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.

Words from within

   I have found myself without words, without a real need to speak out, to talk to anyone. I find every person to be utterly dull, to be devoid of anything really interesting to say, of anything that means something to me. Granted, it is my fault and my perception. I cannot explain why it happens and exactly how, but I realize it is something that is part of me and I cannot shake it off and continue my path through this world. Is not as simple as many people things. Demons are stronger, always.

 That does not mean they win every single time. It means the battles are always hard, filled with blood and sweat. And you will lose some of them, hopefully the ones that don’t really matter. If you lose, you learn. And that’s always good but not really. Because when you learn you have to have a good brain inside your skull. If you don’t, well, learning all you want won’t change a thing. You will always have a narrow-minded view of the world and that may not be the best in your life.

 I have learned a lot of things, I believe, both useful and useless. I know the names of all countries in the world and their capital cities but I have no idea how to use numbers beyond the most essential calculations. I know some things, here and there, about some of the world’s personalities, about animals and things all over the cosmos. But I have no idea what love is or what responsibility means for most of the people. I don’t even know if I want to know, but it’s clearly frowned upon.

 Not talking in a world that yells at you every single second of the day could even be dangerous. How to counter all of that crap that enters your ears and body? By talking, by having opinions and thinking. I do all that except the talking because I have found myself noticing there’s no one there to actually listen. And talking is only worth something when someone is listening and maybe they change their views on a subject because of what you said. That’s not happening to me.

 Granted, I’m not saying every single thing I say is worth something, anything for that matter. But I have realized that, as humans, we do need to be listened and for people to care, in any way possible. We need to feel we matter, that the world would be different if we suddenly disappeared. Sadly enough, the world wouldn’t really change if I died now, only a small fraction of it and only for a small amount of time. That’s not drama but a reality and the truth is not always something we want to listen to. But truth does not care about us, only about what is.

 Yet, I may be too much of a drama queen. Maybe every single thing that I’m thinking and writing right now is just in my mind. Maybe I’m worth much more than I feel to, maybe the world would change if I died right this moment. But something in me does not think so. Something inside of me, in my heart or brain or lungs, is trying to tell me that I’m hollow and that I simply don’t matter. Because another truth is that we don’t all matter and we’re just too afraid to realize that.

 So many billions of humans have lived, many more are alive right now and others are being born right now and in the future. Of all that cluster of human souls, only some of them really matter in some way. Maybe they discovered something or they made feel people good. It is possible they fought wars or their love, branded by words, transcended the borders of speech and time and truth. But those people are such a small group in such a vast amount of people. Just people.

 Yes, we all matter to someone, in a way. We all have parents and sisters and brothers and more family. Many have daughters and sons, lovers and pets. There’s always someone that remembers you. However, that may not be enough to some of us, especially when life has decided to make your life different, to make you the one to go through a path that not many people travel. And you don’t feel honored at all because it pisses you off how you feel like a gamble.

 I don’t speak that much because I hate my life. I don’t hate the people in it, because they have done their best. That’s another truth. But I do fucking hate that I have learned so much and really know so little. I hate that this world doesn’t seem to have a place for me. Each second that passes the air around me seems to be getting thinner and thinner. In some ways, I feel like an astronaut that has started drifting away from the spaceship and only has a limit amount of time left.

 I hear the clock ticking and ticking, passing too fast. Because people think there’s torture when time goes slow but that’s not the real nightmare. It is much worse when hours and minutes and days and years pass in the blink of an eye and you feel you’re still in the exact same place, as everyone else moved around and achieved so much. And you, me in this case, are drifting away more and more. Alarms make sounds all around you but there’s nothing really you can do besides waiting. You try to reach, to live, but life doesn’t really want you anymore.

 That’s how it feels. It feels as if you’re drowning slowly and no one should live through that. Not physically or figuratively. We don’t deserve to be killed in the slowest of fashions, as the world looks at us and judges us for not being brave enough to do things that we have no idea how to do. This world is wild, is a rabid animal that has to be tamed. It’s just a savage beast that wants more and more and more and we cannot all comply with its wishes. Maybe we’re too weak.

 That’s a factor, I guess. We might be too weak for this life or, at least, for the way we handle ourselves and everything around us. I find myself to weak write anything more right now. Every single thing takes a toll on our heads and it’s just too difficult to try to handle everything at the same time. It’s too hard and we’re not the same people that before, year ago. Those rugged men and women are not here anymore, maybe in some places thought. Most of us surrendered to our feelings.

 I just wanted you to think a little bit about the state of your mind, about how you really feel and how you live. Reality is a bitch but it’s the one we have to live in for the time we remain on this planet.

 If you can, help someone else live through this. If you can, help me.

My sister's visit

   We did not expect her. There was no reason to do that, especially after we had buried her only a couple years back. When she rang, the doorbell did that strange repetition, the way it sounded back when she was alive. When our mother opened the door, she stood in front of her for a long time. Then, almost in slow motion, she fainted. I ran towards her and checked for bruises, trying to wake her up and the same time. I had neglected to look at the door and at the person standing right there.

 She came in as my mother recovered her senses and started crying for no apparent reason. I told her to relax and, as I could, I helped her to the couch, where she could be much more comfortable. Then, I realize the door was still open, so I walked towards it and closed it. When I turned around, it was as if I had a vision. I saw my father, by the window, holding my sister’s hand. He looked at her as if it was the very first time he was looking at her brown eyes and long hair.

 The vision was special, as they were both standing against what little light entered the apartment. It was raining a lot outside and we hadn’t turned on the lights inside the house. The vision was so special; that I absolutely forgot about my mother in the couch or that my sister couldn’t be there because she was dead. But it was my mother who dragged me to the real world when she asked, almost in a whisper, what my sister was doing there. Strange enough, my sister laughed.

 It was a very particular laugh. Not a loud one at all. To be honest, the sound seemed to be coming from a place much farther than the living room next to the window. I walked towards her and then I saw her body very next to mine. My response came in without intention, just from deep within my soul: I started crying profusely. Think tears ran down my face and landed on the floor making a very particular sound. I noticed my father was also crying and my mother had fallen silent.

 It was her, walking slowly from the couch to the window, who looked at my sister and asked her if she was doing fine. The question was exceedingly strange but my sister had no problem answering it. She told us she was perfect, had never been better, but that she had been granted a special permission to visit us. Apparently, after you die, you get to come back once, wherever and whenever you choose. She had decided that was the perfect time to come and visit us. We asked her why and she explained it had seem like the best moment to her.

 That answer confused me a lot but it didn’t seem to mind my parents. Their faces denoted happiness beyond anything they had felt in a long time. It was sad to realize, but I hadn’t been enough for them to be happy about. To be fair, I didn’t really bring a spark of joy into the house. My sister, on the contrary, had always been full of life and that was apparently still true, even if the statement was particularly strange at the moment. She had always been their baby girl.

 Of course, it did help that she was their first one. Her death had been very hard on everyone. She was a very young woman still and no one had ever predicted she would die so soon. It was all because of a car crash, a horrible event that lived in their memories as a scar that won’t go away. She had been the only victim of that accident, which made everything feel even more unfair and horrible that it already was. She had been pronounced dead right on the spot, before anyone could see her.

 We decided, or rather, my parents decided they wanted to have a small funeral for her. They did not want a huge amount of people to be there only to gossip and to cry like crazy when they had never really liked her or known her as they had known her. So we had a very private ceremony, a really silent one. I wanted to ask her about it but it felt wrong not to enjoy her presence instead of asking things that didn’t made a difference anymore. I decided to put the teapot on the stove.

 My parents sat down with her on the couch. They touched her hair and her hands and fondled her face.  They didn’t talk much and the only thing they said was that she was beautiful and smart and the best daughter they could ever have. Her face was very white and her expressions were a little bit… dead. It was as if her attitude reminded them that she was actually dead and she was only there for a while. But they didn’t care because it was an opportunity they never knew they had.

 They talked about the past while drinking tea. She had some and loved it, it was the only authentic expression of joy she showed. They spent a long while in silence and then my mother realized she could do something for her right there. She decided to cook my sister her favorite meal, so both of them stood up and almost ran to the kitchen. In minutes, they were pots on the fire and chopped vegetables, as well as meat cuts waiting to be put on very hot pans. It was a beautiful sight, one of warmth and happiness, never minding the storm outside.

 My father was very silent the whole time and he just looked at them while they cooked. Tears went down his face every so often, in complete silence. He was obviously beside himself to have his daughter for a while. But I knew he was asking himself the same questions I was asking: for how long was she going to stay? And, what will happen when she leaves? Remembering her visit would be a privilege but it honestly didn’t seem to be something mortals would be allowed to have.

 Some time later, I helped them serve and we had a very tasty lunch at the dining table, as we used to when we were younger. As back then, we laughed and told different stories. We also ate all of the food, which was delicious and made me realized I wasn’t dreaming or at least it didn’t seem like it. We didn’t turn on the lights for lunch and it was clear my sister didn’t care for light at all, as the sight of thunder outside made her appearance much less beautiful that minutes before.

 We continued talking, remembering the past, even after we finished the food. Mom served coffee and cookies, the ones my sister used to love. She drank it all and ate several cookies. My mother was absolutely happy and it was clear she didn’t want the day to end. It was clear none of us had veer wanted something like this to happen, but now that it had we didn’t want this beautiful dream to end. We wanted my sister, their daughter, back from where she was, forever.

 But that wasn’t possible. A few hours later, my sister asked to go to her room. My parents hadn’t changed anything there, going to the extent of closing the room since her death and never opening it again. Apparently, she wanted to have a nap, feeling exceedingly tired. We all looked at each other, knowing that it was probably the sign that indicated she had to leave very soon. We all helped her into bed and sat besides her, my mother even singing a lullaby from our childhood.

 My sister fell fast asleep in seconds. For some reason, we all started crying in silence, as we realized that her body had disappeared in the glimpse of an eye. She wasn’t there anymore, we couldn’t feel her anymore and it was horribly devastating.

 It was in that moment, when I felt that pain in my heart, when I woke up from that dream. The first thing I felt, beside my heart in pain, was a single tear running down my face and landing on my pillow. I almost couldn’t breath, as I had seen her one more time.

Those voices

   I was awake, of that I’m sure. My eyes were open, I was kind of seating, kind of lying on my back while I had my laptop over my lap. I had turned it on only a few minutes before. So, I’m certain I was awake, there was no other way. As I wrote on the keyboard, I realized I could hear voices. Often, it would be someone talking by the window, on the outside of the building. It happened all the time and it always felt as if those people were inside my room, just chatting about something.

 But this time, the voices didn’t seem to come from outside. Actually, I was very certain that wasn’t the case because the voices coming from below the window always had the same tone, whatever the voice. This time, it felt as if he voices were coming from inside the building. I could hear them increasing their volume, as if they were approaching me but that wasn’t possible. The nearest someone not from my family, being inside the building, had to be several meters away.

 Besides, there were two closed doors and a couple of walls to go through, so the voices shouldn’t have been come so clear. It was as if they were clearing their throats and now the voices were just perfect, clean and powerful. What was worst, the voices weren’t speaking anything in particular, or at least it didn’t seem that way. What was really awful was the fact that they started singing, like a choir. They were all male voices and they were very potent, professional in a way.

 They sang a song with no real words, only loud sounds perfectly executed with their voices. They did it perfectly but that seemed to me even creepier, because if they had made a mistake, I would have known they were just people rehearsing some awful song or something. But no, that didn’t happen. Instead, the voices kept increasing their volume. By the end of their song, I was surprised none of my family members came to my room to ask what was going on.

 Later, much later in the day, I would learn that no one else had heard anything like I had heard. I felt a little bit crazy, because I didn’t think the voices had any supernatural backgrounds. I mean, they were just voices. Yes, they were not behaving very normally, but there was nothing that spectacular or unusual about them, except maybe the unique weirdness of the song. They had to be coming from actual people but I found it hard to believe that voices could be heard so clearly inside my room, when they were apparently coming from inside the building.

 There was the possibility I was mistaken. Maybe the voices did come from outside and I just thought that wasn’t the case. It always happens that the mind chooses a certain way and it seems impossible that the opposite one could be true but that doesn’t mean it isn’t. Maybe some group of men was rehearsing something near my home and the voices were carried in some way that I don’t know how to understand. Maybe it was one of those natural things that are complicated to explain.

 I’m not the kind of person that believes in voices from the grave or something like that. I respect the dead and everything around them, so much so that I prefer not to go to graveyards and funeral homes unless I absolutely have to. It’s not because of fear but because all those rites are normally linked to a religion and I find myself feeling like a hypocrite in the middle of all that. Besides, the people crying and that entire aura that surrounds dead people, it’s really not for me.

 In any case, none of that explains the voices I heard. What was worse, I later remembered that I had been woken up by a sound earlier that day. Maybe three hours before I actually woke up. The sound must have been louder than a whisper or I wouldn’t have heard it. But I did. And then I heard it again. It was a voice. I don’t remember what it said but it was only one person, not a group like it would happen later. I wish I remembered what he said… I fell asleep a few seconds after.

 So I heard voices twice on the same day. The most likely reason for all of this, besides the voices been of a natural source, is that I may be going crazy. This may sound funny or just stupid to many people, but I actually believe I might be going insane. It’s clearly not normal to hear things that aren’t there. And I don’t believe in the paranormal. Besides, ghost speaking in broad daylight with no other backup “occurrences”? Doesn’t seem to be in line with all those things people claim about ghosts.

 Maybe I am going crazy. I have reasons to and it’s certainly not uncommon for a crazy person to hear voices. They all come from their heads, being a certain version of themselves. They are their own inner demons, created by their illness to torture them. Maybe that’s what I have, maybe that explains everything. I don’t want to keep this story going longer because there’s nothing much to say except that I’m very scared for my mental health. Headaches are almost a daily thing and my life is not really going anywhere. Could anyone blame me if I went insane?

 Damn. Here they are again.