Unexpected

 He was very nervous. Samuel gave him a cigarette and told him to go smoke it outside, by the bushes that covered a large part of the house. As they filmed inside with another guy, he was smoking, his hands shaking and even his lips turning a very bright pink. He had been chosen just of the street, after one of the producers had just loved the way he looked. He wasn’t a very hipster boy or anything like that, he was just naturally beautiful and that was something they really needed in their movies.

 There was a market for those who liked guys like him, the kind that looks very young but that’s old enough to sign a contract and win a decent amount of money for working in the adult industry. Of course, there was always the problem of him never having done anything like that. The producer had told him it was something very safe and very private or at least as private as it could be when the video could be seen by, at least, a million people online. The point was that it was a very lucrative business.

 And the guy needed it. His name was Phillip and he had no money to go to college. He lived with his single mom and a little sister. She was being sent to public school, so her mom had no money worries there. But she just couldn’t do anything for her son. Her advice for him was to just get a job and start making money, in order to avoid giving his future family a life like that one. He was saddened by those words but, at the same time, it was funny that his mom had no idea he had no interest in women or families.

 He accepted the offer by calling the producer the night he talked with his mother. They agreed to do a screen test, with a video camera and taking some pictures. For him, that was no problem. He just did what they asked from him and, not surprisingly, he was all that they could wish for in a guy and maybe even more. He looked exactly like what their audience was asking for. He was very flattered when they told him this, not really understanding the whole dimension of the matter. The important thing was he was going to get paid.

 However, the morning of the first shooting he realized that, although he had sexual experience, he had never done it in front of so many people. There was a camera guy and his assistant, a makeup person, the sound guys, the director, a producer and, of course, the other guy that would be having sex with him. It was al a bit overwhelming when he first saw it all and that’s when Samuel the sound guy gave him a cigarette and told him to go outside and chill for a bit. It was a good advice. Phillip tried to calm down but he wasn’t fully calmed when he was called inside, in order to begin.

 To his surprise, he had neglected to realize he was going to have sex with only one person. So when they started touching and kissing, the others just seemed to disappear. Of course, every now and then, they would say some direction or tell them to move in a certain way. It would break the moment for a bit, but he would go on doing what they were paying him to do. When it was all done, everyone congratulated the pair. The director looked very happy and the producer told Phillip he could be the next big star.

 He got paid right then and there and took the bus straight home to go and stash the bills inside a can he had in his room. He would have loved to tell his mother he was going to make good money, but he realized he had to lie first. He just couldn’t tell her what he was actually doing. Not because it was bad or wrong, his mother was not that kind of person. He just didn’t have any intention to tell her that he was gay. It didn’t seem like the right time to do it. So he had to come up with something else to cover for it.

 Phillip announced her, the next day that he was going to work in a comic book store. He said it was one of those big stores in the fancy side of town, where many men would pay hundreds of dollars for a vintage version of their favorite comic book. She was very surprised but pleased and, as expected, she didn’t ask anything else. Not how he had gotten the job or when or how much did it pay. She was just happy to know her son could take care of himself. Besides, he knew that once he made more money, he would try to help her a bit with it, by buying groceries or paying some of the home bills.

 Time passed and the producers came through with their promises. Some weeks, Phillip had to go and perform for at least four movies. Some were done for the same production company and others would be done by foreign people that would pay to have Phillip in one of their pictures. At the beginning, he was only portrayed as a young innocent boy. But he eventually got into more specific genres within the industry. Of course, nothing too violent or dangerous. He was a pretty boy but not a stupid one.

 More than once, some man somewhere would try to touch him without permission or do crude jokes about him in front of him. At first he tried to just shrug it off, but once he realized he had some weight in the conversations, he started to talk back to people and to let them know exactly what the rules were. One thing was the performances he gave and another, very different, was his intent to be with someone, if there was any intent at all. This made him lose a few jobs but it made others fall in love with him and inviting him to do more work and even a few side things.

 He would do silly videos with some of his costars, in order to raise money for different things, or he would model clothes and accessories for many brands catering to the gay community. The moment he felt he had made it, in some way, was when they asked him to go to the other side of the country to promote some of his movies and also some of the clothes that he had been modeling for. He would make a ton of money doing that and he would also gain much needed exposure that was never a bad thing for anyone.

 His mother thought he was going on a trip to buy rare vintage comic books for the store. It was around then when he felt she knew something, maybe not the whole picture but maybe parts of it. She looked at him differently and would seem to be careful with her words when she spoke to him. He would have liked to ask her what was going on but it would be pushing a little bit too much and it wasn’t worth it, not in that moment that seem to be going so good for her. That part of his personal life could wait.

 However, life never really agrees with anyone. She just takes her own course. On his trip, he met a photographer for a new brand that wanted him as a model. He posed for him and talked a lot during the photo-shoot and at an event where they ran into each other. He realized he really liked that guy, and the guy seemed to really care about him, beyond the pornography and the pictures. Luckily, he too lived on the other side of the country, so they even went back together, talking and talking during the five-hour flight.

 It was about three months into them dating, when Phillips mother told him he was proud of him, no matter what he did. He was confused by that and had no idea what to say. She then grabbed her tablet and showed him an advertisement she had seen online for men’s underwear. It was him. She told him she investigated a little bit more and realized what other business he was working in. Before he could say a word, she assured him it was all fine, because he wasn’t doing anything wrong. It was just different.

 Weeks later, Phillip introduced her to Jonathan, the photographer he had been dating for a while. He really hit it off with her and with his little sister. They would even go to the movies or the park, enjoying the weekends together as a big family. It was a very strange feeling but a good one.

 Phillip kept doing his jobs. Eventually, he moved on more into the modeling aspect of the whole thing, but still loving to work for some brands that let him get in touch with that side of him that gave him a chance in life. It was strange, but he owed it all to pornography. Who would have thought?

Crisis above

   Captain Kohl had been looking at the problem for a long while, but she wasn’t able to find a single way to fix it without endangering her whole crew. She even imagined going outside the ship and fixing the problem there, but there were already many problems with the oxygen levels and walking outside the ship didn’t help fixing any of those. She spent a whole night trying to come up with a plan, making drawing in paper and then tossing it to the other side of the room. She forbid anyone to even whisper around her.

 The next day, Kohl ordered the crew to gather in the main room. She also invited the guests they had received from the military unit they rescued a few days back because, after all, what was going to happen affected them too. She waited until they were all there and when they were, she only faced a big screen and pushed some buttons. All of a sudden, everyone could see themselves on the screen. The captain was recording, so she put herself in front of the camera and tried to look as calm as she could.

 The message was for Earth, so she greeted her senior officers and chief of mission. She stated the current status of the ship and also its location. She then proceeded to tell them about the accident they had been in, just after rescuing the military personnel they had decided to help. It had to be said that people on Earth had no idea that had happened, so she was also reporting a number of deaths and injuries. She tried to do it in a compassionate way but without really stopping too long to explain all the details.

 Kohl then did detail the most important aspect of her message: the rupture of several solar panels as well as the leakage in their main reactor unit. The chamber where it was housed was already contaminated with radioactivity, which had forced them to evacuate half of the ship, mainly engineering rooms that could be control remotely. However the leakage was persistent and the risks had taken a more serious note. If it couldn’t be stopped, the generator could explode and they could freeze to death in minutes.

 The crew gasped, as they had not thought the problem to be that serious. They thought they could fix it but it was clear that the captain thought there was no real chance of fixing the problem. She did stated that she had tried to come up with a novel idea to prevent what she feared most, but that she had concluded that it was an inevitability. The reactor was going to explode and they could do nothing about it. Before her crew could actually react to that, she declared to the camera that they would evacuate the ship immediately and land on the planet below. No one said a word, they didn’t even breathe.

 She finished the video by stating she would inform them of their success in a few hours. The captain then turned off the camera and then turned to her crew. The most affected by the news were the military, that tried to seem tough but they were visibly very close to crumbling. Her actual crew, her peers, just looked at her in disbelief. Someone asked if they really had to leave the ship, if there was really no other option. And she just nodded and declared it had been a very difficult decision to make.

 The next few hours saw the ship turned upside down. The captain had ordered everyone to pack whatever was necessary and then transport it to the lander that they had in order to land on asteroids. Because that was their original mission: they were going all around the solar system gathering information about asteroids. They landed on them and collected different kinds of data that could one day help understand many mysteries of the cosmos and even some of the remaining mysteries on Earth.

 So it was a priority to put the samples gathered on the lander first, as well as downloading their main computer into that vehicle. As they did that, the military people just stood aside, gathering their very few belongings and watching silently, waiting for the moment when they would be forced to jump on another transport in order to continue their journey. It seemed to never end for them and they were getting a little bit tired of that. They wanted to go home, some even obsessing with that prospect.

 When everything was almost ready, Kohl asked everyone t o gather around near the lander. She would explain the procedure to detach from the ship and then head for the planet they had nearby. It was Mars and they knew very well it could be hospitable if they landed on the right place. She was commenting this with her engineers and with the biologists when, all of a sudden, a gunshot could be heard and everyone froze on their spots. One of the soldiers, a man with very crazy eyes, was holding the gun.

 The captain turned to him and ordered to drop the gun. The man didn’t obey. He seemed to be somewhere else, maybe even high. The captain repeated her orders but the man ignored her, telling his comrades that they needed to stay put and wait for the army to come and get them. The other soldiers nodded, although some did look as scared as the rest of the crew at the sight of the gun. It had been a very big mistake not to check them before letting them in, but the situation had been so dire that the thought had not crossed anyone’s mind. Yet, the situation had been very strange.

 The scientific ship had received a distress call and, as they were so close, they had arrived in no time. The place where the military ship was floating around was not a common spot for any ships in the system. Actually, it was too far from any planets or moons and the military were usually assigned to taking care of military bases on such places. But there was nothing where they found them. Only the floating pieces of their ship and a few survivors unwilling to tell the whole story of what had happened to them.

 The truth was that they had been there to fulfill a secret mission concerning a very special kind of engine that the army was testing in secret. They had been sent to that spot in particular because they knew no ships would ever pass close by. It had been a miracle that the scientific ship had been passing not so far from them. Or at least that’s what they thought at first. Because with the firing of that gun, they soon realized there was no coincidence in anything that had happened, except in the crisis with their reactor.

 That had been a factor that the soldiers had not predicted. They did know how to hack unto computers, and it wasn’t hard for them to make the scientific ship deviate from their usual course into one that would put them directly on their path. That’s how they were saved. They had done that after their tests had been successful and a black hole had been formed artificially in the middle of nowhere. However, it had not been a black hole in the typical sense of the word. It was more like a portal, a door somewhere else.

 Apparently, something had gone horrible wrong with said portal. But the soldiers didn’t say another word. Actually, they weren’t able. One of the engineers toppled the man with the gun and a biologist sprayed the other military people with a special gas. The fainted in seconds and were dragged onto the lander. The captain thanked them for their bravery and kept the gun for herself, stating they had no idea if leaving it there was the best idea. One never knew what could happen once in the planet.

 They left shortly after. They landed on Mars about forty minutes after they had left, just on the outskirts of an abandoned colony. They could make things work again and then maybe asked for a rescue mission from Earth. It would be even easier than asking to rescue them in space.

 That night, they saw how their ship exploded over the Martian skies. The debris fell far away. They all felt strange, not only because it had been their home but also because they felt something was still amiss. Something was not right and  they needed to figure out what it was, fast. Before it was too late.

You might go crazy

   Kareem had been having some very bad nightmares. So bad they were, that he had already gotten used to waken up two hours before it was needed to, drenched in sweat, with the sensation of having been screaming for a while. He had no idea if that was the case, but the sensation was more than enough to make him very uncomfortable. He would go then and shower right away, trying to clean away every single corner of his body. It wasn’t the sweat that made him do it, but the images in his brain after he had the nightmares.

 He would see them again, sometimes, as he walked from his home to the bus stop and also at work, where he was supposed to be focusing on sales and numbers. Kareem had always been very good at his job but his performance had steadily dropped from the moment his nightmares had started to the moment his boss called him to his office in order to explain to him how important it was for them all to have their employees focused on the job. It was a way of telling him that they would be many eyes on him from now on.

 When he got home from that, he realized that it was time to deal with the nightmares and, by definition, with whatever was causing them. He hadn’t been sick recently and he knew very well he hadn’t done anything wrong at work or to anyone else around him. His relationship with his family was a bit tense, but that had been happening for years. The nightmares couldn’t have any relation to that, unless his brain was too slow to understand how his familiar bonds were a problem to him and maybe to his way of life.

 He decided the first step was helping himself fall asleep faster and in a deeper way. So he started buying various types of teas and herbs to make infusions with, which he would take religiously before going to bed. Some of those worked and some others were definitive disasters. But even those that worked never did the same good job twice in a row. The nightmares always came back, one way or the other. He also tried exercising, which he had considered for a while but he was too lazy to properly commit to a workout routine.

 Kareem would go to the gym for an hour late at night and try to make himself as exhausted as he could. He would arrive home, shower in a few minutes and then just drop dead on the bed. It actually worked for a full week before, one Sunday morning, he woke up thinking he had wet himself on the bed. Thankfully, it was sweat, but that meant the nightmares had made a comeback. He even tried not sleeping at all but that caused even more problems at work, problems he just couldn’t afford to have. He was even summoned once more to his boss’s office for falling asleep at his desk.

 Kareem went to the nurse’s office located on the office building he worked for. After all, she was supposed to be there for all the employees of the company, which was one of the top investors in the region. So he just made an appointment with her on the phone and visited one day after work. He explained his whole problem to her and she asked for some time to reflect on it, as she couldn’t determine at first sight if there was something physically wrong with him. She also asked him to go to the hospital and get some tests done.

 He spent a whole Saturday doing that, which had to be the worst way to spend one’s weekend. He had to give a blood sample, a urine sample and a stool sample. He was also checked by at least three different doctors and even a psychiatrist appointment was scheduled. Everything was done to know what was going on with him and he was actually grateful so many people took an interest in his life. Actually, they were more interested in him not being able to sue the company, if they happened to be the ones to blame.

 The process took several weeks, in which Kareem still woke up sweating and screaming. He was so desperate and sad, that he started going to bars that closed late in order to have a drink and just avoid falling asleep. At least, he did avoid doing that at home. It was very uncomfortable when he was woken up by a very angry patron at a bar, where he had apparently fallen asleep and then started screaming like a lunatic. That just made him drink even more, which resulted in the formation of an addiction.

 He would go out at night and buy several beer cans and bottles, as well as wine boxes and sometimes other things that he could be able to afford with his salary. But all that booze was only making him fall more and more into an abyss, the same one to which his nightmares had been pushing him to. The day he found himself drenched in sweat, after passing out on the living room, all stained with vomit and alcohol, he knew he had to do something to really fight whatever was happening with him.

 But the doctors couldn’t find one single problem with his body or his mind. Kareem begged them to tell him he was insane or stupid or something, but they refused to do so. They insisted that there was nothing wrong with his and that his problems could be psychological. That was rapidly denied by the psychiatrist he had been forced to talk to, as he explained in a letter that Kareem was only a bit anxious and worried about his future, but that there was no evidence to support any other theory. So he had no answers and he was probably a lost cause.

 As a consequence, he was fired a week after the test results had been sent by mail to his boss. As the company had paid for every single test and appointment, they were obliged to notify his boss. The man treated Kareem very badly, practically ignoring all the good work he had ever done in there. He accused him of being just too lazy to realize and acknowledge that his work was too much over his head and that he wasn’t really able to deal with all of it. Kareem had to hear it all and then receive the letter were his firing was made official.

 He grabbed a box, threw all of his things inside and just left. He didn’t talk to anyone, as no one had had the balls to say something to his boss. Everyone had been able to hear what he told Kareem, as the offices were made of glass and nothing could be left to the imagination. But again, no one said anything and that hurt him deeply. He even grabbed a report he was working on, due a few days after that day, and just took it home to burn in the oven. The company depended on that report but Kareem had depended on them.

 After all of that, one would think the nightmares would have stopped. But they simply didn’t and Kareem dove even deeper into alcoholism. He was so out of himself sometimes that he would actually go out and just become that crazy person that yells crazy stuff on the street. That was how he was arrested one night, after running after a girl who had not wanted to tell him what time it was. Two police officers beat him and took him to the station.

 He was freed days later, because the woman had come and had decided to remove all charges against him. The police wanted Kareem to stay for longer, but they couldn’t do that. So they just threw him out. He was sober but very sad and walked the longest route to his house. When he got there it was very late and he wasn’t interested in all the emails and calls he had been receiving. He would deal with his former boss the next day. He just wanted to fall asleep and die or at least rest for a couple of hours, before the screaming began.

 However, he was woken up by his cellphone ringing loudly. He didn’t even know he had the volume on so high up. He almost didn’t answer but he decided to do it anyway. It was one of the doctors from the hospital with some very important news. He needed Kareem to come to his practice as soon as possible.

 In that doctor’s office, several medics and nurses were gathered. They announced that a very rare parasite had been discovered living inside of him. They had concluded all of his problems had come from the presence of that organism. Kareem stared at them for a while and then just left, in silence.