Secret of the woods

   The last day they saw each other, they didn’t say a word. They just stared and finally left, each own his or hers on way. They were six people and they had all been there as the war had happened. They had been useful servants, slaves if you will. They had done everything they were ordered and even then the ones that ruled over that place had beaten them with sticks or solid rods. Everyone was cruel and sick during the war and the secret that they all shared was proof of that. When it happened, they all shared that moment but they never really spoke about it. First, because there was no time to do so and, second, because it was extremely hard for them to do it. The war then pressed on and reached its desired end; they were liberated one morning and found themselves to be free.

 Clara was the youngest of the group and the first one to leave that horrible place. She noticed, as she left in a truck filled with liberated people, how the surrounding forest was still dark and scary and how it had no life inside of it. It had been rendered lifeless by the atrocities of war. Eventually, Clara made it to the nearest town and there she desired to get to a port and then away from that forsaken continent. But she never got to do it because she had no money. She decided to work in the town, doing small chores all over. It was doing so that she met a nice young man, a baker, and she fell in love. They eventually married and had a very large and happy family. She was almost seventy years old when she received a phone call, one she never thought she would get.

 Robert, the youngest man, left in the following truck. Its destination was another place like the one he had come from, which made him sick. He vomited several times and made the soldiers think he was sick with something. They left him in a provisional hospital, not too far from there. He wasn’t sick, just nervous and scared. In the hospital, one of the doctors asked him for help, as nurses were very scarce. Eventually, Bob followed the medicine man to a big city in the south and there he paid Robert’s studies to become a doctor. The man turned to be a second father who loved Robert as his own son had died months earlier in battle. Bob turned himself into a great doctor, getting the call too after one of his lectures.

 The oldest was Irina, a woman that didn’t say a word and that left the place by foot. She was not that older but she had seen more of life than Clara and Robert. She was hunted by the violent deaths of her family, which she couldn’t forget. Feet bleeding, she collapsed and was rescued by a group of women, who nursed her back to health. They were also escaping violence, so she joined them. The group eventually settled in the east and became of the first feminist groups of the area. They were adamant in their convictions and Irina proved to be a real fighter. She did good things for women all over the region and was in a frail state when she got her call.

 Next was Alexander, who was the first one that talked publicly about the atrocities he had seen. He became a renowned writer after been able to travel abroad and reunite with his family. He was member of an aristocratic family who had disowned him but now that everything had change, they recognized him again and even more as his fame grew larger. Alexander published books about the war, all very successful. He did novels, and documentaries and short stories. He even sold his rights to make movies about the subject. By the time he was an older man, he was one of the richest persons on that side of the world. Privately, he had grown tired of the subject but as it was his life, he couldn’t drop it. His call caught him in the middle of the night.

 Marissa was the only one that had been transferred from a proper prison camp. She had seen other atrocities and when she was transferred she thought she would have a better life but she didn’t. After the liberation, she had to be institutionalized because of her mental state. She received shock therapy for several months and was even the subject of several dissertations about paranoia. She was finally released to a resting home when she was a woman in her forties. She had no skills and had been permanently damaged but that didn’t stop people at the home to make her clean floors and bathrooms, use her as many had used her before. Then, one morning, someone came and took her away.

 To complete the group, there was Louis. He had been a musician but after the war his fingers were not the same ones. He couldn’t play anything and he did not have any other skills. He tried finding a job as a waiter or as a chauffeur, but he would always ruin it by having awful breakdowns that involved hitting himself repeatedly. His guilt always showed itself to others, and it couldn’t be controlled. He was violent and unpredictable so, when one day he shot himself in the head, no one really made a fuss about it. So many people that had been liberated were committing suicide, so it wasn’t a real shock. When they called Louis, trying to locate him, the news hit hard and deep.

 The person who called was Clara. She had started to contact everyone else for one simple reason and that was because she had received a call by a state officer who was investigating the events that took place in that place in the woods all those years ago. They had identified her as a resident for some time, as well as some others. They wanted to talk to them in order to know exactly what went on there because there were these rumors and it was necessary to know if they were true. Clara just hung up, asking her husband never to pick it up again. When the government came to her doorstep, she chased them away.

 For her, it was too much. Her children and husband didn’t understand, but for Clara it was all a disaster. She was an older woman now, someone who had already done what she had to do, and someone that was already planning to come to terms with her existence as a human being. Clara was almost ready to meet her maker and she had no intention to face the human justice. That was when she had the idea to track all of the people that had been there with her, in those basements with rooms with no windows or proper lighting. She looked for them and after some time she had called them all. They had all agreed to meet, no questions asked, in the town where she lived.

 It was fun, at least for a while, to see how different everyone was. Clara had been a housewife all of her life so she did an effort to look good. She was the one who picked up Clara and, with the help of her husband, nursed her back to a better health in order to be more aware of the world. But Marissa was gone and would rather play with the dogs than talk to those people she didn’t know anymore. Bob and Alex looked fantastic. They were all so dapper and successful in their respective fields. But once there, once they got all together, they went back to being young and simple. Irina walked slow and needed to be waited and helped. But her demeanor was strong and resilient, having struggled all of her life for others. They reunited and, once again, just stared.

 But those empty looks turned into tears and hugs and kisses. They had never done that while at the woods, they had never shared a moment of love because love had been outlawed. They only law, the only real thing there was violence and cruelty and they had been poisoned by it. They talked about their lives and about how everything had changed but had stayed the same in some parts. They also spoke about Louis and Marissa was the first one to smile when hearing his name. She had helped him once and they were the only friends in existence in that awful place. They went there and the cold wind that greeted them made all the memories come back.

 The place was now a museum with a park. A young woman came to them as asked if they wanted to take a tour of the place but they told her they knew it too well. They each told the story of how they had gotten there and how they had gotten out of it. They also confessed to have helped to the killing of several people, including children. The place was used as a testing site for several weapons: biological, chemical and radioactive.  They also tortured them with other experiments and them, who were prisoners, were made to watch and help. If they didn’t, they died. So they did. That place had been hell and now they had liberated themselves from it, in order to leave it there forever.

The Beast

   When the man also known as The Beast was caught, everyone was relieved. He had escaped every single police force along his path, as he killed innocent people, and he had finally committed was small mistake. The police had noticed his liking for a certain candy and it was a wrapper they found at a gas station that lead them directly to him. He was found torturing his latest victim on marsh. Fortunately, she was still alive. He had to be shot several times in the legs and spine in order to immobilize him. The police remembered that they couldn’t kill him, no matter how much they wanted revenge for what he had done before. He had killed several people, not only women but children and men too. Besides, the way he did it earned him the nickname Beast from every force chasing him.

 Finally in a prison cell, doctor that checked him upon arrival were surprised to see that the damage done by the bullets to his body was minimal. He could still walk and had only a slight limp on his left leg. He was transferred to a maximum-security prison that same day, where he was able to wait for his trial. This offended many of the victims’ families, because they didn’t thought such an animal had the right to a trial. But the law was the law and he was at least entitled to tell the people how he had done it and why. The trial, after all, was also useful as a way to explain everything that had happened and shed a light on such a monstrous behavior. If it ever happened again, authorities and society needed to know why.

 For everyone, it was a very hard time. The pictures, the police videos, the details by coroners… It was awful to hear how every body was dumped, how some of them were raped and how he tortured every single one of them. He had no real proceeding; it wasn’t like he just raped the women or something like that. He was erratic and that was proven by the first two weeks of the trial. People had asked for only a week to show evidence and so on but the judge had to change that as he had to cut short every day, because at least one person would get physically sick of all the details of the murders. He knew it was asking too much of every single person to sit there and stand such truths.

 At least five of the jurors had to be excused. They all decided to leave the trial as they realized they weren’t fit to stand all those gruesome details that they knew had to come out to the light. They were replaced as they left, and some information had to be repeated for the new jurors in order for them to understand the whole process. That week was the most difficult time in the lives of the family member, more than the moment when they had been notified that their loved ones were dead. Everything hurt up to that point and most of them just wanted it all to finish with the dead of the Beast, they needed to see how his body stopped breathing.

 The second week of the trial it was all about the Beast. Bringing him to the courthouse proved difficult, as demonstrators were always there throwing things at him. The authorities didn’t really mind but they just couldn’t allow something worst to happen. It was rumored that some of the family members were planning to kill the Beast and that had to be stopped. The police started bringing him through the back door of the courthouse and they also made a couple of arrests to make people understand that they needed to trust justice and what it stood for. It was understandable that they were angry, very angry for what happened but they had to let justice do what she needs to do. They needed closure and that couldn’t be found by killing a human being. They shouldn’t become him to prove their love.

 The first couple of days, he was cooperating so much. But by the third day, he started speaking, saying incoherent things. After the opposing lawyer confronted him, the man attempted to attack him and had to be restrained and tied to the chair he was sitting on. The lawyer asked for the trial not be cancelled for this incident and he used this event to demonstrate to the people why the murderer was called the Beast. He then read a psychiatrist’s report, where he stated that the Beast suffered a very rare syndrome were his brain thought everything and everyone was a danger to his existence. It was the only explanation they could give to killing so many people. But why torture them, they asked? No response.

 The next day, it was a very long one. Again, pictures and videos of crime scenes were shown but this time in order to provoke a reaction of the Beast. His lawyer, who was trying to get him life instead of the death penalty, had not spoken much with his own client because he had become very quiet and still. He had to go through all the evidence to, at least, prove the man he was defending was insane and that he belonged to an asylum. He repeated this over and over again during the trial, without little to no positive response from the jury. They were all disgusted by what they had seen and had no space in their hearts or their heads to consider the Beast as only a crazy guy that happens to kill people.

 By the end of the week, they finally got some words out of the Beast. He said that he had to kill them all because he was afraid. But when asked if he had any reasons to torture any of them, he was quiet for a while. By the end of the session, he stood up and said that he fought against the forces of the devil and that it had been God himself who had told him what to do and how to do it. This was a low blow for everyone in the courtroom and for everyone in the city, to be honest. Blaming God was ridiculous but it was a step towards that insanity plea and it was hard to fight it because his time on the trials ended just after that.

 The following days a couple of family members gave their statements. It was, again, a difficult thing to see and hear. Most of the people in the room cried at some point and how not too, when the details of someone’s death were being given by their wives, husbands, mothers, fathers… The jury was thankful that those statements only lasted for a couple of days. After that, the judge gave the jury four days to decide about this man’s faith. Of course, they didn’t need so much time. The following day every single person had being summoned to hear the verdict: the Beast was going to die by lethal injection. Many of the families were relieved but none of them were happy or anything close to that. They just needed to close that door in their lives, once and for all.

 The execution was programmed a month after the trial had ended. Some people complained that it should have been done faster, but they couldn’t get everyone that needed to be there at an earlier date. The governor wanted to be there, as well as at least one member from every family that the Beast had destroyed. They even looked for his parents or relatives and found and old woman that denied the invitation to see a family member die. She said he had not seen him in years and that he had always been “one of those weird kids”. Television crews stationed themselves very early the day of the executions, as well as many people that supported the families. Strangely enough, there were also protesters against the death penalty. Not their best showing.

 The lethal injection process was very simple and some people complained, again, that it was too humane for such an animal. But the state had no other way of killing inmates. Firing squads were a thing of the past, there were no electric chairs anymore and communities had successfully avoided the implementation of death by gas. So everyone gathered in very small room and just watched as the man they hated so much was brought from his cell. As they saw the people from prison tie him down, many thought that the last ting their loved ones had seen was probably the face of that man. And that made them so much angrier.

 The liquids that went into his body were lowered slowly, one by one. As they saw him closing his eyes and his vital signs going away, they felt their hearts even more broke than before because it was the end of the road and they had gone through all of it together. They pronounced him dead and the governor started to applause but soon stopped. Everyone else looked at him with disgust. Somehow, people were still disgusted by the fact that people had to be killed to teach a lesson, a lesson that maybe no one was really hearing or understanding. Somewhere in the region, another person was being killed. Because the evil inside humans doesn’t stop and it has many layers and faces. The only way is to keep fighting.

Nightmares

   I woke up breathing heavily but without screaming or doing any more noises. I had no clothes on but I could feel my body drenched in sweat, as if I had been running for quite a while. I grabbed my phone, which I had left by the bed, and checked the time: only a half hour had passed since I had fallen asleep. I was trembling and stayed there, sitting on my bed looking at the bedspread, not thinking at all. Then, I tried to remember what it was that I had dreamt off and I could just remember a few images, a few horrible images of creatures and scary situations. But the most awful thing was that I had felt paralyzed for a while. I mean, I had thought I was awake but I wasn’t and I felt and heard a sound coming at me from behind.

 I think I was paralyzed like that for at least three minutes but even such little time felt like an eternity. It felt like that being or that person behind me was going to be successful at attacking me, probably wanting to kill me for some reason. In that moment, I wanted to scream for help but I couldn’t, my mouth wouldn’t open and my eyes were frozen open. It was the worst kind of torture I could have thought of. I woke up just after that and thanked my body for helping me in that dire moment of need. As I stood up, walking to the kitchen for some water, I realized that the temperature outside had dropped even more in those thirty minutes I had been asleep. The cold was harsh so early in the morning so I decided to drink fast and put on some clothes to sleep.

 I didn’t fall asleep right away. To be honest, I was afraid I would keep dreaming those awful things so I just thought about other things. But the paralysis I had suffered earlier came back to me and I felt scared, more than before.  It had happened before and that was probably why I was so nervous about it. What was the reason of that? Why did it happen to me and why like that? It was a mystery I’d rather not explore but that’s how things were and I hated it. I didn’t want any more things in my mind right now, less of all a dream night were every single part looked like the perfect kind of torture. Was my mind just telling me that I was going insane?

 Hours later, at work, I didn’t mention my dreams to anyone. I tried to behave as I always did, crazy free. I even engaged in the typical lunch conversations, which was odd, as I preferred to listen and not to talk. That was because what I said was almost always perceived as “too much” or radical in some way, so I stopped talking at that time. But that day I must have forgotten my own rule because I talked and talked like a parrot and the fun thing was that some of the people agreed on why I said and other seemed to agree but didn’t want the rest to think they were as “radical” as me. That day in the office was good and, after lunch, I didn’t remember a single thing about my nightmares.

 They didn’t come back to me until late at night, when I was surprised to remember an especially gruesome part of my earlier nightmares. Apparently I had dreamt that I was some kind of murderer. I had never witnessed such things in real life and did not understand how my mind was able to replicate that situation, but there I was. It was clear to me now that I had walked amongst corpses, on a floor were every single centimeter was covered in blood. And that wasn’t the most shocking part. I was carrying a chainsaw in one hand and had my body covered in blood too, stepping on it as I walked through the room. I believe that was just a dream fragment, I don’t think there was more. But it had been enough to make me avoid sleeping at all that night? What was going on with me?

 The next day, more than one person asked me if I had slept at all. Apparently my eyes were pretty scary and my face looked horribly pale. I washed it at least twice but it didn’t make a change. I still looked like someone out of a horror movie. That day, I went back to not participating in conversations. I decided to skip lunch altogether, preferring to have some chocolate on a park bench nearby. The sugar made me feel alive and with enough energy to withstand the day. Maybe I had to do something special to avoid these dreams or at least to stop the memories of them coming in my head. I just wanted to go back to before, when I never had any kind of dreams, not even the typical ones people have.

 Suddenly, someone sat besides me on the bench and I realized it was this guy I liked from the office. He had arrived to work with us very recently and I felt he liked me back. I asked him what he was doing there and he told me that he had followed me. I must have opened my mouth very wide because he laughed and said that he had actually come out of a nearby restaurant and happened to se me alone so he just wanted to check on me. I asked why and he said I seemed distracted. He also mentioned the sleeping part. We stayed there for the remainder of lunchtime and when we went back, we had decided to meet in my house that night in order to watch a movie and have some take out.

 As it was Friday, many people were going dancing or drinking but we had decided to share a movie and we hadn’t done that ever before. It had been the first time we decided to meet outside of work so I was nervous about it. When I got home, I decided to check my computer for the best movies I had around. I chose three so we could see them all or he could chose his favorite. We could order anything and I changed my clothes to something less work related. I wanted everything to look good and on point, to look as if I worried about everything been clean and nice. Normally my place was a mess but I managed to make it presentable in short time.

 Then, the memories kicked in again. I wasn’t paralyzed or a butcher anymore. But I was tied to the floor with a metal chain and I was trying to release myself from it. I pulled with the little strength I still had but it was useless, the chain wouldn’t break. Then someone came in, someone whose face I never saw and he started to kick me and punch me and then… And then he did something I can’t even process, something… Something I didn’t understand when I realized I was remembering another part of that awful dream. Why was it happening now? Why did it keep coming back? This time I was drenched in sweat again but I had no time to change or to clean myself as the doorman called to tell me that my buddy from work had arrived. I wasn’t excited about it anymore.

 My legs shook as I got near the door and waited to open the door. I couldn’t just send him back to his house so I was just going to have a nice evening and tried to forget what I had just seen. I clean the sweat of my face with my sleeve and opened just as he had pressed the doorbell. He was surprised I opened that fast but he just laughed and we hugged as we greeted each other. I took him to my sofa and offered him a beverage but as I poured the two glasses of wine, my hands shook like crazy but he was talking about something so he didn’t really notice. We talked fro some minutes before I told him which movies I had picked and he said he liked them all so we could just try to watch them all that evening. I agreed so I asked him to put some popcorn in the microwave as I set up the movie.

 Minutes later, we had turned off the light, on his request, and were side by side eating popcorn and trying to concentrate on the movie. The truth was that I wanted to focus on him but couldn’t. I was still too shaken by what I had seen. I was been wondering if going to a shrink was the best idea. I needed someone else to know and to tell me I was just being crazy and that nothing from my nightmares could attack me, ever. I knew that maybe that was obvious but I needed to hear it from someone else. Then, I got scared and almost threw the popcorn bowl to the floor as he touched my hand. I was so ashamed I stopped the movie and just told him.

 I explained my nightmares, my fears and why I had been acting so weird. I told him because I needed someone to know, I needed to share those feeling with someone else. When I finished, he took my hands on his own and pressed them gently. He told me that I wasn’t a bad person for having nightmares and that maybe my imagination was too active or I had eaten before going to bed. It was common to have horrible nightmares sometimes and maybe I was just scared that what happened in them could actually happen some day. He assured me, with the confidence of a doctor, that I would never be that person in my dreams.

 I hugged him, we shared a kiss and, surprisingly, we watched two whole movies before we decided it was too late. He asked me to call him a taxi but I never dialed. I came in from behind and hugged him. I think I scared him. The thing is, he stayed the night and I never had those nightmares again. I’m not saying it was because of him but maybe my mind needed to focus on something else and what better than a nice, intelligent prospect? But sometimes I remember the nightmares and I wonder who I am and why I am.

Torture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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