Fireball

   For us, life changed the day we saw the sky on fire. Or, more precisely, we saw fire falling off the sky. I remember waking up by the noise outside, as I always left my window open when I slept, because of the heat at nights. My parents and the neighbors were talking very loud for so early in the morning and my brother, who slept in bed next to mine, was not there but standing by the door, hearing everything. Then, not even having the chance of asking what was going on, I heard mom walking towards our room. Brother ran to bed and pretended he was asleep but he did a really awful job at it.

 She told us in a hushed voice, for some reason, to get out of bed and put on some slippers. She rushed us and we went with her. When we went out of the house, dad was already there looking up. We all looked up too and we saw it: a big ball of fire was crossing the sky. It didn’t look like something that nature would do but, then again, I had never really seen a real meteorite so maybe that was it. I then remembered the many shows I had seen about the extinction of the dinosaurs and thought that maybe it was our turn and that’s why we were all outside.

 I thought it was a little bit weird to go out and then look at the thing that was going to destroy us, our homes and our planet, but when we started moving towards the beach, I found it even stranger. Dad held mom’s hand and she held mine and I held my brother’s. I honestly thought our time on Earth had come so I had no problem walking with everyone side by side and in a strange harmony, crossing the few blocks that separated us from the ocean. When we got there, a crowd had already settled down, many families and old people and kids and lonely folks. They were all looking up.

 The ball of fire was getting considerably larger and it came with a weird sound, like the one a string gust of wind would do but much more annoying. It wasn’t the nicest thing to hear just before dying but I guessed I couldn’t really complain. I was on the beach, which I loved, I had my parents and… Shit, they had left Captain back in the house! I told mom but she wouldn’t pay attention, not pulling her eyes away from the fireball. I wanted my dog with me if I was going to die so I released myself from my family’s grip and ran to the house.

 As old as he was, he was sleeping, not minding a bit about the fireball or the scandal people had created for hours. I grabbed him by the collar and, at first; he was not very willing to come. But after some petting and food, he came peacefully. As we walked to the beach, I felt suddenly very hot and realized it was the fireball, cruising the sky exactly above me. Captain barked at it and then it happened all so fast, as if someone (maybe God) had pushed the “fast forward” button. When I got to the beach, the ball of fire had already fell.

 But it did not destroy us. Actually, my last thought before it fell was that it wasn’t a ball at all. As close as it was, it didn’t have a real shape, not one that I could pinpoint. People on the beach had pulled back as some waves came in but didn’t do much damage. There, on the horizon, fire could still be seen but it was dying. I imagined a monster, burning and dying in the middle of the ocean. It really looked like one, due to the shape of the object. I realized that’s what it was because nature would not do something like that, which such and odd shape.

 Captain barked and growled. That snapped my family out, my dad telling us that it was better to go back home, as nothing more would happen tonight. He was wrong but we went anyway. I slept with Captain in my bed and he didn’t mind. He was a strange dog, preferring sometimes to be away from humans, especially young kids. But that night, somehow, he didn’t mind the attention and care and I was showing him. I even kissed his forehead before going to sleep and he didn’t even budge.

 The next morning, I was woken up again by the sound of my parents’ voices. I asked myself if they weren’t able to shut up, as I really wanted to keep on sleeping. I felt tired and my body ached, as I needed to sleep some more. Again, my mother came to our room to get us to have some breakfast. After all it was a school day. It was too early so I ate my cereal not even realizing I was spilling milk all over the place. I showered afterwards and got my uniform ready. Walking with brother on my side, I was still sleepy but we managed to find the way to school.

 Yet, we noticed something was wrong. Policemen, or at least they looked like policemen, were everywhere. They were in the corner of the street checking lampposts, or asking people questions in front of their houses or running somewhere. Our small town did not have a police department. We depended on the next town for that. So who were those men and women? They were dressed in black and had a small logo on their shoulder but I couldn’t see what it was.

 In school, teachers seemed as distracted and sleepy as the rest of us. They all tried to do what they had to do but it was almost impossible. Kids were not listening and teachers were obviously not interested in speaking about mathematics or chemistry or history. Some yawned several times and others just looked at the window as if they were hoping for it to get shattered into a thousand pieces. It was the first time I saw kids actually sleeping on their desks and the teacher not saying anything to them. I would have liked to do that but when I decided to one of the men came in the school and said the classes were suspended.

 At home, mom explained those men were from the government and that they needed everyone’s help to salvage whatever it was that had fallen from the sky. They needed experienced swimmers and divers in order to help them, as only people from the area would know about the depth and characteristics of the water close to town. Dad had offered to help them, as he was a fisherman, and that’s why he wasn’t there to greet us from school. Normally he would come back early from fishing but he wasn’t there then. We joined mom in order to look the work he was doing from afar but got bored soon because there were no hills from which we could actually see something.

 The rest of that week was all the same. Dad started to get paid for his help but he had to leave early in the morning and would return late in the afternoon. He was always so tired he would eat half-asleep and then just fall into bed like a rock. Mom seemed worried for him but as my brother and I were deemed to young to ask anything, we simply didn’t. But we were worried too. Dad had always been such a joker and he loved to play around after dinner but during that weak he was practically a zombie.

 The third day after the “fireball” had fallen from the sky, a rumor ran across town. Apparently, some said that the thing that had fallen in the ocean was actually a spaceship and that the government was using us to get to them, them of course being the aliens. I found this a little stupid of them because if we helped them many people would know, so how would they cover up that? Killing everyone? No, too many questions would come up. I would make drawings in class of the aliens and the ship. I would also imagine talking to one of them and him telling me were he came from and how sorry he was to have crashed on Earth.

 My brother had nightmares about it, obviously he had been told awful stories about aliens by his friends. After all, most books about them it the library was about how evil they were and how they loved to destroy humanity ever single time they were able to. In some old movie magazine, they were even very similar to insects and I guess that was the image my brother had in his mind because he went insane when, walking to school, we saw a butterfly.

 The men in black left town after exactly seven days. They had taken out all they could from the ship and dad explained they could come back to take the ship, part by part as it was huge. As he seemed a little bit more rested we asked him about the aliens and their technology. But he only laughed and told us that he saw no aliens. Then his expression turned grim and said no more.

 Mother would explain that night that the object in the ocean was a space station, made by men, and that it had failed somehow and just fell off the sky. People had died on it and the men from the government had come for their bodies, to give them to their families. I couldn’t sleep that night. Somehow, I couldn’t stop thinking about those astronauts and how we saw them die.

The App

   Do you ever feel your friends get you to do things that you don’t really want to do? Very passive aggressive, not so many words but they get their way and, some time later, you regret following their advice because you realize it was all a big trap? Well, that happened to me and I felt like an idiot after realizing it was all just a way to get me out of my comfort zone.

 You see, I wasn’t planning on going out with anyone. And when I said that I mean, for a long time. I just wasn’t interested in having to be with anyone, sexually or romantically. See? I wrote, “having to”, because to me it’s still an imposition. I’m still without couple but things shifted a bit when my friends convinced me to download this new app for my cellphone. I’m gay, so I thought I was an expert on apps to check out people on the phone. And yes, I do mean that as a stereotype that is actually the truth.

 Well, anyway, they convinced me to download it and we spent a whole afternoon lying around like idiots just putting yes or no to many pictures until the app decided to stop us from keep doing that. Normally, I would have left it at that. Every time I download an app, I normally erase it from my phone days later because I find it not only boring but also such a fucking lie. I mean, let’s talk here: does anyone not really mock people when looking at all those pictures with sunglasses on, upside down “selfies”, shirtless pictures and so many other classics of the internet.

 Anyway, I just went back home and have a good sleep, which I really need by the way, and the next morning I checked my phone, as I usually do. First my emails, then some social networks and finally I reentered the app realizing someone had written to me. I answered and we had a rather normal conversation, very uneventfully. I stood up to have breakfast and forgot all about it. That day, a Saturday, I spent some time home and then I went to the mall with my family to buy some new shoes and a shirt for the upcoming wedding of some cousin or something like that (I don’t really follow that part of my family).

 When I came back home I realized the guy had sent lots of messages and even pictures and many questions marks. I didn’t even acknowledge it properly and erased the whole conversation. I certainly didn’t need anyone like that near me and even less if I was consequent with my decision not to have any type of relationship with any man. And there were no exceptions or any kind of weaknesses from my part.

 The guy kept on sending messages and I just ignored him because that’s not the type of person that interests me, not even to chat with any day or to go out and have coffee. That maniac behavior is great if you want to be scared for life but I’m just not going for that. So I kept using the app because it was kind of an obsession to criticize people and I’m known among my friends precisely because of that. I’m the one that says what the others only think and I never care if I’m being to over the top or “mean”. I just like to be honest and if that means telling you you have a big nose or your shirt is too small or your pictures are one big fat lie, I’ll say it. It’s not like we know each other.

 So one day I was going through pictures and another guy hit me up. We bonded and chatted for hours and hours and he looked cute in a couple of pictures with no filters, really casual photos of him and his dog and him in a beach. He looked like a nice person so I decided to go for it and tell him to me meet for coffee. We did and I have to say I don’t regret it at all. He was such a nice person and we had a blast together, laughing at the same things, sharing interests and even learning a couple of new thing from one another. I have to concede it felt great to feel that again after so many years, to feel that connection with another person and just feel at ease with them.

 For the following two weeks, we saw each other fairly often. On the fifth date, we decided to go for cocktails and it was then when things got strange. In a moment, a couple of seconds in which I went out to call home to say I may be late, I could have swore I saw the guy that had sent me all those messages with question marks and so on. For a minute I was convinced it was him but I forgot about that quickly when I started kissing the other guy, whose name was John, and we walked around holding hands and just having a good time that night.

  Then, another Saturday, we decided to meet for beers at his apartment. As I’m no idiot, I knew what was going to happened so I shaved properly, I put on the nice clothes and tried to be my best self. No, I wasn’t thinking of anything serious with him. To be honest, it was all such a blast for me but I saw only as kind of a game that we were playing and that may end very soon. He wasn’t ready to have a new boyfriend, having broken up with one just two months ago, and I had never had a boyfriend but wasn’t going to begin like that. Just no.

 It’s stupid, isn’t it? But I picture my first boyfriend someone to be very special and me just knowing that is him. And I didn’t feel that with John. However we had a lot of fun and every time I remember those days, I smile because he was such a nice guy and had a great time in every sense possible.

 Anyhow, I took the bus and then it happened again. I was so sure one of the people on the bus was the creepy guy from the app. And this time it wasn’t something that happened fast and went. This time I was just two rows behind him and I couldn’t wait to get to my stop and physically run. I didn’t want to know if it was actually him. I just wanted to stop minding about the crazy guy and keep on with my date with this great guy. But I couldn’t, at least not for the whole ride to John’s home. The guy wouldn’t go out in any of the stops and I was staring to get nervous. But finally my stop came and, as I had pictured, I ran to John’s building and told him all about it.

 I know it’s very romantic or arousing to talk about a creep you think you saw in a bus, but I just had to tell someone in order not to feel crazy. He was very nice, gave me a beer and told me many guys can’t just get a hint and get obsessed with others. I must have looked even more scared than before because he went on saying most of them just stopped, after finding someone else to annoy so he was sure that would happen in my case.

 Then, again, I forgot all about my problems, because we started kissing and, minutes after, we had gone to John’s room, without the beers. It had been a long time since I had had any sex with anyone and, I have to say, it was awesome. Maybe that was precisely because I had nothing to compare with, a foul thing we all do, but I just though it was perfect. He was so tender and loving or so I felt and even when things got a bit rougher, he seemed to care about me a lot.

 I ended up staying the night. I called my mom past midnight to tell her that and me and John didn’t go out of bed until eight in the morning or around that. He had fallen asleep hugging me and that has been the only time I seriously thought two things: first, that he might be that person I would decide to have a serious relationship with. Second, that I was able to do things I didn’t know I could. For me, a hug is more personal than anything else. And John did all night, awake or asleep. And he also kissed me a lot and touched me and as a person with a poor self-image, that was huge for me.

 When putting on my clothes, I thought I really could like being in a relationship and could use to nights like that. We had some breakfast and bid farewell with a final kiss. In that moment, I didn’t know it was going to be the last time we saw each other. Isn’t that sad? It would be so nice if we knew when that’s happening but I guess that, as humans that we are, we wouldn’t be able to handle it.

 I walked slowly to the bus stop, thinking of the night. I was so distracted I didn’t see the man running at me. I only reacted to late, when he tackled me and put something in front of my face. He must have drenched it in some chemical because I felt dizzy fast and I passed out. To be honest, I think it’s great that I don’t remember anything that happened after that. When I regained consciousness, I was in a hospital. They had called my parents and I was too groggy to say or do anything.

 Days later, the doctors and I talked, in the presence of a policeman. I told him what little I remembered and they told me what they could conclude had happened: them man, which I recalled been the creepy guy from the app, had taking me somewhere and had raped me. They explained he could have told people I was drunk, for them no to get suspicious. I was left in a park and a homeless man had found me and called the police and an ambulance.

 They told me it was probable I would never remember anything and I thanked the drugs for that. I went back to my life but slowly and cut off every link that was too weak to keep holding. I erased all social network profiles, erased all apps from my phone and only played games in my computer. My friends visited me at home and asked about John but I didn’t know nor care. He had paid for something he hadn’t done but I wasn’t ready. And now, I might never be.