Torn

   I just kept running, until I woke up and realized there was nothing to run away from. I was sweating a bit and breathing heavily, as if I had really been running on the street. I just sat down on my bed and tried to calm down. There was nothing more that I could do than calm down and try to sleep again. After all, I had woken up at five in the morning and it was a Saturday. I decided to go to the kitchen, have some orange juice and then go back to my bed and lay there until sleep appeared again. To be honest, I was a bit scared of dreaming all of that again but I knew that was very unlikely. When I got sleepy again, I just covered myself entirely with the sheets and the bedspread. I didn’t dream a thing and woke up some four hours after, not really rested but at least calmed.

 That day, I decided to visit my family’s grave in the cemetery. I don’t know why, but I needed to do that. Somehow, I thought those awful dreams had come again only because my family was resentful of me not tending to them properly, not even thinking about them or putting some flowers on their graves. SO that was exactly what I did. I bought the most beautiful little bouquets and put them on their graves. I didn’t pray, I never did, but instead tried to apologize to them because I had been such a bad son. I knew coming to a cemetery didn’t really change anything, but I knew that I had left my family to one side, as if they had never existed. I cried a bit while asking for forgiveness and it was then that she appeared.

 It sounds insane but she was the woman of my dreams. And by that I mean she’s the one that appears there every time. I didn’t remember if she had a name in my dreams but once I saw her straight into the eyes, I realized she knew exactly whom I was and was there to talk to me. However, we just looked at each other as if talking or moving was the stupidest thing we could ever do. But finally, it was me who asked her what she was doing there, why she had come. The woman seemed confused at first, but then realized something and a smile appeared on her lips. She just said “I’ll be waiting in the car” and turned around. Ten minutes later, after saying goodbye to my parents, I was walking towards a car I knew to be hers, even if I hadn’t see it before.

 I opened the passenger door and sat down. I closed the door and she started the engine. She told me my car would be at my home in no time, but I didn’t care because I was beginning to fell like in my dream. Not as scared but I knew something was coming and I had to be calm in order to get to the bottom of everything. The woman drove the car out of the city and after an hour we had traveled several kilometers. We finally arrived to a small, quiet town, where se parked the car in the main square and told me to follow her, once again. We walked two blocks and then we entered a house.

 The house was not abandoned or anything. There was a family watching TV there but they seemed to ignore us, or something stranger… We crossed the house to the other side, where we got to a different street. There, the woman waited for a moment and hen opened another door I hadn’t even seen. I followed her and realized it was the same place where I had been tortured in my dreams.  I turned around to escape but the door was locked. She had sat down on a very old chair and seemed to be in deep thinking about who knows what. It didn’t seem that the torture would continue but, still, I was very nervous and had no intention of staying there more than was necessary. I wondered who she was and why I was following her like a mad man but felt the answers would not come easily.

 She finally seemed to remember where she was and walked towards me. She got closer, as if she want to kiss me but in reality she just checked my neck. Then, I felt a very horrible pain in the neck, where she had touched, falling to the ground as if was much more pain than I could resist standing up. Somehow, it felt like I had blood all over my hands and neck but when the pain passed, I realized there was nothing there, I was clean. I could see that she was now by a table, checking something that was apparently small in size. I had a thought of killing her and ending all of this in a single moment but then I realized I had nothing to do it with. Not a knife or even a good piece of wood.

 The woman turned around and indicated me to come to her side. I complied, but I really didn’t trust her and I did it even less now that she had taken something from me. That something was the thing she had been checking on the table, a small object shaped like a cylinder. Actually, it was bigger than what I felt in my dreams and the moment she had taken it out. And why wasn’t there any blood if that thing had been inside of me? I realized then that I had been left alone, that the woman was nowhere to be seen. I ran to the door and realized it was still locked, putting a very string barrier between me and everything outside. I wanted to run away, to just stop reliving that stupid dream but I couldn’t, somehow it was all real.

 I checked the object on my hand and felt something strange, as if I knew what it was used for. My gut told me it was some kind of implant to follow me, to make sure I did whatever the person that had put that on me wanted me to do. But why would I be of anyone’s interest? I was a failed artist that survived working the most menial job in a bank where, every single day, I just wanted to kill myself or at least kill several other people. Why would anyone be interested in following me or doing anything to my life or my body? Weren’t there others that were at least much more interesting in any aspect?

 The woman came back but this time she didn’t lock the door. She told me she had been checking on the object with people she knew and realized it was an old implant that was no longer functioning on the moment of extraction. She also said that, while it had probably some effect on my behavior for the last few years, it had stopped whatever it was it was meant to do several years ago. But that was even stranger because why would someone put an implant on a young person that had nothing to gain or loose form life? Why where they monitoring me? And who were they?  But she didn’t have those answers, she said she only tracked to device and found me and just needed to know which ones were still active and which ones weren’t.

 Apparently, although she didn’t say it in full words, she was doing all of this out of guilt. She had worked with the creators of the devices and now felt it was her moral obligation to remove them all; before they had any serious consequences on the people they had been implanted in. It was pretty alarming, but during all that time she was talking, explaining her reasons and trying for me to understand who she was and what she had been doing, I just wanted to kill her. It was a feeling I had never felt before, like an urge but it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. I wanted to feel her neck broken in my hands and the taste of her blood. And then, I noticed she had seen it in me.

 Too late. I launched myself at her and tried to strangle her with my own two hands. I pressed hard, feeling her fighting against my superior strength and superior mind. Her life was running out and I smiled because that’s what I wanted. I not just her but everyone else too. I realized my goal was to kill every single person in the world and that, if I wanted to do it, I could do it. I smile even more and when she stopped breathing, I laughed and felt like I was in the happiest place in the world. I left her lifeless body on the floor and the smiled all around me, realizing my poor and might and thinking of how much more I could do for my needs and for me. The world was absolutely mine.

 I got out of the house and walked up the street, now in the dark as the night had fallen during my stay in that awful place. I kept smiling for some more until I got a bullet straight between my eyes and fell to the ground. I died instantly but the fun part was that I hadn’t died. Somewhere far away, I woke up again and realized something worse had been done to me. Not only that device had turned me into a murder, it wasn’t a piece of metal to know where I was but whom I was. The one that died was just a clone that had gone insane and the real me… Well, I still don’t know where I am. But I’m scared of what might come.

World of twilight

   Somehow, the temperature had begun to drop so fast it was impossible to get used to. The days turned darker and it was some sort of twilight that ruled over the world instead of the light people had enjoyed for so long. No one knew exactly why this was happening but many people pollution and others climate change. But it didn’t matter what humanity thought of the matter, the planet had changed and it was beginning to die faster that ever before. Animals and plants started disappearing forever and people had to build new homes in order to survive. Whatever had happened it was too late to fix it and people had no other way but to endure what had come for them. Many died in the first few weeks.

 Not all people had been created to resist something like this. Most humans had been too comfortable in recent times to even bother to think: “What if everything changes? Am I going to be ready?”. No one asked that and that’s why people just died in the middle of the streets or even killed themselves. They had no idea how to survive, how to keep going, so they chose death over life. But others did endure because they loved life so much they couldn’t just let it go. Some people got organized and created small communities that moved around the globe looking for a better climate and others occupied places where they could live a sheltered life, surviving by eating bugs or whatever there was at hand. They did what they had to do and no one in those groups ever complained.

 In one of those groups, of the kind that migrated around the world, there was a woman named Ylia. Before the transformation, she had a family consisting of a husband and two children. She wasn’t rich but she wasn’t poor either. She had a good life, living in a small apartment and working for a small tourism office. She wasn’t exceedingly happy about her life but it was her family that made her happy and fulfilled. She had always dreamed to go with them to one of the destinations she showed her clients and had been saving for that everything changed. The transformation took her children and then her husband, mad with pain and grief, killed himself when she was out trying to find some food.

 Since then, Ylia decided to start moving. She broke in several abandoned stores and gathered winter clothes and tried to get some food but she could only get her hands in frozen fish. So every night she would make a small fire with some igniting stones and eat the frozen fish, that was always small and tasteless but it was better than to eat nothing. She moved on foot and off the roads, in order to avoid groups of people that had come to realize how much they loved to kill people. According to them, as humanity was already doomed, they only wanted to help by moving on with the process. So Ylia stayed far from roads and turned off her fires when she was done cooking her fish.

 One day, when she was doing that same thing, she noticed a presence near her. It was something scary, as if she was about to be attacked by monsters or something. So she stood up and yelled like mad towards the tall grass around her. Soon, a group of three children came out of the grass. They were all filthy and it was obvious they hadn’t had anything to eat for days. She could see the rib cage of one of them. They didn’t talk, just sat down near her and stayed there. She took some of her fish and cooked a piece for every one of them. To be honest, she did it kind of reluctantly because the fish was not eternal and soon she would have to start hunting or stealing something else. She had to feed herself and know; apparently these ids needed her in order to survive.

 When the light was even dimmer in the world, she knew it was night so she lay down in the ground and the children did the same. She didn’t have anything to give them to sleep better but the only thing she could for them is to ask them to sleep all together, all very close to one another in order to keep the heat. They seemed to understand, so they got close to her and fell asleep fast. It was difficult not to think about his own children, who had no chance against this kind of life, against the destruction of what humanity used to mean and of the world, that had become visibly fed up with every single person. It wasn’t a secret any more that our own world wanted us out fast.

 The next day, Ylia and the children started walking up, through the forest towards the tallest part of the hills that separated the city from the ocean. Her logic was that maybe the ocean creature had not died out yet, so maybe there was a way to catch something to eat before it died or got extinct soon. But having the children with her proved good and bad at the same time.  They were fast and agile but sometimes they got tired really fast and she needed to have a certain rhythm when going cross-country like this. In the mornings she would always tell them that they needed to be fast and never to stop for hunger or thirst. All of that could wait once they were safe somewhere else.

 But they were children and she knew she couldn’t ask that much of them. They were often afraid and even one of them seemed to be closer to death that the other two. She didn’t discuss it because she didn’t want to face something like that again, but it was obvious he wasn’t doing well.  The day arrived when they saw the end of the hills and knew the ocean could not be very far. But then, an arrow flew directly at the sick child, taking his life. The others reaction was slow and Ylia had to push the other two children in order to avoid the arrows that flew their way.

 Hidden behind a rock, Ylia confirmed what she had thought: it was a group of killers and they knew there were more humans to kill. A bit nervous but resolved, Ylia came out of hiding, surprising the children, and took out a gun she had hidden inside her big coat. It was a revolver that she started shooting with, wounding at least three of the members of the killer gang. She was not very good at shooting and new she wouldn’t manage to kill anyone but she was successful in scaring the hell out of them. They all ran, turning back to where they had come from. When they disappeared, Ylia and the children when back to where the kid had fallen and decided to bury him beneath the rocks that covered the hillside. She was about the leave the place when she saw the children doing something she hadn’t seen in a while: they were praying.

 They spent some time there, the children praying and Ylia thinking what their next move should be. She knew she needed a better weapon than the one she had but that revolver was the only thing she could find. In fact, it was that revolver that took away her husband’s life. But had not thought about him when she fired towards the killers. She had not thought of anything. Ylia realized she was becoming like all those people that were just shadows of what they used to be, just killers or machines that lived but not really liked to be alive. Ylia was on that edge but she knew she wouldn’t be there for long.

 With the remaining children she started walking towards the ocean. She knew it couldn’t be too far so she kept on walking, despite the complaining of the children that did not talk but did growl and complain on their own way.  She gave them some hours to rest but then they were attacked again. More arrows fell off the sky, like rain, and landed in one of the children, killing him and on Ylia’s shoulder. She took the hand of the remaining child and ran like mad towards where she thought the ocean was. They didn’t stop for a minute and then she knew the kid wouldn’t survive. She was carrying dead weight and it may be her fault that he was dead. He collapsed a few minutes later, dead too.

 She went on alone, running at times but tired and bleeding from her should. Ylia looked around and then ran and then stopped and ran again. She was erratic and insecure because she knew what had come. Then, she heard the sound of the waves and felt sand that was wet. Her happiness filled her so much that she just ran towards the water and got in the ocean, wanting to swim there and drink the water even if it was salty. But it wasn’t. The ocean was now acidic and she had just drunk a huge amount of poison, not unlike cyanide. Ylia died with a rather disturbing smile on her face and with the realization that she had done what she could but her death and everyone else’s, was already written.

A game

   When I woke up, I felt the scent of grass invading my nostrils, as well as the scent of dirt. I lay there for a while, not really wanting to move but that didn’t seem to mind as I stood up almost automatically and started walking slowly. It was very strange, as I didn’t really want to do but, nevertheless, was moving. I decided it had something to do with why I had woken up just on the side of a dirt road, below a big pine tree. I walked some more but then stopped, as I reached a small wall on which I stood up to see the surrounding view: there, very far to the north, I could see a castle or at least its shape. And by the east, there was a small river coming down a mountain range where a big mountain had smoke coming out of it. It was a volcano. Closer to me, I could see more tree and a building. I decided to walk towards there.

 I walked with decision towards the building, feeling very strange still. I tried to remember what I had been doing before waking up by the road but I just couldn’t remember. It was as if there was nothing to recall. Then I stopped, as I head a strange noise coming from behind. I looked up to the sky and there it was: a plant or an animal, something floating up there very high in circles. I stupidly walk towards it and it noticed me: it had razor sharp leaves and it was about to hit me when I ran as fast I could towards the building, which happened to be a farm. I stopped on my toes as I passed the two houses that formed the ranch and realized there was a pasture area behind them, as well as a granary.

 There were horses and many chickens and a girl. I hadn’t seen it right away as she was sitting on the ground feeding the animals. When she saw me, she greeted me as nice as one can greet a stranger and told me that I looked funny, as she had never seen a boy like me. Apparently my attire, which I hadn’t really paid attention to, was not very common in these parts. She told me that the best thing for me to do was to pay respects in the temple close the castle, where every wish could come true. Then, she taught me how to sing to the horses and lend me one of hers. Before leaving the farm, she told me I could come back any time but that her brothers may not be as nice to me as she was.

 The horse was fast and elegant, soaring through the bushes, over the grass and elevating dust all over the place. We finally got to the castle, just as they announced hey were letting in the last group of people before drawing the bridge for the night. Some others seemed to be entering too but they looked more like peasants and people trying to buy their stuff in the castle. After the group entered, the bridge was elevated and, just before they had finished closing, I could swore I heard the call of a wolf. That made me a little nervous but I decided to move on. Suddenly, everything went black.

 When I woke up, it was morning already. I had no idea where I had been sleeping but the horse wasn’t there with me anymore and I just happened to be in the middle of the morning market. People were everywhere, pushing other buyers as they moved from one post to the other. There were also games and dances bursting up a little bit everywhere but I finally saw what I was looking for when I walked into an alley: a big white building with the symbol of the land on top of it. That had to be the temple the girl in the ranch had told me about. The castle was not far, as I could see it when entering the temple. Inside, there were no chairs or places to rest; people would just stand and pray before a big altar and nothing more. None of them would take long there and I started to get anxious when I didn’t see anything that could help me. So I just prayed and left.

 My next move was to go towards the castle. I felt I had to go there so I went through the market again, which seemed even more crowded than before, and then on to an open road which lead to a big gate on small canyon formed by very high hills. There was a guard there and told me I couldn’t move beyond that point as the royal family had it strictly prohibited than anyone walked into the castle unannounced and without proper permission. So I went back but only some meters, where the guard couldn’t see me anymore. There was a vertical wall on the side of one of the hills and plants had grown over it so I just climbed to wall to the top. My next move was to cross the gate from above and then move from tree to tree, hiding from the guards.

 I finally got to the main entrance of the castle, were two guards were busy talking to each other. The thing was I had to pass by them to reach the entrance, unless I swam across a small pond of water, which seemed to come from inside the castle. With great disgust, I submerged myself slowly into that water and moved cautiously, in order not to alert the guard. I finally go to the end and there, found that the door was closed. I couldn’t force it because that would be making too much noise so I just looked around and saw a big hole on the wall that seemed to be crumbling. I snuck up through there.

 There were some guards in the gardens, but it was easy to full them through the mazes of hedges and flowers. Finally, I got to a big garden filled with the most beautiful flowers I had ever seen in my life. Every color was there and the smell was even better. That’s when I saw another girl. For a moment, I thought it was the girl from the ranch but soon realized that couldn’t be. This girl was wearing a dress that looked smooth and silky and a headband with a jewel on it. It was almost as if she was a princess. She finally noticed me and I thought she was going to call the guards but instead asked me to come closer.

 She said that her father had asked her to exit the throne room as a visitor was going to be there. It was said to be an important man and, as such, women were not allowed to be there. It was one of those traditions she hated but had to respect. So the next best thing she had was to see the whole thing through a window that was just there in the garden. I came closer and saw the throne a big bearded man sitting on it. That must have been her father, the king. There was no one there on his side, which struck me as odd. I looked towards the other side and saw a tall and dark figure. But it was his robes that were black, as his skin was the color of olives. He had a big nose and looked more like a horse to me than anything else.

 The big man approached the king and kneeled. They said something but I couldn’t hear behind the glass. Then, a voice behind them told them that it wasn’t very polite to hear other people’s conversations. It was a tall woman with short hair but not as tall as the man they had just seem. The princess asked her if she knew who the man was and she answered with a very somber expression. She only said the man had come from the desert to the west to pay respects to the kind and inform him that the kingdom could be calm as he had soldiers that would help the kingdom be much more secure. However, no one had ever seen his army and there was a rumor that he was a wizard.

 The woman looked at the kids and told them it wasn’t their business anyway. She told the princess to stay there as she helped me get past the guards without been seen. She left me by the village, where I decided to distract myself with more games. But I couldn’t think about anything more than the princess and the tall man from the desert. He had a menacing look. To be honest, his whole physicality was very menacing, as the one of a giant or something like that. That night, I decided to leave the castle and go to the river and fish, to distract myself. I had very nice time fishing with a borrowed rod and the river was very nice place. The volcano, which was close by, was a very nice sight.

 When the night came again, I decided to head back to the village but the drawbridge was up. There were no people waiting and it started to rain. I screamed and yelled but no one would open. When I got a little bit closer to see if they could hear me, the bridge fell hard and then a horse came running fast from inside the citadel. All I could see was that massive black horse that got scared to see me, as I was from it. He stood on two legs and in that small fraction of time I realized it was the tall man riding and, in front of him, he had the princess hands tied and with a cloth on her mouth. Something fell from the horse to the moat just before they rode away fast, disappearing from view in a few seconds.

 I walked towards the edge of the moat and realized that what had fell from the horse had been a small flute that floated on the water. Just as I took it in my hands, I remembered the song from the farm girl. And I would have played it but then the world went dark and I wouldn’t wake up for a long time.

Know thyself

-       So she broke up with you because you lost your job?

Erick nodded, still drying his tears from before. His best friend Juliette paced in front of him, in his room. He had finally come out of his bedroom covers and Juliette had forced him to open the curtains. Now, all that was left was to talk.

-       I don’t get it…

-       She…

-       Not that. Why did they fire you?

Erick gulped down some orange juice Juliette had brought him and looked to a point by the window, probably remembering the moment he had been fired.

-       They said I was too focused on my personal life.

Juliette smiled.

-       So you lost your job because of her and left you because you lost the job she made you loose?

 Again he nodded and he started crying again. This time, however, Juliette did not try to stop him from doing it. Why would she? He had been the one guilty of his firing and that was the real tragedy in all of this. Nothing else mattered, not even that silly brunette.

-       I love her.

-       No, you don’t.

-       I do!

-       You’re obsessed with her. And frankly, I don’t see why.

-       She’s smart and beautiful.

-       No, she’s not. She’s a fucking bitch.

 Erick stopped crying and lamenting himself. He stared at her friend, confused.

-       What? You really didn’t know she’s a pain in the ass? Always complaining, always thinking she’s better than everyone else because she has had money to travel the goddamn world?

-       I…

-       You didn’t know… My God!

Juliette had finally had it so she stepped out of Erick’s bedroom and went for the kitchen. It was very early but she knew he kept some alcohol in the house for parties. Right enough, she found a can of beer and drank half of it on one go. Erick came out of his bedroom and sat down in his sofa, just in front of the kitchen.

-       I didn’t know you hated her so much.

-       I don’t hate her. I don’t know her that well.

-       But you…

-       I just don’t like her attitude. She comes off as arrogant and preachy; always thinking her way is the one to go. And she’s not that smart.

-       Why do you say that?

 Erick’s friend had another big sip of beer and looked at the can instead of him when speaking.

-       She thought your birthday was in February.

-       It’s in August.

-       I know. She also said that day in the gallery she did not know what all the fuss was with all that “homosexual art”. She said it was wrong to give them too many liberties.

-       But that was Alex’s expo.

-       I know.

-       And she’s gay.

-       I know!

-       Why would she say that?

-       Not smart. Told you.

For a while, they did not say another word. Juliette was busy trying to know what to say next, hopefully helping her friend and putting him in the right path towards a fast recuperation from all of this and for him to begin to worry about the job, which was the biggest lost he had suffer. However, Erick was still thinking about his former girlfriend, remembering every single time they had been together. It had been a nice ten months, in which he had lots of fun. They had laughed together and enjoyed nice moments but now he realized he had been in the presence of several comments and things she did or say that hadn’t shocked him back then but now they made more sense.

-       What are you thinking?

-       She didn’t like dogs.

-       Oh…

-       And she didn’t like any of you.

Again, Juliette smiled.

-       I knew that.

-      She always told me, in very well thought words that all of you weren’t really funny or nice to be with. But I didn’t realize what she was really saying until now.

-       It’s ok. You’re not the first person to hook up with a crazy woman.

-       But it is my first time.

 Juliette did not know what to respond to that. She finished her beer, threw the can away and sat down by Erick. She had been friends with him for over ten years now and she had seen him in every single state one can imagine a person to be. She had seen him immensely happy and also very sad. Excited, crying, yelling out of rage, insane… They were friends and she just wanted him to be all right.

-       You’re worried about the job, right?

-       I think it’s the most important thing right now.

-       Maybe… But to tell you the truth I was getting tired to be there.

-       You made great money.

-       But it was the job my dad had found for me thanks to his buds in the business. I want to make something of my own.

-       That’s great but how? Work by demand?

-      Maybe. I don’t know… I was beginning to do things there like a robot, just like the same thing over and over again and I…

-       Are you sure?

Erick looked straight and his friend’s eyes.

-       Of course. I know that you think that because of what happened I’m trying to find an excuse for it but I really didn’t feel right working there anymore.

-       That doesn’t matter anymore. Now it’s all-new again and you can decide what to do and what not do, in every sense possible. If you want to look for a different job, I guess it’s only a matter of finding it. It’s hard but you’ll get there.

-       And about…?

-    That can wait. You don’t have to be with someone to feel you’re worth anything. Actually, it’s when you’re single that you realize how much you can do and what are your strengths, your weaknesses.

-       You really think so?

-       You have to know yourself before getting it on with someone else. I think.

They smiled at each other and then they did something they did not do very often: they hugged. They then talked a bit about Juliette’s life but she didn’t want to take all the attention to herself. She told Erick she had to go to her mother’s, so that could be his first time alone and thinking about his future. Or better, not to think about anything and just enjoy himself in his place.

 Juliette left and Erick decided to try and have a nice day. He downloaded a couple of movies he had always loved, he decided to have a shower first and in the shower, he realized he wanted Chinese food for lunch so he ordered that when he was still holding his towel by the waist. In the bathroom again, after brushing his teeth, he took off the towel and took a look at himself. His eyes were read and his skin was pale, lifeless. He needed to get some sun too but maybe he could leave that for the next day.

 His delivery arrived fast and he received it in his boxers. Just like that, he sat down on his bed, by the laptop, and watched the first movie, an animated one. At one point he cried, but because of the movie and not what he had gone through. Actually, the next time he thought about his ex was the following morning when she called him on his cellphone. But he didn’t answer the call and decided to go have breakfast with Juliette.

 Eventually, he would find a job and maybe a new girlfriend. But Erick had learned that he had no idea who he really was, not entirely at least. And he wanted to know desperately before anyone else. If he didn’t, life just couldn’t be lived properly and what’s the fun in that?