Payback

   Jean was on highway six and she was doing great time. The road went through the mountains, using tunnels and bridges, to a place with a much nicer climate and where she could finally relax from an exhausting week. Work as a nurse could be very heavy and opportunities to have a few days for herself were pretty scarce. So she decided to grab the car and ask her parents for the keys of the summerhouse they had on that region.

 She had not been there for several years, since she had started her career, and her parents were not big fans of going to a house were the weather was warm but there was no ocean or anything to look forward to. There was a pool though and Jean knew she would have to clean it thoroughly before making use of it. Her parents now owned an apartment by the ocean, so this house had been deserted for quite some time. The plan had always been to sell but no one really seemed interested.

 Driving was making her back hurt a bit, so she decided to turn up the radio and sing along, in order to male a distraction from her pain. She would sing clumsily after the lyrics were sung but it worked as it made her laugh and enjoy the trip. On every curve, she would stop singing, instead humming the lyrics and looking at the dark road. It was the end of the afternoon and she had been driving for about an hour. She was only about thirty minutes away from her exit went the unthinkable happened: another car rammed her.

 The hit from the back make her bob like one of those taxi dolls but her arms kept straight and the car didn’t move so much. She tried to look who had done it. For a second, she thought that maybe someone was having problems and it had just been and accident. But some minutes later it happened again and in a curve. Jean’s heart felt right in her mouth and she decided it was best to speed up in order to loose that insane driver.

 She gained velocity quickly and in a couple of minutes she had lost the car, a red car that seemed to old to be still in circulation. Jean noticed the exit was nearby and was trying not to miss it when a police car appeared out of nowhere and she was asked to park further ahead. She stopped the car on a restaurant just off her exit. Stepping out of the car, she fixed her hair and waited for the police officer to come and talk to her.

 With that air of superiority many policemen have, he told her she had gone above the limit some kilometers ago and that she had violated the top speed she could be driving on the highway. Jean answered that it was all fine but that they should also give a ticket to the owner of the red car that rammed her twice. She went to the back of her car and showed him the marks of both attacks. The man checked it closely, then grabbed his radio and alerted other patrols to be on the lookout for the red car.

 After he had given the ticket to Jean, she was able to go. Her parent’s house was just fifteen minutes down the road on a small plateau between two mountains. The place in itself was very nice but it was obvious people always wanted more and better things so they were all selling these all old houses in favor of newer, more modern ones in places not very far from there.

 Jean stopped the car on the entrance and used the keys to release the lock on the main entrance. She opened the door manually (it wasn’t a electric one) and then drove the car into the lot. She stopped the car just by the pool, closed the door and then took out the only suitcase she had brought along.

The place was very dark and moist, the humidity was incredible. She turned on the lights and was amazed at how much work she had to do that night. She only had three full days for herself there and she was to clean to leave everything as it was. So after leaving her suitcase in her parent’s old bedroom, she decided to grab all the cleaning products available and start scrubbing the floor, mopping them, dust the furniture, vacuum and a number of other thing she would have forgotten to do if she hadn’t been a nurse.

 She had gotten there around seven and now it was almost eleven and her stomach asked her for food. In the house there was nothing to eat, as they had always disconnected the refrigerator before leaving, in order not to let any electric appliances on the long periods of time they were not there. She had forgotten all about eating when she had grabbed the car, so she went outside and decided to head down the road, where she remembered some stores were located.

 They were small family-owned stores, the kind that sells things kids would like on a road trip. No meat or anything raw. No lunches or any form of cooked meals or even microwave meals. Thankfully it was open and the lady that tended to it remembered her. They had a nice conversation as Jean grabbed some yogurts, orange juice, milk, cereal, bread, ham and butter. She also grabbed some candy and a big bottle of soda. The lady asked her if she wanted help to carry all that to her house but Jean refused and told her she could manage.

 After dropping the soda bottle five times, she finally arrived to her house and ate a pathetic sandwich before feeling to tired to go on. She feel asleep in no time.

 The following day, she put on her swimsuit and ran to the pull, only to realize she hadn’t cleaned that. Someone, according to her parents, took care of it when they were not around but still there were many leaves. She grabbed that long pole they use to catch leaves and she started doing so, sweating like crazy, feeling more and more humid by the minute. As she was halfway through the job, she heard a car coming. She wasn’t expecting anyone so she didn’t looked up to see that it was the red car coming slowly down the road. It stopped a few meters away, far from her sight.

 Jean finally looked at the pool: it was clean enough and she just wanted to swim. So she did, for several hours. After that, she decided to lay down in a plastic deck chair and just dry away the water of the pool. It was right then when the two men driving in the red car entered the house and she didn’t heard a thing. They hid behind lush plants and behind her car. She had closed her eyes, tired again from all the exercise. One of the men was holding a knife, the other a gun. This last one raised his hand.

 A shot was heard all over the road and many neighbors looked up and down the street for the source. But they could only see a red car parked there.

 And also, a patrol car.

 The policeman, not the same one that had stopped Jean on the road, had shot first, wounding the one that was holding a gun on the side. He fell to the ground by the pool and his pain had made him drop the gun into the water. The other one was still holding the knife and was pretty agile, grabbing Jean by the neck and trying to suffocate her with his skinny arm.

 She fought back but he was stronger and much more crazy. The policeman was pointing at him but the knife was already too close to the skin and Jean decided to do the only thing she could thing of doing: she bit the arm of her attacker, that got distracted for a second. The policeman got the message and shot two times, both to the chest.

 In a matter of minutes, neighbors had called the police and ambulances. Both men were alive, one on much worse condition that the other. Paramedics also attended Jean, as she was coughing too much and she had a deep cut on her neck.

 She went back home that day, on the ambulance. She would ask someone to go down there and grab her car for her. She only wanted to be home. Jean thought of the men every second of the short trip, their faces mad with anger, the weapons and the feeling when she had heard the gunshot and then the man grabbed her. She felt so helpless and useless. They cured her wounds in a hospital and then released her, late at night.

 Once home, she sat on her bed stroking her neck wound and remembering where she had seen those men before. They were family members of a woman that had recently died in her care. Her husband had attacked her and those men were her sons. Jean remembered they wanted her cured instantly, like by magic and they pressured the doctor not to mention their father in the report. But he did. And Jean was too slow the day the woman went into cardiac arrest and died. She had not believed their word, as the woman had been fine just hours before.

 Jean couldn’t fall asleep anymore. And traveling to relax was definitively out of the question.

A character

   She sat down on the edge of the bed, naked, and just stayed there for several minutes. She then glances at the man that was sleeping in the bed and she realized she found him repulsive. There was no real reason but she felt very uncomfortable around him and decided to dress up and leave. The woman picked up her things from the floor and put them on fast and in silence. Anyway, she could have been loud and the man wouldn’t have woken up. He was snoring and drooled, making her think what was she thinking. Once the woman had everything, she grabbed her purse, which she had left on a chair, and walked out the room. She didn’t really take a look at the guy’s apartment, she knew it would be filthy and tasteless, a mirror of his own personality.

 Once she arrived on the street, she felt more free. Her name was Marina, or at least that was the name she used to sign her paintings. She was a proper artist, painting and sculpting professionally for some years now and been very recognized by it. The man she had just been with probably had no idea what the artistic world was like or how famous she was to other people. But he hadn’t been with him to be recognized, so she couldn’t really blame him for that. She had found him in a bar and had decided she needed to have sex and just went for it with him. He seemed like the kind of guy that would pick up any girl after been offered a drink, so it wasn’t difficult to convince him. She was now regretting her choice as the guy lived very far and now she had to take a bus home. Calling someone to pick her up wasn’t really an option.

Broken camera in Rome

   I woke up very early, to the sound of m cellphone alarm. It was still a bit dark but I knew I had too take advantage of every single hour if I was to spend the whole day in the city of Rome. I entered the shower, thinking about how strange it was to wake up early in a holiday but that after all it was the best reason to do it. I didn’t take very long, dressing up pretty quickly and then grabbing my bag, where I kept everything I needed to walk around. I would leave my backpack, which was my only luggage, in the room until the next day when I had to leave the city.

 My real holiday had been spent in Greece, where I had been laying in the sun for almost a week. But I had decided to go back home via Rome so to have one day of sightseeing around the city. In Greece I had also walked around a lot, visited museums, gone to the beach, taken hundreds of pictures and getting to know one or two Greek men. Yes, I had a very good time in that country.

 I went down to the hotel restaurant and realized an hour had already passed since I had woken up. As I helped myself to orange juice and cereal, I noticed only another table was occupied at that time by an elderly couple. Every other person, especially families, woke up late during the holidays which would have been great but I wanted to have the option to visit as many places as possible. As I ate, I checked a small schedule I had created with things I could do: museums were ruled out as they usually take a long time to go through. But I couldn’t avoid going to the Colosseum and to the Forum as they were symbols of the city and walking them wasn’t that time consuming.

 After lunch I decided to go there first, as it was the farthest place on the schedule. I would begin to walk from there closer to the hotel, in order to get there late to have some hours of sleep and then leave early in the morning for home. The metro station was not very far so it was in a matter of minutes that I arrived to the Colosseum. The place was very majestic, although some of the walls were covered as they were being repaired. There were men dressed as ancient roman soldiers all around and a lot of tourists, even that early. The place had a weird vibe, as if it was palpable that people had died there. On the highest part, I took several pictures and realized more and more people were entering. After some more minutes, I crossed a small piazza towards the Forum. The entrance fee covered both sites so it was perfect.

 Various temples still stand, very large structures and the general layout of the site is magnificent. It was there when I noticed two things: there were lots of tourists in the city and the temperature was rising fast. After all, it was the middle of summer. Silly me, I hadn’t brought a water bottle with me and I already started to feel a bit lightheaded. I went on walking; trying to “shake it off”, but it wasn’t that easy. Finally, a sign saved my life when I realized there were water fountains all around the premises, in order for people to fill their bottles or drink directly. Apparently the city had one of the purest water in the continent.

 I didn’t walk all around because some areas were only trees and some ruins. I took pictures and then moved on. The Circus area was a disappointing place, more like an undeveloped terrain than anything else. Across that stretch of land, which was pretty big, I made the line to put my hand in the Mouth of truth, a whole in a marble image that people used to think was good to use as a lie detector. I then walked through the streets to finally reach the Piazza Venezia where there was a large statue of Victor Emanuele, the man who united Italy and made it a republic. I only took pictures from the outside and it was here my luck had run out.

 My camera had stopped working. It wouldn’t turn on so I decided to walk towards a small square in front a church and sit there to check it properly. This would have taken a lot of my time and I had no time to lose. But that was visible not important to an unanimated object that wouldn’t work. I took the battery out, the memory card, I shook it and even yelled at it but it just wouldn’t work. As I did that, someone came closer to me and said something in Italian I didn’t understand. It was a man, maybe in his thirties, who was extending his hand to me. For a moment, I felt scared, but then I realized that if the camera was broken, there was really no harm in giving it away.

 The man took it in his hands and checked it all around. I, for one, was looking at him. Italian men were very into the facial hair thing and always very lean, not muscular or fat but rather nice complexions. The man didn’t seem to notice my eyesight going all over him as he tried to ask me something in his language. I tried to understand, breaking it up buy words. I recognized the word “help” and the word “camera”. I nodded, looking a bit stupid, and then he stretch out his arm to me and I grab it, clumsily again. He started talking and walking and I just followed him. I realized I was losing time but I felt I couldn’t just be rude to him.

 He talked every step of the way. I just nodded and smiled, thinking how stupid I must look doing that like a robot. After a few blocks from the square, he pulled out some keys and entered and old building. Inside, it was beautiful. The place was full of lowers and everything was very clean and taken care off. A cat slept on a corner and barely looked at us as we passed. I followed the men up some stairs and to, what I presumed, was his apartment. It felt really cool at this time of day. He offered me a chair and then started to check my camera on a table with a big lens and a lot of different tools and gadgets I had never seen but would attribute to an engineer or a mechanic or something like that.

 He had stopped talking and was very concentrated in the camera. He opened one side and started moving things around. I nervously took out my cellphone and realized time was passing fast. I needed to head to the Trevi Fountain if I wanted to visit every place I had put on my list. Uneasy, I stood up and tried to say something but couldn’t think of the words. Anyway, it wasn’t necessary. He turned around, put a hand around my wait for me to get closer and explained slowly what he had done. Funny enough, I understood it all. The camera was working again and I could keep taking pictures. I took out my wallet to pay him for his troubles he grabbed it and put it back in my bag.

 So he didn’t wanted pay. I asked again but he kept nodding his head negatively so I stopped talking and just stood there like an idiot. Then I remembered my schedule and decided to just shake his hand and be on my way. As I turned around, he pointed at himself and said he would take me around. Yes, he spoke in my same language which was both funny and annoying, as if I had know he knew what I was saying it would have been less of a weird experience.

 We went out to the street and right enough, we went to the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona and through streets he knew very well. We didn’t really talked about ourselves, not even when we decided to have lunch in the afternoon, after walking a lot. We had a delicious pizza and ice cream for desert and it was only then when I told him I was a writer and he told me he worked fixing all kinds of electronic devices. But we went on to talk about Rome and Italy and politics soon enough.

 To be honest, it had been a great day with him and I had more time to spend. So we went to the Vatican and entered Saint Peter’s basilica, which is enormous. It feels like entering a huge cavern or something like that. Pietro, as he had told me his name was, explained to me everything there was to know about the site. Funny enough, some tourists thought he was a guide and began asking him questions. He was kind enough to answer every single one of them. After that, he took me again through the streets, taking pictures of people, cafés, ice cream parlors and just about everything. The sun had already gone and I had only a couple of hours left.

 He invited me to have some wine and then we chatted again about things that were not us. About other people, my trip, his country. He was very charming and I could feel he didn’t do that often. He wasn’t a player or a very outgoing person. He was just one of those people that loves to help and that feels alone, because that I could see, as he walked me to my hotel. His eyes talked as his mouth didn’t and that was more than enough for me. When we got to the lobby, I wanted to shake his hand but he decided to hug me instead. It was a very nice hug, also speaking volumes, which his mouth was unable to express. We bid farewell and then I went up to my room.

 To this day, I regret not asking him for his number or email address or something. But I also answer myself that it probably wasn’t one of those encounters. Maybe it was meant to be a one-time thing, one of those that’s really great and lives in our memo

Life's a bitch? No, you are.

   Charlie was still breathing heavily. Mike went out of bed, almost running to the bathroom. From there, came the sound of running water. Charlie wasn’t really listening, still trying to catch his breath. He had this stupid smile on his face and he knew it but had no idea of how to get rid of it. Anyway, who cared? He was happy and wanted to feel that way for as long as he could. It wasn’t that often he felt fulfilled in life.

 His boss had recently promised him a promotion, then Mike had moved in with him and they were planning a trip around Europe to celebrate their first year together. It was all going great and he had no reason to stop smiling. When Mike came back to bed, he told Charlie he was very thirsty and had to drink water from the tap. Charlie kept smiling at him and kissed him without saying a word. Just as they were, they fell asleep until the day was new.

 They had breakfast and a nice conversation before separating to get to their jobs. Then, Charlie’s happiness ended. He had been notified that someone else had landed the promotion instead of him. All morning, he was too embarrassed by this new development to ask anything but, after lunch, he decided to talk to his boss about it. After all, he liked him and new that he would be honest and would properly explain what had happened.

 As it happens, the guy who had landed the promotion was not even a long time employee but a new staff member and the boss told Charlie he had been obligated to give him that post as he was the company’s owner son. Charlie tried to understand how a person that had been working there for four years, working hard to be precise, was not going to get the job and a kid who had no idea of the business just landed the gig because he was related to someone.

 Unknown to him, Charlie had asked this enraged, screaming a bit and visibly annoyed. The boss asked him to calm down but he didn’t. He had no idea what came over him but he just started grabbing things and throwing them all around the room. He was about to go for his boss when two security guards subdued him. He was in such a state; it was hard for them to pull him out of there. He was not a tall guy but he was apparently really strong and would go without further fighting. But the two guys were stronger and they threw him out the front door. They left but returned shortly, telling him he needed to ask someone to empty his desk. He called his only friend in the office and she put everything worth something in a box and gave it to him in the parking lot. They parted, saying nothing.

 He walked to a coffee shop with his box and tried calling Mike from his cellphone several times but he wasn’t picking up. The last time he tried, the call went straight to voice mail. Then something came over him. It wasn’t the rage he had felt before but rather a sense of worry, that something wasn’t completely fine. He decided to go back to his house and call Mike from there. Maybe his cellphone had just died or maybe something else was going on. It was certainly not the best day to be Charlie and, as he walked to the train station with his box, he hoped for everything to be ok and for this to be just a normal day or a dream.

 When he stepped off the train, he received a call from the bank, telling him why he had his bank account blocked. He hung up immediately. It made no sense that his account was blocked and he knew those calls were just pranks or ways to get his data in order to rob him. He wasn’t going to fall for that. He walked fast from the station to his building. He was helped by a lady to open the front door and took the stairs as the elevator took too long to arrive at the ground floor. When he finally made it to the sixth floor, he looked for the keys in the box and open the door.

 The place was empty and he had hoped to see Mike there. But he was obviously at work. He just wanted to know right away that he was ok but apparently that was a lot to ask for. He decided to take the phone and call him again but the cellphone number he was calling was dead. Voice mail time and again. Then he sat in his sofa and started thinking where he might be. He could go to Mike’s work, but he said they didn’t know he was gay so maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe…

 And then he heard it. It was a sound coming from somewhere, like the one of someone complaining but soft. It was just as if someone tried to be silent but couldn’t really mask their own voice. It was then when Charlie realized the sound was not coming from outside or from another apartment. It was coming from one of the rooms, from the bedroom to be precise. He forgot all about his search for Mike, about his dismissal and his little box filled with shitty things. He just walked down the hall and opened the door, without even thinking much about it.

 The bedroom door was never closed but it had been this time and he now knew why. Mike was there all right. But he wasn’t wearing any clothes and wasn’t hurt at all except a few nail marks in his back. Trying to cover himself up, Mike fell from the bed and Charlie saw the person who had been moaning. Different than he might think, the person was a woman. Charlie had never seen her before and that really didn’t matter.

-       Get out of my house…

 The woman looked at Mike and then at Charlie and then at Mike again, who was putting up his underwear and walking slowly to Charlie.

-       Get the fuck out of my house! And you…

 He said nothing. The woman picked up her things and ran past Charlie, still naked. She took his bed sheet but he didn’t care. He just wanted her out of his home. Once she was out, he stood in front of the door, still shocked. There was no way of crying, of going through another episode of crazy rage. He was too overwhelmed and too hurt to cry, scream or yell. Mike came out of the bedroom and was about to touch him but Charlie slapped his arm to one side and told him to go fuck himself. He told him he had been the best person in the world to him for a whole year. How could he be like this to him?

 He shouldn’t have asked. Mike told him, caressing his arm, that he had liked at first and that he was a nice fuck but that was it. He got boring both in bed and in the rest but he didn’t let him go because of how well positioned he was. But now, Mike said, he had enough of that and wanted to leave him. Charlie followed him back to the room and told him that he wasn’t just leaving. He was throwing him out. He wasn’t going to be the victim, he told Mike, not when he was clearly the one that was losing more.

 Mike didn’t listen to anything he said. He just put some clothes, grabbed a small bag and started packing. He packed all the clothes that Mike had given him. He had to take out another bag, a bigger one, and by then Charlie decided he had to breath and count to ten, so he went to the living room and tried to calm himself down. He finally started crying profusely and didn’t heard when Mike left with two big bags full of everything Charlie had bought him

 He had been alone for at least an hour when the phone rang and he had to answer because the sound annoyed him. It was the bank again. They were sorry to tell him Internet pirates had targeted his account and that he had lost of the savings in there. He laughed like a crazy person right then, and the lady talking to him thought he had gone insane or something. She was careful to say it may take a while but that the bank would reinstate all his savings, as he had paid the insurance they sold.

 Charlie just said thanks and hung up. He cleaned up his tears and, as painful as it was, he tried to think what he had done wrong. Although he saw nothing at the time and decided it was best to take a nap, Charlie had been not that great at his job and had been promised a promotion he didn’t deserve. The owner’s boss was not the stupid kid he thought he was. The man was actually an expert in advertising and would make the company double its earning in a single year.

 As for Mike, he had met him in a bar and, been drunk, had taken him to his apartment and had sex with him. The first three months, it was all about sex, not minding anything else. It was Charlie who asked Mike to be his boyfriend and the one that insisted on Mike leaving with him. All of this happened in a matter of months, including the expensive gifts and the planning of the trip that, unknown to him, Mike was still going to have. Charlie had left him in control of one of his credit cards and Mike had recently bought the tickets for both his female friend and him. Charlie would realize about this in the future, a bit too late.

 And the pirates. That looks random but it isn’t. Mike had paid for porn and clothes in many websites and that’s where the pirates always take their information from.

 In conclusion, Charlie had all the answers in front of him but he wasn’t acknowledging any of them, anything that he had done. He blinded himself into thinking certain things and rushed into liking somebody because he thought he would never find someone. His sunken self-esteem had been the one to blame and it would take him still a lot of life to learn the necessary to stop blaming others for his mistakes.