Tip of the iceberg

      The metal door opened up with a “bang”. Carter was holding her gun upwards. She looked to her right and to her left and walked slowly, trying not to miss whatever she was supposed to found there. The day was perfect, almost no clouds in the sky and a shiny sun glistening above her head. She was wearing the uniform and sunglasses, as she was very sensitive to light. As she walked, more like a crab than like a human, the sound of several police patrols could be heard on that rooftop. They were possibly trying to contact Carter but she had left Johnson downstairs and had made him promise he wouldn’t let anyone in until she was done with the criminal. Johnson was younger and eager to help. He was kind of the ideal partner.

 Finally, Carter saw Frost sitting on the edge, looking at the office building in the distance. As she grew closer, she noticed he had no gun, no weapon to defend his life. She had a bad feeling about all of it and made a full stop when Frost talked in a loud and clear voice:

     - Your gun is not necessary. You can come closer but leave your gun somewhere over        that vent. – He indicated one pipe that had a cubic shape.

 Carter held her gun for a few more minutes until she realized the best thing to do was to follow his advice. She left the gun on one side of the small vent and then, slowly, walked up to the criminal. He didn’t stand or looked at her, he just spoke from his seat.

     -  I guess you are aware that I lured you to this rooftop?

 Yes, Carter knew that. It had been obvious from the beginning that he wanted to be caught, that he wanted someone to notice where he was and Carter had been the first and only one to realize what he had meant. Frost had sent a letter to many newspapers, each one very different but having a secret hidden among the letters. Being an avid reader, Carter was able to break Frost’s code and know where he was going to be next. However, she had made the mistake of leaving a note on her desk about it and now every member of the police was there.

     - Poor Johnson. He’s not that strong. – Said Frost, looking down.

 Carter got nearer and looked over the edge. She could see a large group of men dressed in blue and they seemed to be arguing. Her eyesight was not so good but she thought they were talking about how to get in. Johnson had probably locked the door, blocking their entry for some time. Frost was right, Johnson was too young, to new to know how to handle these kinds of situations.

 Frost finally turned around and looked at Carter. She pulled back a bit, scared by his scar. He had a large scar running from the left corner of his mouth to his ear. He smiled, which made him look insane, much more evil than she knew he was.

     - I am sorry. Enemies try to make their marks you know?

 He didn’t wait for an answer from Carter, who was too scared o say a single word. The man stood up fast, putting his legs with agility over the edge of the building and standing up, revealing that he had been seating on a big envelope, the kind they used at office for reports and so on. Carter’s scared face changed to a curious one. She thought, for a moment, that he was inviting to grab the envelope but then realized he was just taking his time and letting her see what he wanted her to see. He took the envelope and pulled out one random paper. Carter could see it had a big seal on top of the page.

      - This is from Saint Mary’s hospital. No that you should feel bad, but I have an                   incurable disease. They told me I could live my life normally if I take pills forever and       have the life of a monk. And I won’t have that.

 Frost looked straight into Carter’s eyes. She felt a bit hurt by then, as they were bloody, as If he had been crying for a long time. Maybe he had cried a lot, maybe he was thinking about his chances and that’s why he had decided to leave the hidden message. He just wanted someone to join him and to know how bad he felt or how sad he was. Although that didn’t really corresponded to a man that had activated a bomb in a very crowded mall less than one year ago. His disease, whatever it was, didn’t change a single thing about him and the justice system.

     - I have to take you in. – Carter saw him straight in the eyes too. – You have done too         much. You cannot get away.

     - Yes I can. You know that.

     - But you wanted someone here with you. Why do that if all you wan is to keep                  vanishing?

 At first, Carter’s hands had been trembling. But that had disappeared. She was not nervous or scared anymore. She had a job to do and she was determined to actually do it, even if it meant running back to her gun and kill the terrorist right there. She was supposed to respect his life but she couldn’t allow him to keep escaping as he had been doing for so many years. He had fled so many horrible events he had caused, he was very insane and unstable, a person that could be trusted. Frost could not really believe he had the cards to come on top this time.

      - You’re done Frost. Come down with me, calmly.

      -  No. I need to tell you something first.

 She walked towards him and he didn’t move. Carter proceeded to taken his arm and made him kneeled before her. He didn’t really complain, he just seemed exhausted, tired somehow. His scar turned a little bit redder and she was disgusted to see it so close to her face. She took out some handcuffs she had on her back pocket but then Frost did a very fast move, pushing her by a vey loud punch on her chest, leaving her with no air on the floor. Then he got near her and asked her for silence.

 Frost took out a cellphone from his pocket and dialed a number. He waited for a bit and then someone answered in the other end. He asked for someone named Carly and then he waited again. Carter could hear he had called to a hospital or a hotel, somewhere where rooms were numbered. He talked with Carly for a while, smiling a bit and laughing. Maybe she was his wife or maybe a very close friend. Was she doing all of this for her? It didn’t make any sense. And if it was true he didn’t want to come in peace, then why bother doing all of this.

 When he finished his conversation, he told Carter to get up. He helped her but she let go of his hand as fast as he could. She demanded to know what was going on. And he complied explaining everything he had to explain. It was a long monologue, with precise details like times and days and even places and descriptions that made al seem so real. Carter thought he was playing her again but somehow he seemed honest, more than any other person she had witnessed confessing such a big part of his life.

 When he was finished, he just smiled at her and told her to keep the envelope. Downstairs, they were finally able to open the door but it was too late for that. A body crashed into one of the police cars, scaring ever-single man and woman there. Frost had jumped a few seconds ago, running towards the edge and not even doubting for a second. He had planned it like that all along and he had chosen that building because he knew how the police would park, how long they would take to bring the door down, how much time his body would take from top to bottom and so many other variable that he had loved to unravel. That had been him, through and through.

 A few weeks later, Carter visited Saint Mary’s. She met Carly there. She happened to be only nine years old and suffering a very rare disease. The best doctors in the world treated her and Carter was told it had been a difficult process but that the child would live. She was Frost’s niece, his only living relative. The envelope also revealed his disease, which was revealed by the police in the media creating a wave of hatred and proof, the irrefutable kind, that he had been forced to do every single one of his evil deeds. So his death was just one step of many on a game no one knew they were playing.

I did it

    I did it. I have to acknowledge, after long hours of thinking and deciding was it’s best, that I do have to consider what I have done and said. The fact that now I present myself as a guilty man, does not mean that I think that everything that happened that night and the following years, was all under my control. As you know, things can happen and we just can’t control ourselves, we are driven by something else, some other version of us that is more primal and simpler or more sophisticated and brilliant. No, I’m not trying to excuse myself but I am trying to explain what I think that has to be explained. After all, many of you would be reading this wondering how I ended up here.

 They have labeled me as someone with privilege and I have to accept that my life has been much richer in objects and shallow things that most people’s. I had the chance of having been born into a family that was able to provide with many things, many which were useful like education and others that could have gotten me away from this mess. I don’t blame, at all, my parents or anyone else for what happened. I know that it was me, and me only, who caused so much pain and misery. But I cannot talk about all of this and ignore the fact that I was able to spend money when others weren’t able to do it. Yes, I was privileged but in no way have I ever been rich, loaded with some many things I couldn’t remember all of them. That’s not my life, don’t believe that from them.

 I started writing this letter because my therapist thought it would be easier for me to talk about all of this in this form. I have never really been one to write or to ever think much about anything. But this trial, this process, it has taken over seven years of my life. I was another person when I did it. I do not mean that I am less guilty because of that but I think it’s important you understand every single aspect of this situation from my point of view. After all, al of this time you have seen me as an evil character, someone worst than the devil, like a serial killer or something. And that’s not me. I do have a soul and I do have a brain and feelings.

 The hardest part of this whole process has been having my parents live it with me. They didn’t deserve to be drawn into this vortex of media frenzy, hate from every corner and suppositions and insults and so many other things that have made this time a living hell. I don’t say I don’t deserve it but they are innocent in all of this. My upbringing had nothing to do with why I did it, they didn’t have anything to do with it because they were great parents, they were great people who I actually pushed away in that moment and I do believe that if I had being closer to them, if I had been a good son, maybe I wouldn’t be writing this letter from a rusty table in a very small cell of a major prison.

 About life in jail, I do not want to talk about. It is well known that I have avoided death several times here. They think I’m far worse than them and I honestly don’t know if that’s true. But if I have to remain here for the rest of my life, I want to live as long as they do, as comfortably as they do, because they do have many things here, like outside. The men that have tried to hurt me are the ones that handle a small black market that trades every single thing you can imagine, even those razors they have tried to use to kill me. But I have to say here, without any modesty, that they have nothing to do with me in a fight. They might be big and tough and now the drug world and the hard life but my life had rough patches too and during many of those times I learned a couple of things.

 No, I don’t really want to sound like a bad guy. Maybe I am but I do not want to sound like that. I just think I just should be given the same chances that everyone else has. But I know I am here and that I will possibly live here until I die so at least I want to make this work. Yes, that doesn’t make any sense but I don’t think it has to have any sense at all. I did something wrong, a bit drunk and high but I did it and now, I think I can take the punishment. Because I did it and I have to recognize that. I did do it and I am sorry.

 I know that, for many years during the trial and all of the process, my lawyer has insisted that I was so wasted, so consumed by marihuana and cocaine and booze that I had no idea about anything, that I couldn’t have done even if that had been my intention. The truth is I do remember some flashes, like fragments of my memory and I have to confess they are very confusing. I do not now if I remember those parts more because my brain was really fucked up or because I have chosen unconsciously to only remember bits and pieces.

 I do remember the party. Fuck, that was a huge party and the kind of party I had gone to many times without anything weird happening. I’m not proud of it, but back then I was just starting my career and I had so much going on. I was very popular in every sense possible and successful too, so people liked to make me feel special and tended to my every need as if I was an all powerful being that needed to be pampered every single second of his life. And I was. Many brought me alcohol, others brought me drugs and others brought themselves. And we would party all night.

 Another confession: I was in the closet during all those years. I had never dared to publicly tell anyone that I fucked men but people that knew me really well did know and I think some of them are responsible for what happened to Blake. I mean, I did it and I acknowledge that but they should be here too.

 After all one of them was his cousin. He brought me cocaine and other stuff that I would use in private with my lovers. Yes, because I had many. Back then, I had bought this nice apartment, nothing too fancy, and that was where everything happened. My business grew in there, all the parties and the craziness happened there and what happened and got me here also happened there. I wasn’t thinking, that is obvious. I wasn’t smart enough to know that many of those people that fed me all of those things I consumed were not my friends; they didn’t really want me as a significant part of their lives. They were just leeches, taking away things from me and I didn’t even saw it.  I actually think I didn’t want to see it because it would have been obvious otherwise.

  They did fake it for long and just like Robert, Blake’s cousin; they all brought me things that I would enjoy. He was the one who gave Blake to me as a present and I have to confess Blake didn’t know anything or at least he didn’t seem to know anything. I cannot say anything for sure and I wouldn’t be the kind of person to blame the victim. As I have said many times, it’s Roberts fault and mine, of course. He brought to my birthday party and just presented him as a friend. I did like him because he’s a beautiful guy but the party went on and I don’t remember launching myself at him from the first second.

 I was too busy getting high and performing that sick and stupid persona I had created for everyone else to see. It was such a fake, such a false representation of what I was. Or rather, what I had been. Because just a few years earlier, before money and false friends, I was a guy trying to live his life and even falling in love. I was normal and I was a human and I do believe I’m a human now, even if many of you don’t think so. I have feeling and I know that because I have barely endured all of these years trying not to be consumed by my own hatred, by guilt and so much pain. Because what I did not only affect one person. It also affected me. I know, I am not the victim but that’s how I feel.

 The fact is, however, that I vaguely remember finally speaking to him. I was drunk but I tried to make me look great in front of him. Then my memory goes very blurry, I think we did cocaine and he was wasted much faster than me. The next fragment I have in my head is him falling slowly on my bed, the sound of the music far away and me trying to take off his jeans. I remember him fighting, I do remember it… Oh my god, I remember. He was fighting, as much as he could and he couldn’t do much. The cocaine had gotten into him all right. Then, the next image is me forcing myself onto him and my hand feeling wet over his mouth.

 Then, I woke up the following morning, alone. And then the path to this cell started. I did rape him and I know that now, I accept it now, It is I fact and I am ashamed of it. I do blame drugs and alcohol and also Robert for having had the audacity to do that, almost setting a trap for me to fall into. But the fact remains that I did it, that I am guilty. And I would repeat this as many times as it’s necessary. Because I have come to the conclusion that I cannot live in this way any longer. I want peace. I did it.

Stranded

   The situation was becoming more and more uncontrollable. Bodies had ben found everywhere now and people were starting to wake up, to ask questions and to really ask the questions that they should have been asking for years. They were protests all around, riots and even murders due to the revelations that had occurred recently. All wars, all confrontations of any kind, had been stopped. It appeared to have been a miracle but it had nothing to do with that. Miracles didn’t exist anymore, magi died and only truth was there to comfort the lives of so many people that now found solace in the new reality that was hitting everyone straight in their faces, in their families and communities. Everything was there and people had to take their stand.

 The director of intelligence reunited with the president that week. No one knew about that meeting except top officials in the government. The two men discussed the best course of action. As predicted, the intelligence leader wanted everything to be covered, to be hidden from the people and blame everything else for the deformed bodies that were being found. But the president knew very well that the people knew the truth and they weren’t going to throw it away just because two men said something that was obviously not true. They had to find the way to reveal the truth but in the best way possible. That was the idea of the president and he knew he had no choice in the matter.

 The announcement was done the following week and everyone in the country, and the world, was shocked in the most violent way. People knew but they still couldn’t believe it. It was too much for many and the predicted suicides happened, impossible to be stopped or prevented. Some murders too, in the name of so many things that people didn’t even understand. Others, in the other hand, turned to science and objective thought and tried to adapt to the new reality but no matter how smart a person was, the concept that they were dealing with was too grand, to big to understand in one take. It was obvious humanity would take several years or centuries or who knows how much to understand what was happening and its consequences.

 The first case, the newspapers said, had been the one of Michael Collins and his sister Colleen. They were two teenage kids that had wandered into a deserted area and had been the first to be found dead and deformed by a local policeman. The case was almost a cover up if it hadn’t been for the pictures that policeman took before his companions and members of military intelligence arrived. That case was twenty years old and the man had hidden the pictures for eighteen of those years until he decided he needed money and attention and revealed them to the world. However, the world thought it was a hoax.

 But months after he revealed his pictures, more images and proof started being revealed in other countries, less prone to cover ups. And then it happened, bodies began to pile up very high or so it seemed. They were everywhere, appearing in forests and rivers but also in homes and office building. There was a famous case when four bodies were discovered on top the tallest building of the capital city. No one ever knew how they got up there, especially because the bodies belonged to four farmers from a remote region. But there they were, deformed ad the rest. It caused so much sensation and fascination that it became the case that everyone went to when talking about the subject as whole.

 The medical colleges reunited to settle how deformed all the bodies were and which were the main characteristics. They agreed that the most obvious new feature on the bodies was the loss of both eyeballs on the victim and the elongation of the eyeball cavity by several centimeters. The head of every victim was also modified, now looking a little bit larger, to adjust to the new cavities in it. The mouth in all victims had dried up, the lips almost disappearing. The nose of many had shrunk somehow, probably asphyxiating them if they weren’t dead by then. All extremities were incredibly thin, as if they had been deprived of everything a human needed to live. And another shocking fact was that none of the victims had their sexual organs. Everything had been removed.

 When that report had been releases by the medical associations, even those that still did not believe in what was happening was caught by the amount of detail and proper investigation these men and women had done. They had checked over one thousand bodies for their report and had no way of being wrong or been exaggerated. Every single body had the same issues and one more, with which they closed the inform: every body was radioactive. They had discovered this by accident with one of them but then checked them all and every single corpse was deemed extremely toxic. Of course this was very bad news for the teams working on the matter.

 Every doctor and nurse was checked for radioactivity and no one was found to be seriously contaminated, although some did have some in their bodies. The government guaranteed they would be well taken care of by the state but no one believed in anything the government said anymore. Now it was obvious they had been covering everything up and people wanted head to roll. Elections were scheduled within the next month and a new party, founded by the people, won the election. The new president was one of the women that had done the autopsies on many of the corpses. People trusted her.

 But the new president was also bombarded with questions. What was happening and why was this happening? Were there new cases? Were there under some kind of attack? Of course, she was unable to answer any of those questions. She had no idea about any of that and the scientific community was as confused and restrained as the rest of the world. They had no idea how to deal with everything, trying to help people as well as they could but that wasn’t enough. Most were just shocked and would never be okay again. They had seen their family members die and didn’t know how and it was obvious there was something else beyond all of this massacre and mystery but it was difficult to figure out. That was until one last piece of the puzzle came to be.

 That piece was another finding of bodies. A large mass grave in a remote area. A native community had found it and all the forces of security converged there as well as the associations supporting the families of the victims. They wanted to know who was the victim now but they found out much more than that. They dug up a huge piece of the land, discovering not only human corpses, deformed as the other ones, but also animal corpses that had been horribly modified. Some people screamed when they saw those, unable to understand what would cause nature to mutate like that, to create some sort of monsters. The answer was close by and it was discovered by the end of that year.

 More bodies but these weren’t human. They were something else. They did not seem to have been dead for a short time and it was concluded they had died at least a thousand years ago but the other bodies were recent. It was a mystery no one ever solved but it didn’t change anything. Because the world confirmed what it already knew. Creatures from beyond the star were there and they had been killing people, no one knew if intentionally or not. Those bodies confirmed they had been there for a while and that maybe that had found a way to adapt to society. Maybe they had found a way into the human heart.

 Further investigations revealed that all the deformed bodies belonged to former extraterrestrials. Apparently, they had found a way to adapt their physicality to our own and had been living with everyone else for years and years. They had no sexual organs and it was confirmed that none of the victims had children, only adopted ones. How people overlooked that important fact seemed strange. But what was even stranger was that those creatures had been living on Earth for so long that they had to become humans. They had to turn themselves into something else because they had been left there, stranded probably. And people know begged them to reveal themselves completely but that didn’t have to happen because they were all dead and no one knew why.

Hidden

   As the doors of the club opened, Hosni stumbled out flanked by two other guys, not one looking as lost as he was. He had to lean against a wall next to the club and just wait there. The two guys that had come out with him did not ask him if he was ok or if he wants some kind of help. Actually, they only looked at him glaringly and started talking on their phones almost immediately. His head felt very dizzy, he felt it turn and turn and not stopping but his body had no reaction further than that. He wasn’t going to vomit, so he just stayed there, looking wasted.

 The guys finally asked him if he was going with them. Hosni shook his head. He didn’t feel up to any task right now and just wanted to get home as soon as possible. As the guys left, he put his hands on the pockets of his jacket and checked everything that needed to be there was indeed there: the wallet, home keys, his socks and a candy. He even opened up the wallet to see how much money he had and realized he was obliged to walk back home, as he hadn’t enough money for a bus or the subway. And even if he had, he wasn’t in the best state to know where to walk to take any of those transportation options.

 So he started walking, at seven in the morning on a Sunday, through a neighborhood that he knew well as he had identified it as a go-to place since he had arrived in town five years ago. He remembered his excitement when seeing the order and the cleanliness and the coldness of people. It was very different from his home country, in both good and bad ways. The nice thing here is that his parents became a bit less religious and were not as tough with rules as hey had been before. The proof was that he was there, stumbling around corners at that time of day.

 Then he realized he hadn’t felt his cellphone in his jacket. He stopped right in front of a disco and people smoking outside watched as he furiously looked all over himself for the cellphone, only to find it in pocket close to the knee. He was wearing the cargo pants that his dad had felt would make a great worker, being able to carry all sorts of things everywhere. Even as he had studied to be a psychologist, his parents were still looking forward for Hosni to come to the family business, which was fixing all sorts of things, like a plumber.

 The walk was resumed, with Hosni checking out a map on the phone and rectifying his route. The small scare of not finding his cellphone had helped him being a little less wasted, he could see things little bit clearer. Yet, he wasn’t walking faster at all. He thought it would have been funny to go back to the club and make the owner or some guy turn on the lights to look for the cellphone. But then he remembered that couldn’t have been possible because electronic devices were not allowed in. He laughed stupidly, alone.

 After stumbling around for around thirty minutes, he finally got home safe and sound. It took him a while to open the main door of the building and he helped himself by holding the cellphone towards the door when opening the door of the apartment, in order not to wake up his family. He was very silent and when he got into his room he took every single piece of clothe of and just entered the cold bed stark naked, falling fast asleep in a matter of seconds.

 The following morning, the voice of his mother woke him up. She wasn’t calling for him but he could hear her in the kitchen, talking to his sister and father. They were probably having breakfast. He could smell the eggs and his stomach practically belched at the presence of the aroma. He would have wanted to eat but, again, his head was spinning. He was not wasted anymore, sleeping had taken care of most of the damage, but his head hurt and he just tried to fall asleep again but couldn’t.

 Besides, as he closed his eyes, he remembered various scenes from the previous night including many that he thought were not real. So he stayed with his eyes wide open looking at the ceiling, deciding which memories were real and which ones were fake. He knew he had a lot of beer and also some drugs, which weren’t allowed in the club but people still had them inside, when employees weren’t around and that was pretty often. The scent of the eggs felt stronger, so he got up.

 His family celebrated that he joined them and he was served a plate. Then, minutes later, he had to unfold the lie that he had been preparing since the day before. He said he had been in a friend’s house, drinking and having a small party with some of his friends that had recently arrived from his home country. All his parents could ask was what news they brought from home and how they were adapting to the city. They didn’t really care for anything else. It was his sister that asked at what time he had arrived and he had planned to lie about that too: he said he arrived around four in the morning, after helping a couple of his friends get home.

 The truth was he had arrived much later than that, even remembering seeing a bit of sunlight as he entered the building. He wasn’t asked much else, and he was thankful because remembering every single lie that he had planned before that night was difficult and made his head hurt even more. He just ate and enjoyed a time with his family and then went back to his room and tried to sleep some more but couldn’t. Again, he stared at the ceiling and just wandered about every single aspect of last night and how everyone had no idea of his real night.

 Later that Sunday, he took something for his headache and by night he was feeling better. He helped his dad around at the hardware store the family owned, as it opened every day, and just tried not to think about that night anymore. Now that he was better, he felt guilty and kind of scared that someone would be able to really now what he had been doing that night and so many other nights, because that one had not certainly being the only night he had gone out in order to be closer to what he thought was being his own real self.

 Since arriving to the city, he had been going out to places his parents had no idea he went and the thought of them knowing was enough to make the headache come back. He was afraid of the response, not only from his father but from his mother too. Even his sister’s response would be very hard to take in. He loved his family and wouldn’t want them to disappoint them or make them feel like he had betrayed them. But the fact was that he couldn’t tell any of them the truth. Because he knew how they would respond and he wasn’t ready for that yet.

 As if his thoughts had been heard in heaven, his father rolled out his prayer mat and felt in one very specific part of the store. Hosni did the same, just next to his father and prayed for a while with him. The amount of guilt that was piling up in his mind was too great and he seriously thought that his mind would explode one day. But it didn’t, because he was much stronger than he realized. After all, he had kept them out of the truth for many years and was ready to do it for many more.

 A couple of friends told him to be real, to live a more honest life and to lift that weight from his shoulders. But they didn’t understand how his family worked, how his religion and traditions really set a standard in which he didn’t fit in at all. Sometimes he had to go to his room when his parents had discussions over news in the TV that were “immoral” to them. He just couldn’t bear to hear them argue over something he felt they didn’t understand. He was just trapped between the life he had while a kid and the life he had now, after being able to go to college and have a real education.

 So, as always, for the following week, he was the Hosni everyone knew. He worked in the store and then he applied for jobs, some very far away, trying to get into the work world and into his profession, which he actually loved. He was charming with people all around him and loving with his parents and friends. He was just a young man full of dreams as anyone else, ready to take on life and just try to get the best out of it. He really wanted to be happy and thought that lying was part of that idea. It was unavoidable and he didn’t really mind.

 H was back in the club the following Saturday night. He had bought a year pass many months before so they knew him well. They gave him a token for a complimentary beverage and then he moved on the locker area, where he proceeded to strip down and only keep on his sneakers and his underwear. Then, he crossed a curtain to the bar where he drank vodka straight. Five minutes afterwards, Hosni was walking downstairs, to the dark room below, where his dreams did not live and he could be as close as he thought he could to the person he thought he was.