupidest of pets, making them do, as he wants. He doesn’t even have to ask, which is even more revolting. They just do it, as if getting the reward of his smile was more than enough to feed their children or pay their bills. I’ve heard them, women and children worshipping him in the elevator, talking about how kind and sensitive he is.

 People will believe anything if they want to, even if it kills them. They’re not smart enough to feel, to sense. I laugh in my head overtime they organized that annoying secret valentines game. They always try to pull me into that and, once, I almost agreed to do it. At the end of the day, I’m not much more smart than they are and I do work here with them. But then they spoke of how that stupid fuck was organizing it all. So I just said no and left for my house.

 Days after that I ran into him. He smiled to me! As I was a friend or one of his dogs. I just got out of the elevator and went to the bathroom, as I had no need to stand more than a minute in the presence of that cheeky smug smile, expecting me and anyone else to do the same. I want him to know that we’re not all enthralled by his physical appearance and his effort to be liked by everyone.

 He wants us all to like him? Then he should behave like any other of us, just work and shut the fuck up. We don’t wanna know about his colorful life full of beauty, and style and drama that’s only dramatic to him. Of course, he has been employee of the month so many times, no one even asks anymore about the picture they take when you win. They even said he asked fro the pictures to be removed, as he didn’t want to be disliked.

 Funny he said that, if he did say that is. Because I don’t dislike him. I don’t. Don’t ever get me wrong there. I hate him. I fully and truly hate his guts. I hate his smile, I hate those pictures of everyone’s holidays they put up once on the company’s Facebook page. Of course he was on a beach somewhere half around the world, tanned and his body ridiculously fit and lean. It was obvious that he was perfect in every fucking sense. And I hate that.

You may calm me resented or that I envy him. Maybe, I would not know if that is so. What I do know is that a fucking hate that guy and everything he stands for. He makes people feel less than they are and then he just greets them and think that will make everybody feel better because, like the Pope, he stretches the hand of all those less fortunate. And those poor devils do think that they are his friends just because he smiles at them or because they hear one of his stupid little stories.

 I’ve gone to the doctor, the shrink that is. Believe me, I’m not happy thinking about that guy every day in the office. So I went to see one of those doctors and he says I’m obsessive and I’m looking to deep into it. He tells me I should just leave it at that and live for myself. But I can, I have explained to him. How can I have time for my own when I have to go to that damn floor everyday and hear him make one of his lectures to people.

 That doctor doesn’t know I feel ill, sick to my stomach every time I hear that man’s voice. Many people say you can’t really hate, that it takes something really strong to feel that for someone. I tell you, I didn’t take a lot for me to feel what I feel. And it is hate, and I hate that feeling too. I have a life, not much but I do have it and I don’t want to spend it thinking of some male model that parades around.

 He hypnotized me once, that doctor. I thought the idea was stupid but I let him do it, as I wanted peace for once on my mind. He said, after I woke up or however you name it, that I have dangerous tendencies towards criminal behavior and that I have deep problems rooted in my brain. Fuck, what an idiot that doctor is. I could have told him that myself, awake and for a cheaper price. Of course, I never went back to see him. I don’t need people charging me for telling me the obvious.

 I want to kill him. That’s what the doc meant. And I have thought of it many times, carefully. I do it before I go to sleep or when I daydream at work. Some days ago he came to my corner and asked me for some papers. I wanted to throw up, right there. Sick isn’t it? Then, as I reached for the papers without saying a single word, I imagined punching him to his death. How beautiful would he look like with blood all over his face?

 This is not good. I know killing is a bad thing, that’s obvious. But what can I do? Every single time I see him, that strange rush invades my whole body and makes me feel like I could really do it. You know? I’ve thought several ways to do it, all of them fun to me. Of course I don’t share this with anyone. People would overreact and say I’m mass murderer or some shit like that. And the truth is I just want HIM dead. I know if I do it, I wouldn’t do it again. No need to.

 The day after he asked me for those papers, I decided I would follow him to his house. Why? Easy: before he dies I want him to tell me what lies beneath that entire perfect surface. Because, as you know, I don’t believe for a second all of those nice little details about his life and how he loves everyone and so on. I know there must be something really rotten below all that beauty. There always is. No one is perfect in this world and, the better the cover, the nastier the secrets.

 So I followed him down to the basement, because he’s one of few that comes work by car. And then it struck me: it doesn’t matter. His life, what he has or hasn’t done. I don’t give a fuck about that. What I really care about is the image he gives to the world. He might fuck children, kill whores or spread STD’s. I don’t care. I care about that fake smile he gives to everyone he meets. I want that finished.

 Yesterday, I almost went for it. I went to the bathroom to pee and he went in to and went for one of the stalls. We were alone. He was whistling. The rush came back and I knew that was the perfect moment. I could strangle him myself with my hands, seeing his soul leaving his body and his smile finally disappearing from his face. But when I decided to do it, another man came in and I just went out, breathing heavily as if I had been running.

 Then comes today. The guy announce to everyone, as if he was the president, that he will be leaving us to pursue other endeavors. I almost went crazy when I heard about it. But then, I relaxed. My life could get back to normal and I could make all these thoughts go away. Him leaving would be my cure. And the only person that would ever know about this all would be me because here, inside my head, there’s only me. And I’m thankful for that.