I choose freedom

   I had never been the type of man that smokes. However, after so much shit happening around and to me, I figured smoking was not really the worst thing in the world. I had received all the cancer pep talks, all the advice to tell me it looked so disgusting and the smell was so repelling. But I didn’t care. I had already been in a hospital for several weeks and had been given a bunch of things to do, as if I had just entered middle school or something. I threw all that crap out to the garbage and decided to leave as freely as I could.

 Then again, freedom was a word people said but rarely understood in these times. Freedom is not what it used to be. Now freedom has limits, it has rules and regulations. Freedom stopped existing a long time ago and gave way to all these people that just want to rule over everything people are able to do with their bodies, including the use of their penis and their brain. Freedom doesn’t mean shit anymore. The good thing is that I don’t give a rat’s behind either. The world around can crumble and I will crumble with it.

 In my small flat, the one I barely have money to pay for, it is me who determines what freedom is. And my version of freedom involves not using clothes around the house, except when cooking and just doing whatever I want, in whichever way I want to do it. I eat whatever I feel like and I invite all the people I want, when I want it. And if I want to be alone for days, I do that too. Books and movies become my refuge and I binge them like crazy for a while until I’m ready to be in the world of the living again.

 I do have sex when some of the people I invite come. They seem a little bit scared sometimes, because my flat is not the kind of mess they are expecting to see. They look at me and think they have me all sorted it, some weird hipster fuck that rarely bathes, smokes weed and smells funny. And then I’m not, because people often prefer to form ideas of others in their heads instead of properly getting bothered to really know someone. Then again, sometimes there’s no time to really get to know each other.

 Sometimes they only come here for a fuck and that’s all we do. And I try to make it good for them, because if I went to a guy’s house, after paying the bus fare and maybe dressing nice and getting something to do before fucking, then I would want the whole experience to be at least enjoyable. Sadly, many times that doesn’t happen, especially when people come thinking one thing and then it becomes this other event in which no one has sex and everyone is miserable because they are dealing with some kind of shit. Those dates are the worst and after those I go back to my books and movies.

 Weird or not, I never mix both those things. I never ask someone to come and then watch a movie. Not only does that seem counter productive to me, its almost invasive and unbearable. I enjoy watching movies and those that I love are like precious gems to me. Sharing them with people that may not be able to see what I see in them, would be problematic, to say the least. And I never talk about books, religions, politics or anything like that before having sex. No idea how many right-wingers I’ve brought in. And I don’t want to know.

 Besides sex, I really like to cook and sometimes I do that with the only friends I have. We’re only three, two guys and one girl and we like to get together sometimes and just chat away, and talk about all those things I can’t and won’t talk about with the people I sometimes bring in. It’s fun, because it makes me change a little bit every now and then. It makes the place look different and feel different, and it’s not all about the food we make. It’s about the trust and all the other feelings that are able to exist in those circumstances.

 Those two are my only friends in the whole planet. There’s no one else. I know the have other friends, their social lives being way more diverse and entertaining than mine. They sometimes mention those other people but I think they know how uncomfortable it is for me to hear about people I don’t know. They only do it when they want to make a point or tell a funny story. And its not because I forbid it in my house or something, it is just that they know what kind of person I am and they have decided to respect that.

 They ask me about the people I bring in my house and always ask questions, trying to get funny stories and anecdotes from me. They know how it is and that weird stuff always happens. I tell them and they usually laugh their asses off and that’s how we know our gathering is going well: by counting how many times we’ve laughed as hard as we can. Of course, we don’t actually count the times but we are very aware that some times things are different, because of some exterior occurrence that has the power to change the ambiance.

 That happened on the first meeting after I got out of the hospital. They had visited me there a couple of times and when we decided to meet up just the three of us, it just seemed odd. For most of the time, it felt like we didn’t even knew who the others were, as if three complete strangers had suddenly appeared in some random living room with glasses of wine and little things to eat. Even the food tasted funny that time. Thankfully, it all ended very early and the next time we actually discussed it all and started having fun like all those other times before. It was a tough situation.

 The third kind of visitors I get in my flat are my mom, my dad and my brother. They often come all at the same time, as if it was an invasion. I have to say that I really like catching up with mom and dad and I try to visit them in their place as often as I can. It gets a little bit tiring because they always want me to do something for them, but I guess that’s one of the things that happen when your only brothers is married and has a full family of his own to take care of. They assume he’s too busy to ever help at all.

 Of course, he kind of is but he could still visit them more often. The reason he comes to my house when they come is because he can then do two visits at the same time and that’s time saved for him. The thing is he brings his wife with him and his two children. Yeah, I think she’s kind of a bitch and I know she thinks something similar about me. And the children are okay but a little bit to overprotected, so they tend to do dumb things and ask the stupidest questions, but I really do not blame them for that. I blame her.

 She’s always going around my house telling them not to touch my things or not to do one thing or the other. I always tell the kids, away from her, that they can do whatever they want as long as they don’t break anything or do any serious damage to my place. But besides that, they can jump on the bed or flood the sink and play with boats or whatever the fuck they want to do. Oh, and she also hates that I curse but, as it is my place and I was in a hospital for so long, even my parents have decided not contradict me on that.

 I love watching her all pissed off while we eat. Not only because my concept of freedom goes much further than hers, but also because she knows she cannot say a word. She’s in my house and they are my nephews, my parents and my brother. In a way, she’s the one that doesn’t belong there. But I would never tell that to my brother who loves the woman like a mad idiot. He knows we don’t get along but has decided to ignore that in order to have a peaceful family life. And I greatly admire him for doing that. Very well done.

 When everyone leaves, I clean and get everything in order. I take off my clothes and lie down in my bed and do what I like, read something or watch a movie. But sometimes I also stay there, looking at the window or at the ceiling, just thinking about how much my life changed after I had the accident.

 We all thought I was going to die. We really did. The doctors still tell me it was nothing short of a miracle that I was able to live through that, to survive. I do consider myself lucky but I wonder about the responsibility that gives me. I’ve decided to be really free. That’s what I think the world wants from me.

A dream of biology

  Mary drew the shape of the rhinoceros as fast as she could. The beast was not moving at all but she knew she had to be fast if she wanted to fill her sketchbook with drawings. She had already seen a zebra and also an elephant, from afar. She had also done some landscapes, although she was fed up of doing those. Back in school, that’s all they did. Just walks and walks to draw mountains and a prairie and homework like drawing what you could see from your bedroom window or from the kitchen or from the bathroom.

 Coming to Africa was a surprise from her father. She rarely saw him around, as he was one of the most acclaimed scientists in the country. He was always in some exotic location and he would often mail her beautiful handwritten letters with at least one curious thing inside. He would often mail her feathers from birds that no person in Europe had ever seen, but he would also encase in the envelope a couple of leaves from some rare plants or a complete flower, dried up from the journey on the plane.

 She had kept all of those treasures in a small shoebox in her closet. She would often look at all of it and just sigh, thinking both about her father and about the kinds of adventures she could have once she had graduated from a good university and then study even more. She knew very well how hard her parents had to work to achieve the milestones they had arrived to, but sometimes she hated to be so young and silly. Mary wanted to have all those grownup things right then and there, no more wait.

 Her mother had always been the patient kind. Her name was Debra and she was the one in charge of raising them properly. She also had a job though, so she left at the same time than the children in the mornings and she would return a couple of hours after the school bus had dropped at home She was a very kind woman that enabled them to explore the world and be open about everything. So open that when Mary’s little brother Devon said he liked one of his school friends who was a boy, she was understanding and supportive.

 No one knew if Devon’s crush for his friend was real or something that should be looked at, but that wasn’t the important part of the whole thing. The issue was that they had great parents that tried to make them see that the world was truly open to them and that they could do whatever they wanted, if they wanted to become better people and even help others be better too. That’s why both kids would often go camping in the summer and would be encouraged to join clubs at school. That didn’t make them the best students ever, but it made them curious and that was more than enough for their parents.

 The only thing that had always bothered Mary was the fact that his father had never wanted her or her brother to join him in one of his trips. Of course, she had only wanted to go to one of the shorter ones or maybe something in the summer. But no matter how long it took or where they would have to go, both their parents’ answers were two resounding “no”. Her brother, of course, was too young still to go and do those things. At eight, he barely knew what the world was really about. But Mary was seventeen and she had already decided that she wanted to be a biologist.

 He dream was to be able to discover many new animals and help classify them and protect them. That was her life plan and she had even discussed it with her parents, who had been very supportive up until she had requested for a spot in her father’s next trip to China. She felt she had been very close to convincing him but her mother’s last words, something about school and being a woman, made her father decide against it. She had been very mad with her mother that summer, so much so that they didn’t speak at all.

 Of course it was all related to her father. She was very aware that one of her reasons to go and explore with him was the fact that she felt she didn’t really knew him that well. He was a kind man and very intelligent too, but anyone that worked with him could say that. She wanted to know him properly, as people and not as an adult and a child. There was no real connection when he came and visited because, every time he was with them, it didn’t feel as if he lived there at all. He was just hanging around.

 They only had a couple of very deep conversations, all of them regarding animals and the trips his father had taken. She could hear him for hours, talking about the new creatures he saw and how they were careful enough to preserve every single shred of new things they encountered. He even told her about the other people on his explorations, must of which were always unknowns to her and her brother. They would visit sometimes but would always only talk to their parents, have coffee and then run back out.

 When the Africa trip came up, Mary couldn’t believe her ears. It was so shocking to her that she started laughing hysterically. Once things calmed down, her mother explained that they had been talking about her dream of becoming a biologist and they had concluded that it was necessary for her to have real life experience, on the field. Coincidentally, his father had some things to do in a national park in Botswana in the summer, so the whole family would be able to go with him and just enjoy a couple of weeks as if they were actually working with their patriarch.

Preparing for the journey had been a chore: clothes had to be bought, suitcases had to be taken out of the attic and caretakers for their pets had to be found. Once the two cats and the dog had someone to live with for the time they would be out, everyone got a bit less stressed. However, they had to be smart about what they would pack because, after all, they weren’t going to a beach or some beautiful city to walk and take selfies. They were going where the wild things were and it was necessary to be objective.

 Mary was the first one to have her suitcase ready. Her mother requested to check if everything was in order and she was not so surprised to see that her daughter was taking the trip very seriously. She was so proud of her that she took her to the mall in order to buy some supplies: a large sketchbook and a big box of colored pencils, as well as a smaller case with only normal pencils with different degrees of granite. It was the best gift Mary had ever received and she hugged her mother tight, which was a rare occurrence.

 They were not really one of those hugs and kisses families. They were the kind to remain together and respect each other, but physicality was not at all involved in their interactions. Mary’s hug was something spontaneous, out of sheer joy because everything she had always wanted was happening at the exact same time. It was fun and it was happy, so much so that she even helped her little brother packed and talked about his crush for a short while. It was nice to feel they were more than just siblings.

 The plane ride felt too long and strenuous. The moment they landed and met their father in the terminal, Mary knew it was the thing she had always waited for. From that moment on, she was always very perceptive of anything near her. She would carry a backpack with her sketchbook, pencils and camera, plus some other things that she needed in order to really prove herself on the field. Her father would check on her work at the end of each day and he would always nod and then kiss her goodnight.

 She needed much more from him but she had no idea how to ask him that. She couldn’t just do it because, by doing so, she would probably break the very fragile and interesting relationship they had. She wanted to build on top of what existed and not tear everything apart to try again.

However, she reminded herself every night that they were going to stay there for almost and entire month. She was going to have all the time she needed to really prove herself to be as good as her parents. She needed to do it but she also wanted to do it. She never put herself out of the equation.

Adolescence

   The taste of iron was not to be ignored. Maybe it was because of the cold that had swept through the city around those days, the fact was that the gun tasted like pure iron and the taste was enough for Felicia to pull it out of her mouth and put it back on the wooden box her mother kept it in case robbers or someone broke into the house. Felicia’s eyes were flooding with tears, so she ran to the hallway bathroom and thoroughly washed her face, trying to eliminate her feeling while doing it.

 She looked at her own eyes and nose and skin once she was done but everything she had been feeling was still there: her insecurities and self-hatred had not left her body just because she had taste the iron that made up a gun. She did feel a little bit less agitated and her mind seemed clearer, as if she had put on glasses or something. She dried up her face with a small towel, taking her time to appreciate its smell and texture. It felt as if she had never used her senses until that day.

 Felicia then walked to her room again and closed the door. She didn’t lock it though, because it didn’t really seem necessary anymore. She had dropped the whole idea of killing herself, only because of the taste of the gun. But it wasn’t only that, it was also the fact that she wasn’t really sure about what she was going to do. After all, Felicia was still a very young woman and had a whole life before her. Something inside of her told her to wait a little bit longer, to hold on for a while.

 The young woman was in high school and, as with most kids there, she had started feeling anxious when she discovered how things had change from one grade to the other. Now, all the girls in her classroom and age would be trying makeup away from teachers, drinking alcohol, smoking marihuana and even talking about their sexual experiences. Felicia, at first, thought it was all about a little group of girls that had changed in the blink of an eye but then she realized it had affected every single person her age.

 She used to enjoy talking to her friends about the shows she liked, many animated programs among them, and about some games and silly things that they liked because, after all, they were still children. Maybe not like her brother Thomas who was eleven years old, but kids anyway. They couldn’t legally drink or vote and they were still in high school trying to decipher math problems and having homework. The shift that she had witnessed seemed rushed and unexplainable but she soon learned she had to adapt soon to this new state of things.

 Felicia realized this when she started being harassed by some girls in school because of her weight. She had always been a little bit bigger than most girls but no one had ever said anything hurtful to her because of that. Now, things had changed dramatically: some people outwardly said to her how fat she was and that she looked like a pig or a boar. Sometimes it would be in a low register on the school corridors but some other times it would be right to her face, as if they wanted to see how she responded.

 She always walked on, deciding not to engage in any sort of fight. But as the school year went on, it was more and more difficult to resist. She tried to remember what she liked about school and so she decided to spend a little more time in the library. Her best friends were sadly not there for her at the moment because one of them had left for a neighboring city and the other one had just stopped talking to her out of the blue. It was probably the worst part of the whole deal.

 Anna had been her best friend since they were toddlers. They had been in each other’s houses and their parents knew each other very well. They had celebrated birthdays together, as well as spending some holidays in the same place whether it was Disneyland or a cabin in the woods. They loved to go shopping together and make fun of everything and everyone, along with their mutual friend Jeff. They were basically sisters for more than fourteen years and now all of that had disappeared for no apparent reason.

 They had not talked over the summer because Anna had left for a long trip with her parents and she never contacted Felicia after she had arrived. Felicia didn’t think much of it but she quickly realized in school that everything had changed between them. She had tried to come close to chat for a while but it was obvious Anna had no desire to interact with her. So Felicia stopped trying and the relationship died a sad and unexpected death pretty soon. It was devastating for Felicia.

She even called Jeff to tell him about it and he was kind enough to hear about all of it but the thing was that Jeff had some problems of his own. His parents were divorcing and it wasn’t clear what was going to happen with him after that. He had told his parents he wanted to go back to were he had friends and family but his parents didn’t seem to care a lot about what he had to say. They were too busy accusing each other of something, so Jeff couldn’t really be there for Felicia in any way. He just asked her if she was okay and that’s when she realized she wasn’t.

 After that phone call, it was the first time Felicia realized that she didn’t really feel great about the whole situation happening around her. After all, she started feeling alone and without friends, something a young person is sometimes unable to handle, as it is a necessity for them to be social and able to talk to someone if they need help or advice, and sometimes that comes from people their age who have information they personally don’t have. It’s something they need Felicia realize she didn’t have anymore.

 Her parents were another problems. They had recently begun showing signs of a certain distance forming between them. There were no family weekends anymore. Mom stayed at home while Dad went away to fish or be with his friends. And when her mom went out with her friends, Dad stayed around to be with the kids. It was nice and all for a while, but Felicia soon realized it wasn’t very normal for parents to simple not talk a lot to each other. She wondered if a divorce was looming.

 So the bullying at school, which got increasingly worse, her lack of friends and the tension at home, had all been enough for Felicia to take advantage of none of her parents being at home to get into their room and grab the gun, to the point she had it in her mouth. After she went back to her room, she started crying and she didn’t really knew why. Maybe it was because she felt weak or maybe it was because she felt very alone. It was then when she heard the door and it was her little brother.

 He had arrived from being with a friend and Felicia could hear him throwing his backpack and turning on the TV. Without thinking, she opened the door and walked to his room. He was watching cartoons and looked at her on the door when she appeared. Felicia tried to seem calm and just wanting to hang out for a bit but Thomas was no fool. It is a common mistake to think youth means ignorance when it’s nothing of the sort. He realized soon something was wrong but didn’t ask outright.

 Brother and sister spent a good chunk of the afternoon watching cartoons and sharing appreciations about them. Then, they grabbed cookies and milk and also some ice cream and ate it all just before their parents came back home. They didn’t look as happy as them.

 But all of that didn’t matter because Felicia realized she still had people around who she could trust and also that she had to take care for. The world was not going to end. She was going to face the tide with the weapons she had at hand and promised herself to survive the whole messy thing that is adolescence.

Camilla's aunt

   The man closest to the window started screaming, slamming the table with his fists, launching to the floor every single piece of the chess game he was playing with a younger man. That one looked like a younger and saner version of the person that was being carried away to his room by two big men in blue uniforms. The kid looked on in disbelief and fear, as his father kicked the air and screamed nonsense. A minute late, it was as if nothing had happened on the room.

 Camilla turned around and looked at her aunt Matilda. She had always had the most beautiful hair in her family: it was long and silky, jet black like the night sky. Her mother told Camilla that she had gotten her hair color from her aunt but that was everything she had that was similar to her aunt. That poor woman was now on a wheelchair and she drooled often, her mother having to clean it from her mouth and lap every few lines of a conversation that was one sided, as Matilda couldn’t talk.

 Her mother had always told Camilla that no one really understood why her aunt had fallen ill like that. As far as she knew, it had happened overnight or after a night fever or something like that. Camilla’s mother liked to invent new realities every time a subject so touchy came up. It was not as if she didn’t wanted to talk about it but rather, her subconscious had created different versions of what had happened to protect her. Her story kept changing every time she was asked about it.

 They stayed in the hospital for ten more minutes, then a nurse came around to tell everyone to leave as visiting hours had finished. Camilla kissed her aunt on the cheek and it was then, in a second, when she saw a flicker of something, probably life, deep inside her aunt’s eyes. Camilla didn’t have any time to respond or to say a word. Her mother took her hand and Camilla just walked until they reached the parking lot. Once inside the car, on the passenger seat, she wondered looking at the sky.

 Once they got home, rain began to fall from the sky, first kindly and then harder. Camilla sat down in front of her computer and started reading about psychiatric disorders and then about the places people like her aunt were put into when no doctors could point out what was wrong. She saw horrible pictures and read awful essays and articles from all over the place and was only interrupted when her nine-year-old brother came to show her that he had caught a toad outside the house. He had spent his day with their father, playing ball in some park.

 Camille humored her brother for a while but then she started thinking about her aunt again. She wondered if Matilda was curious still about the world around her. Would she be interested on a toad if she saw one through her room window or would she just stare, looking at nothing in particular? Then again, she had no idea if her aunt had a window in her bedroom. It was very likely but the place did look old and people never seemed to care a lot about mental health.

 She came up to this conclusion when one her classmates, a girl called Anna, committed suicide back in high school. They still had two more years to go and the poor girl couldn’t take any of it anymore. Camilla felt awful when it happened, as she felt she had never really cared about that particular girl. She knew she couldn’t be friends with every single person but anyway, guilt is like that. Unexplainable and painful. All the girls went to the burial and they all seemed concerned.

 However, the school never really addressed what had happened. They did tell everyone for a couple of days that, if they needed help, they could always go to the school therapist and tell him whatever they needed to say. A couple of girls did go but their problems were much easier to solve than the one that Anna must have had. Camilla tried hard to learn more about her deceased classmate, but she stopped when the mother yelled at her over the phone, calling her a pervert.

 There were all sorts of rumors: Anna was a closeted lesbian or she was a nihilistic teenager that wanted the world to end. Others said she was always on drugs while others blamed alcohol. Camilla even heard a teacher once saying that the girl must have had a secret pregnancy or, even worse, an abortion. But there was nothing to proof any of those theories. They only knew that a girl had died and all of a sudden a world of stories was born, about someone they had never bothered to really know.

 Camilla wondered all night if Anna and Matilda had anything that connected them, besides probable mental issues. She wanted to know more about the subject and she decided, very late at night, that she had to learn about it, no matter what. So the next day, before class, she decided to spend a couple of hours in the university’s library, where a towering amount of scientific book awaited her. She chose three of the ones that seemed less hard to understand and she started reading. About the brain, about the nervous system and about all kinds of psychological theories.

 By the time she came out of the library, her head felt full of information. A headache haunted her for the rest of the day, at class and even after having a generous launch. Her friend Bastian asked her about what was wrong with her but she decided not to tell anyone about her hunt for answers. She didn’t want everyone to look at her as if she was crazy. Because that’s something recurring she learned from the books: people trying to get answers are always labeled as crazy themselves.

 She blamed the headache for her attitude that day and decided to skip the last class, which was always very boring anyway. She did think about going home but, instead, Camilla decided to walk around a little bit. That way, she could avoid answering annoying questions at home about why she was so early at home. She wandered through some parks, a mall and several streets. She never got lost because she knew her way but aunt Matilda was always in her mind. Then, she knew what to do.

 Some twenty minutes later, she was waiting in the same room she had been the day before with her mother. But this time she was by herself, waiting for a male nurse to come with her aunt. She knew her mother was not going to like this visit but she didn’t care. Somehow, she knew that the answers that she was looking for where there, enclosed in one of the many rooms that had been built specially for people like her aunt, absent almost completely from all reality and sense.

 When the male nurse rolled her aunt in and left, Camilla looked straight to Matilda’s eyes and waited. She wanted to know if that glimmer had being something of one day or if signs of inner life could be seen again. Nothing happened. Camilla grab each of her aunt’s hands with her own and then smile at her. Matilda’s skin was a bit rough but she somehow knew she had being stunningly beautiful when she was younger. Her mother had failed to show her pictures of their past.

 Pushed by something, some strange feeling, Camilla went closer to her aunt. Her lips were a few centimeters away from one of her aunt’s ear. She doubted for a second but then asked the question she wanted answered, or at least one of them: “What happened to you?”

 She pulled back and waited. Her aunt’s eyes seemed dead for a moment, but then she saw that flicker again, a spark of life inside her aunt. Then, one word was spoken by Matilda. Camilla had to get closer to hear properly. And when she did, her world was turned upside down.