Survival

   Fire blurred my vision every single time I leaned over my right leg to run. It hurt like nothing else had ever hurt me, but I had no choice. Running required me to be agile, not minding what was happening with the rest of my body. Those legs that had carried me around all my life had to work at the top of their game, never minding anything else. I felt the taste of iron in my mouth and my mind seemed to leave my body for a couple of moments, but somehow I moved on through the night, like a wraith between rocks and chopped trees.

 When light finally broke the darkness of the night, there was not much to look at anyway. The fields had been almost carbonized and smoke filled every single corner of the once green and lush environment. I stopped and tried to hear the world around me. My ears were buzzing and my head was turning like crazy but I tried anyway but I couldn’t hear a thing. It was then when I noticed that my leg was in a horrible state, a large part opened and spilling blood all over. However, the pain was not as bad as it was supposed to be.

 I tasted iron again and realized I had bitten my tongue while running. There was blood on my head too but I didn’t touch myself to know where it was coming from. It was urgent to find a place to get the proper help I need because, after all that had happened, I was still alive. They had sent troops after me, I had been strapped to a torture table for days and yet there I was, in the middle of a field that they had apparently abandoned. I started walking once more, trying to find a proper exit to that horrible place.

 I might have wondered through the smoke for several hours. I knew it was still day because there was light but it was very hard to see where the Sun was exactly. I tried to identify it a couple of times but it was absolutely useless. So I moved on, walking through the scorched plains, hoping to find a place to rest for a while. I have to confess I never thought of anyone else during that time, I had only myself in mind. What would I be good for if I died? The only way to help others was if I made it alive to the other side.

 When light began to wane, I found the first untouched trees that I had seen in several days, maybe more. I had no idea how much time had passed since everything had started. But there they were, smelling like smoke, with the tips of their leaves burned, but alive nevertheless. I walked into the forest, with a frankly good mood. No one would enter the forest to only look for me. There was a lot more to do in the world than to go after one person that got away. Maybe they thought nature, or what remained of it, would finish the job and make my bones be food for the ground.

 In the dark, I eventually found something of use. It was a small village, made of about a dozen little houses. It looked like one of those places were people gather when they expect to be mining for something, one of those temporal towns that were built back in the day, when retrieving the remaining minerals was of outmost importance for the world. Now, all those miners and their families worked in the big factories in the cities. The old villages had been left to rot under the sun and the rain and everything else.

 Plants had overrun the place, flowers growing everywhere. The smoke around there was much less dense. I was able to breathe a little bit easier. I walked around and eventually found the little hut that had worked as the doctor’s office. Maybe they hadn’t been able to attract a proper doctor to that remote place, only a nurse or maybe someone that came once every two or three weeks to help as much as they could. As I expected, there wasn’t a lot to use around there but almost nothing was better than nothing at all.

 I cured my wounds with whatever there was around and I was lucky enough to discover a linen closet filled with clean sheets and other fabrics. I cut a large one in order to use as bandages for my wounds. My body felt a little better, especially when I lay down in a cot. There was only the light of the moon, which happened to be almost getting to its fullest state. The beautiful pearl color of its surface, visible past the sheet of smoke, made me think of the past, of simpler times that I had been lucky enough to live.

 I fell asleep, dreaming about things that I remembered but mostly about things I had no idea how to understand. It was obvious that I had begun to forget things. Their attempts to make me less of a human had actually worked, as I didn’t feel like my old self anymore. My dream did not make any sense and everyone in it, or most of them at least, felt as a fabrication of my mind or maybe even someone else’s. It was so disturbing, that I woke up very suddenly, sweating profusely and damning my humanity.

 I realized I had slept much more than I had thought. It was morning already and the sound of birds reached me. For a moment, it seemed very normal. But then I realized there was no way. The plain had been destroyed or at least most of it. It was improbable that wildlife would have found a way to survive the destruction of the war and all other things that had happened. I stood up and went running outside, realizing I was not dreaming at all. There was a bird singing somewhere close, and I wanted to see it. I wanted to remember what a bird looked like, one that was real.

 I walked, slowly, out of the smoky cloud that had covered me for hours, maybe even more time. I seemed to be walking on the edge of the forest. The bird was chirping away, probably flying away slowly. I eventually arrived to a place where the trees began to be shorter and there were more rocks and reddish soil. It was then when I saw the little bird making the noise. It was small, brown in color and a little bit puffy. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was happy and talented and free. That was the most important: free.

 I wanted to go closer, to touch him, at least for a moment. But another sound cut me off from desire. The bird seemed to notice it too because it suddenly stopped singing. It stayed on its branch, silently staring right into a group of trees. Then, suddenly and very fast, a bullet rushed through the air and blew up the bird into oblivion. I saw its feathers fall slowly to the ground. I saw beauty being destroyed just because it was there. I felt enraged but also very much confused. I really didn’t like that at all.

 A group of two men and a woman came from the trees. I had walked back a bit just before, hiding behind the thickest tree I had been able to find. I trembled when I realized who they were: Ravagers. They were mercenaries that captured rebels in order to surrender them in exchange for money or food. Sometimes even more ammo for their guns. They didn’t care at all for the rights of others to live or to think differently. That was all done a long time ago. They had sold their souls for a cheap price.

 The woman grabbed the bird from the ground and did something I only heard, because I couldn’t make myself watch any of it. I only heard the crackling of bones and then laughter. I knew of their sadistic ways, identical to those of the people in power. There was no real difference between them. They had all been complacent in what had happened in the country. In the world, even. I only waited for them to go and they eventually did, walking back into the trees, their voices unable to hurt my ears anymore.

 When I felt better, I decided to go back to the village and grab everything I could find that might be useful. I used an old rag to make a sort of bag and put everything I could inside. I put that ball of stuff almost at the end of a thick stick I had found in the forest, getting ready for my next move.

 That night, I decided to walk in the opposite direction of everything that I had seen the day before. They had been the ones to almost kill me. My legs and feet walked on, hoping to move away from everything that had happened. Nevertheless, deep down, I knew that wasn’t at all possible.

Sock Empire

   The place only sold socks. They were everywhere and in every single color you could imagine. It was very nice to see rows and rows of different tones and drawings on them. Special socks for Christmas, for Halloween, for Thanksgiving, for Valentine’s Day, for Easter and even for New Year’s Eve. Every employee knew where everything was and how socks were made and could help a costumer find anything they wanted in a matter of a few minutes. There was a reason why the store was called the Sock Empire.

 The Empire was also divided into types of socks, not only color, and between those made for men, for women and for children. Ruben Rostenkowski had been the creator of the Empire and many of his competitors admired him for his amazing take into the world of footwear. People had been focusing so much on the foot for so long, that it was refreshing that one store could focus its whole attention solely to socks and all the types that existed.

 No one knew how Ruben had come up with the idea but they were envious he had had it. Everyone in the city knew he made millions of dollars every year and only from the main store. He had stores in other states but they were not as extravagant and amazing as the one in his hometown of Cleveland. He had been born there over sixty years ago and, although he had lived and worked in other parts of the country when he was younger, he decided to go back to his home in order to make his dream come true.

 Back then, Ruben was just a young boy, not really a full adult. He was still shooting cans with his air rifle and drinking the content of those cans with his group of friends. He had gone to school to study medicine but the truth was that Ruben was the lousiest student ever. He attended only half of his classes and the rest of the time he just spend it with girls and drinking. For all that, he wasn’t apparently as childish. After all, he was twenty-five years old.

Many thought that a man that owned such a store dedicated only to the foot had to be some sort of fetishist. And they were right. Ruben found that out in college, as he met lots of beautiful and not so beautiful young women. The first thing he did every time, as a form of foreplay, was to massage the girl’s feet. He would do it in such a professional manner; the girls never really realized he was so into it. To be honest, he was obsessed with it as he detailed every foot he saw, the curves and the skin and the complexity of it all. He was very obsessed.

 In class, he would suffer sometimes when a fellow student decided to remove her shoes beneath the desk. He instantly wanted to touch the foot and have it for his own but then he remembered he was in class and he couldn’t risk shaming himself even more than he already did when getting drunk. So he learned to breath deeply and just think about something else, maybe even count backwards in order to relax his mind and get any ideas out of it.

 It worked, sometimes. Other times, he would just ask the girl out and massage her feet as soon as he was able. He decided, and that a very healthy choice from him, to visit a shrink. He was sure a person with enough experience in these things would be able to help him stop his obsession and live a healthy life.

 However, it was a surprise when the psychologist told him it was pretty normal to have a fetish. He told Ruben most people had one, whether they realized it or not. Maybe it was a hair fetish, or maybe a “tall” fetish or maybe even weirder stuff like liking sex in costumes or always in public spaces. The point was, and the doctor repeated it constantly, that it wasn’t a disease and it wasn’t something bad as long as he learned to control it and not the other way around. So he advised him to get a hobby with which he could control the thoughts he had.

 It was difficult to find the right hobby, though. Ruben had never been really good at sports. Actually he sex appeal didn’t come from his body at all but from the way he spoke to women and how they responded to his voice and careful and intriguing demeanor. Anyhow, he still tried to play softball, rugby and gold but he failed miserably at all of them and it was then when he noticed he had started looking at men’s feet and he hadn’t even realized.

 Now he was really worried because in his mind he thought that his obsession had made him gay. But after calming down and watching a pornographic movie, he realized he was not interested in men, at all. Only their feet. So it was in that moment when the idea of the Empire first came to his mind: he thought that if his obsession was to be put to good use the best thing to do was something with feet.

 He looked everywhere and finally found a small workshop where people could go and learn how to make shoes. Of course, it was more about seeing the process than doing it because the materials were not all that easy to find and the idea was to attract people into the footwear business. There were just a few sessions but he became obsessed about shoes now and started reading all there was to now about the history of shoes and also about the making of shoes.

 As far as Ruben’s parents were concerned, they were happy to see him doing his last year of med school. He entered that time when he actually had to help patients and do shifts in a hospital and so on. But he was as lousy in that as he was in class. Besides, he was reading all he could about shoes and started thinking a business dedicated to shoes might be just what his life could be all about. Making them was not that easy but maybe selling would be a lot more interesting. He would see feet every day but he would have under control because it would be his job. Perfect.

 But after months of research, he realized the market was just filled with shoe stores selling the same types of shoes to every single idiot in the United States. He had to be unique and bold.

It was around that time that Ruben met Carly, a student of reflexology. She wasn’t from college but she had attended a rare conference about the subject there and Ruben had instantly fallen in love with her. She took some time to liking him however, but after some weeks they were dating and enjoying each other’s company. They rapidly found out about their mutual interest and engaged in long and detailed talks about the history of the foot and its pressure points.

It was the day Carly took him home for Christmas, when he realized his biggest idea yet. Her grandmother was there, a lovely lady, and she was knitting the socks that were left for Santa to put on the presents. And it was then when he had the idea to dedicate his business, not to shoes, but to socks. He told Carly this over dinner and even her parents thought it was a very funny and smart idea. They had never seen a store that only sold socks.

 The following year was the one. It was hard at first because Ruben had to drop out of college only months before finishing. His parents were devastated and told him not to come back home. He was destroyed by that but moved on thanks to Carly, who traveled with him to Cleveland, finding a nice flat for the both of them. There, Ruben created the logo of his company, the idea, the details of the first store and so on.

 He asked for a loan and with that he set up shop and asked for socks from all around the world. Then, he decided to wait a year and see how it went. If it failed, he had lost a lot of money. If not, it was just the beginning.

 That was the birth of the Sock Empire. The name was made fun of sometimes but he loved it and people loved what he did with the place. He would come into the shop sometimes with Carly in order to visit his workers and shake hands and tell everyone how much he thanked them and how much he loved his sock world.

 Even now, years after his invention, he still massages Carly’s feet before bedtime. And he still looks at all the feet he can on the beach and on his store. After all, he couldn’t stop doing something that gave him his livelihood and so much happiness.

Lily's world

   Medicine tastes awful, at least most of the times. Lily wasn’t just going to drink it and she made sure her mother realized this very late at night. Lily would not go wouldn’t go to bed without her mother reading a story and she had decided that was the best time to make Lily drink a new medicine. Wrong. All wrong, Lily thought, because ruining story time was for her one of the worst things any of her parents could do to her. Granted, they could get violent but the most violent she had seen them was in Christmas when Dad had decided to yell at Sparky, their dog, for “unwrapping” the presents at an earlier time. He yelled at him for several minutes until the dog left the room and wasn’t seen until the next day.

 But Lily wasn’t Sparky and, to be fair, Mom wasn’t yelling. She was just being a mom and who could blame her? Lily understood it was kind of like a job and that they had responsibilities as making her do things she hated, but that was a bit too much. Lily thought that it was time to make her voice heard and she bluntly said no to the medicine. She didn’t even felt sick. She was jus fine but her mother insisted every single night for the remainder of the week and Lily refused every single one of those times. To be honest, Lily was amazed at herself. She was known to be very obedient and a “good girl” most of the time, but she just felt this time her mother had gone too far, she was overdoing the whole mother thing and that was not acceptable, not for Lily.

 Of course, she told this to her mother who looked at her and smiled. Yes, she smiled. Lily was equally as surprised. It didn’t make sense that a parent smiled when their children misbehaved. But there she was, her mom just smiling and almost laughing. The most offensive thing happened the next morning during breakfast when Mom told Dad about the incident. Dad laughed louder and grabbed his sides because they hurt of so much laughter. It was so unbearable to see, Lily just wanted to get on her bus to school and get it going with numbers and historical characters and all that. She’d rather have that than her crazy parents back home. It was even weirder because a laugh hadn’t been heard at home for quite some time.

 In school, Lily told her best friend Anne about what had happened. Anne was fast, which Lily liked, and told her parents had times when they behaved like that. They just went crazy for a few hours and then they returned to whatever they were doing or thinking before. According to Anne, this behavior was natural when people grew as old as their parents were. Just imagine living up to forty years old! It wasn’t an easy thing, or at least that’s what Anne thought. After their discussion about parents, they had a nice lunch together, sharing what each one had brought from home. Anne ate Lily’s ham sandwich and Lily took Anne’s carrot cupcake. She liked doing that every day.

 Back at home, Lily realized Anne had been correct: her mother was behaving normally, busy with her work at home. Her dad wasn’t going to be there for a few hours so it was safe for her to assume that he was normal again too. She smiled at the thought of it and realized that maybe her parents had still some child like feelings inside. She thought that forty years was a long time but maybe in all that time, they still remembered how it was when they were smaller. It had been grandma who explained to her that her parents hadn’t been adults all the time and than they had been kids like her one day. Her mother had shown her pictures and it was amazing how similar the girl in the picture was to her.

 At dinner, her parents attacked again. Yes, her dad was normal, not crazy. They told her that taking the medicine would only take some time and after that every single medicine would be barred from the house, never coming back again. She was almost convinced by them but decided at the last minute to stick to her revolution. She told them that she was tired of drinking all those medicines and that she had just had it. She didn’t want to keep feeling that awful taste in her mouth every time she went to bed. She told them that she just wanted to be like Anne, who hadn’t taken any medicine in years and who never went to the doctor. She was just tired of it all and wanted to be just a normal girl, like any other.

 She had won the round. Her parents changed the subject to something about the house, something with bills or who knows, so he tuned out after that.  What was worth mentioning was the fact that apparently her decision had been respected and that she had done something for herself. And that felt great. She felt like all those girls in the movies or in TV that just stand up for what they think and like. She felt really good and told Anne the following day. Anne was very happy for her and told her that her mom said that every girl needed to stand up for herself, especially against men. Anne’s mom had divorced her husband recently. But the girls didn’t understood about that but they did understand what she said.

 They decided to recruit other girls and form the first Young Girls Alliance against every single thing that was done against them. Basically, whenever they got reunited, whereas it was in school or outside, they would discuss ways to persuade their parents not to make them do things they didn’t want them to do. Even a boy, Roger, wanted to come into the group but they told him it was only for girls but that if they decided to accept boys they would tell him right away. He smiled at this and left. Essentially, it was all about not been forced to eat broccoli, visit people that they considered gross  o do things that no one ever wanted to do like cleaning their bedrooms.

 Word got to a teacher, apparently because someone had betrayed the Alliance, and then several parents were called to the school. The girls thought they would all be suspended from school to something but nothing as bad ever came to happen. Their parents had been in the school, talking to Mrs. Steele who was the headmistress, but apparently things were not as bad as they thought. If anything, things had become a little more enjoyable, both at home and in school. At home, Mom and Dad were always smiling and playing and just having a nice time, like never before. And it school, every single adult had been infected with the “smiley” virus. It was amazing to se it all around them, never stopping. Maybe they really had been successful in changing things for girls all around, maybe the Alliance was just what the world needed.

 But that thought didn’t last much longer. One day, in the middle of their break, a woman came for Roger and took him away. This was very odd as Jason’s parents, like Anne’s were divorced. But what was very weirder was that his mother had never come to leave him in school or pick him up. Actually, Lily did not recall having never seen her and she had known Roger for quite some time. He had been the only boy she had ever liked as a friend, as he was polite and clean, not like all the others. He was almost like a girl, which was the way things should be in a perfect world, at least according to Lily.

 She told what had happened at school to her parents and they didn’t seem surprised but their smiles were absent during dinner. It was of particular note that it was one of the few days she had received so many kisses before bedtime and from both of her parents. Both of them tucked her in and told her how much they loved her and how much they wanted her to be the best girl ever. They told her that they were very proud of her and her convictions and they encouraged her to be the best Lily she could ever be. It was a very strange thing but the truth was that Lily loved it. And she did because he loved her quirky parents, always saying and doing weird things that she may never understand.

 Roger never came back to school and it was a very hot topic during the morning break and lunch, at least for a week. Then, everyone stopped speaking about it. It was sad she would never see Roger again but maybe he was going to be happy in his new school, as she was sure his mom would put him in another school. It was strange, but that whole thing and the war about her medicine made her think a lot. She realized that parents were strange but not only them but all the rest of the adults and the world too. She discussed at length with Anne, who thought parents were just doing what they knew how to do and that’s why they were parents.

 Lily went on with her Alliance, advising girls in every single kind of problem or inconvenience. She knew that they all needed help for something or other and she wanted to be there to help. Maybe that was what she was going to do wen she became an adult. But thinking about it scared her and made her feel sick, so she decided to be the best girl she could. There would be another time to be a grown up but, for now, it was best if they just talked with Anne about those singing boys on TV.