Singin' ain't so

   From her earliest youth, Jessica knew exactly who she wanted to be. She wanted to be a singer, to spend her days on top of a stage and just please millions of people with her voice and personality. She insisted so much to her parents that they finally accepted to pay for acting lessons and singing lessons. They didn’t really support her aside from the money aspect, so every single thing that happened afterwards was done only by that young idealist girl who wanted to eat the world.

 She spent every single weekend practicing in her singing school and at home. Her family didn’t really like it because her voice was not very good at the beginning. And even when she improved it, it was still very annoying for people that just wanted to relax at home after long days at school or at the office. Jessica sometimes left the house and sang outside, walking to the store or the park. In her mind, she had to keep using her voice until someone noticed her.

 In all the magazines, her favorite singers and stars told the stories of their discovery exactly in the same way: someone had seen them in a public space; sometimes it was the supermarket and others in an ice-cream parlor. The point was that they just saw them around and knew that they could be amazing artists. As she wanted to be a singer, she decided to sing in the park sometimes, hoping for people to stop by and just stay for a while, enchanted by her voice and talent.

 Jessica convinced her best friend Anna to play the guitar while she sang. Anna had been pressured by her parents from a young age, leading a very different life than the one her friend had. She had been told that by the age of ten she should know how to play at least three instruments, and one of those was the guitar. She accepted Jessica’s request after her friend said that it was the best way to be far from her mother, who was always telling her what to do, even in summer holidays.

 They started doing their small shows when they were around thirteen years old. They would sing five songs, chosen that same morning by the both of them. They had to do an act that would attract young people to the park but also adults that had connections to the artistic world in order for them to get noticed by a label. Anna was not as optimistic as Jessica, but she supported her nevertheless, mainly because it was such a fun time to have every so often. It didn’t happen every day, that would have been impossible, but they sat on the lawn of the park as often as they could.

Four years passed, very slowly for Jessica and very fast for Anna. They had only one more year of high school to go and then they would be sent to college. Their respective families had been saving for a long time and it would only be the right thing to do to keep studying and go on to live a life where they could be someone. But Jessica had already chosen who she wanted to be and nothing could ever change that. I her mind, she had a year to breakthrough and then, it would be undiscovered country.

 Anna was always checking universities on her laptop, even moments before their musical outgoings. She would tell all of the details to Jessica, who never really paid attention. She was too busy memorizing the lines of several songs or learning about her favorite artists. She had her room all decorated with several pictures of them as well as of other artists and bands that had come before. Her aim was to be in one of those posters in the future, inspiring other young girls to be the best they could be.

 However, life has a way of laughing at people’s dreams. One of those days, in which they sang on the park, Anna was late with her guitar, as her mother had decided to argue about the prospects of university. She wanted her daughter to study to be a chemist or a biologist. However, Anna wanted to learn something that required more creativity, more freedom. She had seen a lot of brochures about design schools, film schools and others like those. She wanted more than what she already had.

 As they fought with her mother, she forgot that time was passing and that Jessica was not the most patient human on Earth. Once before, Anna had been five minutes late and she had been received by a furious Jessica yelling at her a bunch of things about decency and manners that a person in the artistic world should have. She also said some hurtful things and it made Anna regret her decision to help her friend. Jessica apologized later but made her promised she was not going to be late ever again.

 But she was. Jessica had been waiting for a while. As winter was coming, the clouds and the sky turned darker sooner than before. It was the perfect moment for a criminal coming from outside of town to attack her right there, in the park. He covered her face and dragged her away from the lawn and into a wooded area, where he gagged her and raped her. A woman walking her dog found her the following day. Jessica had passed out the day prior and was still asleep when she was found. Not even the sound of more people around her and the paramedics woke her up.

  Jessica woke up in the hospital three days after having been found. Some of her bruises were already receding. Her mother was on the room when she woke up. It was obvious she had been crying for a long while. Her father came in later and he hugged her and cried, without saying a word. It was very strange but she didn’t even try to say anything. It wasn’t that she couldn’t talk; it just seemed wiser to just listen and wait for the right moment to say the right amount of words.

 That night, the doctor told her what had happened, her parents had left only minutes prior. She cried in silence as the man told her that the police had captured the man the day before on a road. He had been cornered by them, trying to take advantage of another girl. He was so surprised to see the police that apparently let the girl go and shot himself on the mouth. The police didn’t even have a moment to properly respond or to save his life in order to get the criminal to jail.

 Jessica nodded. She wasn’t really hearing the doctor. She was thinking about her career, about her possibilities now that she had been through something that horrible. She felt physically ill, disgusted and just tired. But something in her brain made her think that it wasn’t the end or something like that. She felt that there was more to her story than just that. She made sure the doctor knew she was going to get out of that hospital bed soon in order to achiever her goals, by any means necessary.

 Sure enough, she started writing songs the moment she was able to leave the hospital. Jessica closed her room door and did not come out of there for a whole week. Her mother would bring her food and she would often tear up but not say a word. Her father stood by the doorframe and watched her, absolutely stunned that she could be that active after what had happened. It didn’t seem right, but at the same time, Jessica seemed to be in her element writing in silence.

 Three songs came out of those writing sessions. She grabbed her video camera and recorded three different videos, which she uploaded to YouTube on the same day. She sang on them about what had happened, about how she felt and about what was going through her head.

 Her music was a success. Millions of viewers saw the videos and shared them in less than a week. Soon enough, a recording label contacted her and an album was planned to be released within the year. And Anna… She never saw her again. She couldn’t forgive her.

Purple eyes

   The knight in shining armor was running through the hallways, make a clanking noise that was very hard to miss. He had entered the castle through the back, by a courtyard that had never been seen by eyes different than the ones of the cooks and maids that had worked there when the castle lived its golden age. Now, it building was empty and some areas were ruins, crumbling slowly into the ground.

 When he arrived at the end of one of the hallways, he took out a map from his pocket. It wasn’t very easy to take anything out of there with that costume on, so he decided to remove the leg parts in order to be faster. He wasn’t as big and powerful as one would guess so for a charming prince, but that’s what he was. He checked the map and then ran towards the left, down a very long corridor that connected the main part of the building with the south tower of the complex.

 He finally found the door that lead to the second tower. With one it of his sword, he was able to make the door collapse to the ground. He stepped on the remains of the door and started climbing the stairs, step by step. He got tired after the first fifty. He had to stop running so he sat down by a small opening to the side of the tower and saw the world from there. He could see the former gardens and the courtyard below but he was still too close to the ground to see any fantastic views.

 After a while, he kept on climbing, his armor was still making the clinking sound, with every single step he made. He stopped again after climbing for a long time and he saw, through another window, that he was close to his goal. He could see the road from the window and also the forest that existed between the castle and the rest of the civilized world. Some said the forest was created to keep everyone away from the castle but that hadn’t stopped many men from risking their lives and go there.

 Many died in the forest, attacked by packs of hungry wolves or by some huge bears that lived around. There were also rumors of ghosts and various monsters that only rose when the fog was thick or it was very late at night. But the biggest legend surrounding the area was that a dragon protected the building and it had burned knights to their deaths when they had tried to enter the castle without permission.

As he walked the few steps that distanced him from the room in the upper level of the tower, the knight celebrated the fact that he had wore the full armor to defend himself on his way to the top. He had killed a few wild animals with his sword but that was it. That’s why he felt that something was wrong. It had been too busy, not according to the legend that everyone knew by heart.

 When he got to the upper room, he knocked gently and presented himself as Knight of Vals and Dam, sir Tristane Deschamps. But even speaking loudly wasn’t good enough to make anyone open the door from inside. So he pushed the door opened and looked around to see if the rest of the legend was true. If there really was a very beautiful woman sleeping in the tower, waiting for someone to rescue her from imprisonment. He looked around but so no one.

 He entered the room and walked to what appeared to be a bed and checked, in order to know if the person that had lay there had left a moment ago or many years ago. He put his hand covered in metal on the bed and realized it was warm. There had been someone sleeping in it. Out of nowhere, a young woman appeared behind him and held him tightly with a knife to his throat. The knight felt hard to the floor. He couldn’t move there.

 The woman asked who he was and he repeated his name. Then she asked what he was doing there and he just looked at her a bit confused. He asked her if she wasn’t the beautiful lady that lived inside a castle waiting for a knight in shining armor to save her and take care of her for the rest of her life. She looked at him as if he had just heard someone speak in a strange language. The woman released him from her grip but told him to stay down.

 - You don’t need to rescue me.

 The knight was about to ask something else but then a sound was heard very loudly and appeared to come from the first floor. The knight had never heard anything like it, like a thousand lions roaring at the same time or many pieces of silverware falling to the ground. It was very unsettling and that’s why he couldn’t move, he couldn’t do anything more that advise the woman to live the castle with her as she was in mortal danger if that was the dragon.

 She didn’t appear to listen, instead helping him getting up. She seemed to be thinking about something else or was at least too distracted by other thought in her mind. The knight insisted she should go with him in order to fulfill the legend. He knew that she would be very well received in his towns and that everyone would love her.

 That apparently convinced the young woman. She stopped walking around and told the knight she would go with him. They went out of the door and slowly walked back down, each step being easier as they headed to freedom and civilization. The knight was happy about it because he had never thought he would be able to fulfill such a difficult task.

 When they arrived to the back courtyard, through which the knight had arrived, the woman stopped running behind the man. She just stood there, like frozen in time. Her heart was racing but none of her limbs could move. He got near her and tried to determine what was wrong with her and he couldn’t point it out. The roaring of the dragon seemed to grow closer so he decided he would carry the princess to the backdoor but that didn’t work because, somehow, she was very heavy.

 He doubted that was something natural. It had to be some kind of black magic in order not to take the woman out of the castle without fighting the dragon. Probably, whoever put her there, had left very specific instructions in order to safe her and killing the dragon was probably one of those. So he let her where she was and he stepped into the grass patch of the courtyard and looked up.

 The dragon wasn’t flying, as he had thought. He appeared from the opposite side of the courtyard, tearing down a wall with its enormous paws. It was very big, just like a gigantic lizard with blackish wings and a sickening greenish skin. The dragon pushed the wall, launching several stones towards the knight. He avoided them easily. He decided to grab his sword and run towards the dragon. He had to fulfill his destiny.

 But his arms were almost broken when the sword hit the dragon’s skin and it did absolutely no damage. Not only that, but the body of the creature seemed so big and resistant, that the blow had actually affected the knight more than the dragon. The creature did nothing. He just watched him trying to feel his arms again and grabbing his sword to try again with same results.

 He then realized there was no way of killing the creature, so he ran towards the princess in order to wake her up from her trance. The dragon was only looking at him so he thought it was a safe thing to do. When he reached the woman, he realized she was very cold, her hands almost feeling like ice. The dragon watched as the knight tried like a fool to “wake” her up fro whatever was happening to her.

 But then the dragon just grew closer and ate the knight in one gulp. The girl was then able to move but her eyes were not the same as before. They were purple, just like the eyes of the dragon. She blinked and the dragon blinked. She thought about tearing down the wall and the dragon did exactly that with ease. The princess was the monster everyone was afraid of. That’s why she couldn’t leave her castle. Because she shouldn’t. There was no way in trying to prevent evil from pouring out of her. So she kept herself locked away, even if sometimes she needed to breath like anyone else, to run away.

Awards

   He sipped a bit of the coffee and burned his tongue right away. It was too hot and he was in a hurry, so nothing different could have happened. He decided to put at least half the pot he had made in a thermos and just take that in the car. It was pitch black outside and the van would pick him up in any minute.

Of course he hadn’t had any sleep at all. He usually went to sleep very late and he had in the auditorium at five in the morning, with didn’t really gave him much time to do anything. He decided to not even try to sleep and shower and get ready at around two of the morning, se he could have breakfast before they came to pick him up at 3:30 AM.

 But as things that shouldn’t happen always find a way of becoming truth, he dozed off for a while and he lost the time to have a proper breakfast, which resulted in him burning his tongue and running around his house like an idiot. The van arrived only minutes afterwards so he just took his thermos with him and went as fast as he could, although the elevator apparently had a problem with that, as it felt it took double the time to get to the ground floor.

  There he finally met the man that drove the van, who he apologized to. The man didn’t even acknowledge that an explained him that he needed to check him for envelops, microphones, cameras and so on. The poor guy that hadn’t slept more than half an hour wasn’t sure he was getting what the driver of the van was telling him. The man attempted to touch him but he just pulled apart in fear.

       - “It’s for security, Mr. Thomas!”

 Somehow, that enunciation woke him up a bit and he decided to stay very still as the man checked his pockets (jacket and pants), felt everything he had to feel and even asked him to take off his shoes. He complied to everything as if he was in a boot camp which made them loose about fifteen minutes of their time, that he had thought to be precious. After checking the shoes and even the socks, the man finally told him to follow him to the van.

 Mr. Thomas sat down in the far back, not wanting to talk at all with that man during the ride. After all, it was a half-hour drive from his house to the headquarters of the services firm where they had to pick up a suitcase that had all the information they needed by five in the morning in the theatre. He knew he wasn’t the only idiot waking up at such time of the day and that made him feel a little better about himself. So when the van started moving towards the highway, he was a bit more awake than before.

 As they travelled through an unusual cold morning in Los Angeles, light still absent, he decided to finally have some coffee and just enjoy the ride. He decided to pay attention to the world and the world revealed itself to him in a way he had never seen. After all, it wasn’t everyday that he woke up at this time of day, when every single person that was up seemed to have a certain thing about them.

 The driver was the first in that list. He was a very tall guy, the kind that when they bend over it looks ridiculous. When he was checking Mr. Thomas’s shoes, his body contorted in the most funny shape ever and the owner of those shoes almost laughs, partially because of the time of day but also because tall people always looked funny in the simplest positions. Besides his height, he had this weird thing where the mustache was the same color of his hair, which was blonde, but the eyebrows were very black. Somehow it looked odd, as if he was a big Mr. Potato Head.

 The next person that drew his attention was a lady on the street. They stopped in a red light for a while and he saw this elderly woman, body curved as it was humanly possible, walking her Chihuahua in the middle of the night. What was curious about the woman was not at all the fact that she was walking her dog at that time, which he knew to be very common among dog owners, but that she was wearing the strangest combination of clothing. She had a large overcoat, the color of flamingos. Under that she had a flowery shirt that looked too big for her, kaki shorts and fluffy sleepers with a baseball cap crowning her head.

 She was a sight to behold and that was only for a couple of minutes, before they got in the highway and he only saw some cars and a couple of dead pigeons that had been killed by crazed drivers or just by people that had not realized that birds wee not the brightest creatures in the universe. When he saw those bodies, he couldn’t stop thinking about the poor man or woman that had to clean that up from the asphalt of the highway as his or her job. That thought made him realize he was a very lucky guy with a very good job and that he had no right to complain about something as silly as waking up early in the morning.

 It seemed that in no time they were in downtown Los Angeles, stopping in almost every stupid traffic light. He saw his watch nervously, telling himself that if he was a couple of minutes late it wouldn’t really be that big of problem as the show began a little later than five. But then he remembered he had to pass the information to the people than made a nice little presentation video for people at home to get what the presenters were saying. He worried again when he thought of this.

 It was right then when they finally got to the skyscraper where the services offices were located. He got out of the van and remembered what they had told him: he had to go the information desk and ask for Tamara Parks. Then, they would direct him to the top floor where Ms. Parks would give him the briefcase with all the information they needed in the theater.

 So he did just that. The man at the information desk was a security guard; obviously the person that tactually worked there had not yet arrived. The man gave him a badge and told him to take the middle elevator and press the button to the top floor. Said elevator took forever to arrive and also to get up there. It seemed to be going for ages. He checked his watch several times and repeated to himself that they were on time and that the theater was not that far away. He realized the elevator had a mirror so he decided to check his suit for stains or anything unusual, his teeth and his face. It was right then the elevator decided to stop and open.

 This startled him but no one was outside waiting. He had to walk to an office and wait there in a waiting room for the woman. But he didn’t have to wait at all. She was there and greeted him with a big smile that he would be unable to do at that time of day. She asked him to follow her to a conference room and there he found the briefcase but also two big guys, with black glasses and earpieces. Somehow, it was funny to see them there, as if they were thing to put in a room like plants or statues.

 Ms. Parks explained they were the security team assigned to join him to the theater to ensure all the information got there safely and that only the people that had to see it saw it and no one else. They checked everything in five minutes and then they were good to go. He left the smiling Parks in the top floor but was joined in the elevator by the two big guys who didn’t smile at all.

 He was a bit relieved when he got to the van and this time the driver decided to speed up as he realized time was running short. The theater was not far away and, with the presence of the two big guys, Mr. Thomas had no opportunity to see the outside world, mainly because he was trapped between those two mountains that were apparently people.

 Exactly at five in the morning, they pulled off outside the theater and there was already someone waiting, telling her they were a bit late which was a lie. Apparently people there were very stressed. The four of them walked, almost jogged, to the theater and there straight to the master room when a lonely woman was waiting for them behind a computer. It was Mr. Thomas job to only look at her work like crazy for the next twenty minutes, helped only by another man.

 When the presentation was done, Thomas’s work was done. The big men would guard the briefcase and   he could just sit in the back of the theater and hear the name of the nominees from there. At that point, he was finally awake and also very excited because he knew he was part of something that meant a lot to many people and that was, somehow, the pinnacle of their efforts and the most coveted prize in the cinema industry.