3/25/2015

Eclipse

Melissa looked at the moon rising over the dark forest. The woods had just started waking up from the long winter sleep, and animals everywhere rushed to mate. She took a deep breath, smelling the distinct odours of the animals, plants, and wet dirt. It was time. Her blood was boiling telling her it was time, whether she liked it or not. She carefully braided her long golden hair into a thick braid, she hadn't been allowed to cut it since the day she became a woman, and she was getting tired of it. The wind blew on her naked skin that was still wet from her bath. Living in the forest, she usually went naked around, that, at least, she was permited to do. She always felt more comfortable naked and in the middle of the forest, and she wondered if that had anything to do with being named after a nymph. Most of her sisters lived in the coven, however, as she did until she came of age, but she always felt trapped in there. She would need to return there, that night, as she did for every equinox and solstice.

Annoyed, she stood up from the cliff she had been sitting on and went back to her cave behind the waterfall. Her only dress was hanging from a makeshift coat hanger she had fashioned out of a dead tree. It was moss green, unlike the black garments her sisters used to wear, and it felt strange against her skin. Melissa cursed the social conventions against nudity once again, as she did once every three months. She was late, and she knew it, and she also hated herself, because it meant she would have to appear in the coven instead of taking the scenic route. 

The lights and the noise startled her. She had appeared in her room on the third floor of the coven, the one she could use any time she wanted to visit, or, rather, every time she was forced to visit. Everything was as she had last left it, during the Winter solstice celebrations. Her bed was made, as she had never actually slept there, and her fancy clothes were in the closet. Knowing that she would need to dress in a specific way made her skin crawl. Someone knocked in her door. 

-Come in.

Alecto opened the door. She was her best friend, as wild as she was, although in another way. Alecto had decided to stay in the coven, although some sisters would have preferred to see her gone. She was an exotic tall woman, with bronze skin and almond-shapped eyes. She closed the door behind her. 

-I thought I had heard you. Melissa.- the last word had a dangerous shade in it. She and Melissa had experimented a bit when they were still young. Seeing her again, dressed like that, made Melissa want to kiss her. 

-I just came in. Will you help me decide what to wear? You know I'm terrible at it.- the blonde girl said, restraining herself. 

-What's the need to wear anything? You look good naked.- Melissa glared at her.- Ok, I'll help you. You managed quite well these last two years, what's... 

Alecto fell silent with realization and covered her mouth with both her hands in surprise. Melissa blushed to the root of her hair, not wanting to admit her urges. 

-So, it's time, isn't it?- Alecto asked, and her friend simply nodded.- Well, then, yes, we need to find something good. 

When they made it to the ground floor of the house, they found a full-blown party, as Spring equinox celebrations used to be. It also helped that the coven was disguised as a sorority. Unlike the rest of the year, there were men around, young fertile men who would get too drunk to realize what was going on. And Melissa had to pick one out of all of them to be the father of her daughter. She had always been told that she would know which one was the best, the one whose genes were more fit to survival, but she was terrified. Looking around she saw lots of handsome men, and she felt her blood urging her to pick one and be done, her sensitive sense of smell picked up the thousands of pheromones in the room and made her a little dizzy, yet she had to focus. From experience, Melissa knew that most handsome men were jerks, it wasn't much of a problem for her in her normal life, and hadn't been much of a problem while she had lived in the coven, but it was then. Alecto pushed her towards the party, and when she saw her friend wasn't moving decided to help her introducing her to different men. There was the football player, the rockstar, the business major, one after the other passed in front of Melissa, making her blood stir, but making her wonder if she had been right, if the right moment to have a daughter was that one. 

Overwhelmed, she decided to get outside in the garden. It was very dark outside, the sky was full of stars and the moon looked down to her like an old friend. Melissa leaned on a fence, wishing she were back to her cave behind the waterfall. She had been in there for some time when someone else leaned on the fence beside her. 

-You've come outside to see the eclipse?- a dark haired man asked her. 

Of course, the eclipse! She had totally forgotten! She told so to her new companion, who introduced himself as Mark. 

-Pleased to meet you, my name is Melissa. 

-Like the nymph.- he smiled.- You don't really seem the kind of girl who goes to sorority parties. Although I see you've tried to disguise yourself. 

-You don't seem the kind of guy to come here, either.- she said, dodging the implicit question. 

-I'm not. I'm here only because my friends forced me to come. I'd rather had gone somewhere quiet and watched the eclipse from there. 

And then, Melissa knew. He was the father of her daugther, there was no questioning it. Both her mind and her blood agreed, it had to be him. 

-We can still do it. 

-Well, there aren't lots of quite places in campus. 

She took his hand. 

-Can you keep a secret? 

Before he was even able to say yes, they were on the top of her mountain by the waterfall. She kissed him, trying to forget that she would need to kill him as soon as she got pregnant. That night the only thing that mattered was them making love under the lunar eclipse. 

3/16/2015

Sadness

Sadness is an ocean that floods the soul, 
It takes everything, leaves a hole.

Sadness is a feeling that takes control, 
It makes you cry, it makes you wail, 
Sometimes it leaves you silent,
Wishing you were alone.
Sometimes it makes you hide, 
Consider crawling under your desk. 

Sadness fills you up, 
Tries to escape through your pores, 
But it ends bottled up, 
Making you choke.  

Sadness gets with you into bed, 
With the cold from outside,
It makes you shake like a leaf,
Despite the warm covers. 

Sadness gets in your mind when you close your eyes,
Reminding you of lost things,
Of those that are gone to never come back. 
Reminding you of what you could have done, 
Reminding you of what you could have. 

Sadness makes you forget everything good that you have in your life,
It blinds you to goodness,
It blinds you to joy. 
It makes you feel like nothing will work. 

3/12/2015

Bits and Pieces

Rishi woke up in a dark room. He felt numb, his brain floating in some kind of drug-induced stupor, he tried to move, but he was restrained, ropes compressing his wrists and ankles. He fought to free himself until the ropes cut his skin and the cords were soaked with blood. Then he shouted for help, but the only reply was silence and the echo of his own voice. He tried to remember how had he ended up in that place, but the last thing he remembered was walking on the street. He had been heading to work when a young woman offered him a bottle of juice to try, she said she was working for a big company and that they were test-trying on the streets a new product, that they were interested in the opinions from real consumers. She asked him some questions about his life and complimented him for his eyes, blue against his brown skin. And that was all he could remember. Rishi quickly understood that he had been drugged through the juice. 

Hours passed and Rishi's limbs started to hurt. He wondered what would happen next, if anyone would ever go explain him why had he been abducted. Soon enough, the door opened and the lights were turned on blinding him momentarily. He blinked furiously until he could identify the person that was standing by his bed. It was the same woman he had last talked to. He didn't know it, but her name was Eloise. Eloise was carrying a tray that she left on a table next to the bed. Now that Rishi was able to see the room he realized it looked like a hospital, yet it sure wasn't. 

-What are you going to do to me?- he asked.

-I just need something from yours. 

-What?

Eloise didn't reply, instead she turned around and took something from the tray. She, then, got closer to Rishi, and effortlessly she found a vein and injected something into his bloodstream. Looking into his eyes, she finally replied. 

-Your eyes. 

A cold sweat covered Rishi, but he was already completely unable to move and started to feel himself drift away. When he was fast asleep, Eloise started the work of extracting his eyes. Eyes weren't difficult, she had practised before. She placed those deep-blue eyes on ice on the tray, and took another vial of the solution she had used to anesthetize Rishi. There could be no witnesses, she had to kill him. 

Eloise was twenty-eight and single. She had had the worst of the luck in men, probably because she always looked for the wrong things in them. At one point she became tired of being let down, tired of dating, and she decided to solve her problem by herself. If she couldn't find the perfect man, she would build it from scratch. 

She had left the room, were Rishi's body lied, and headed to the refrigerated chamber. The smell of decay greeted her as she opened the door, but she remained oblivius to it. In the center of the room, on a table, lay a limbless body, pale in his death. She approached and proceeded to accomodate the eyes in the ocular cavities. "He's going to need a name, maybe it's better if I let him name himself" she thought fantasizing that that collage of body parts would once be a real man, not seeing the clear signs of corruption. She inclined over the table and kissed the corpse's rotten lips. 

-Sleep tight, my love, tomorrow I'll find you a good set of arms to embrace me. 

3/08/2015

I ran a half-marathon (and I didn't die (I was probably close)).

I ran a half-marathon today. And I'm proud of it, however the story goes much further back. As a kid I hated running, that was probably because I had exercise-triggered asthma and no one ever bothered to check (I was an hypochondriac already as a kid, and despite being always right no one listened to me). The worse things that could happen at school were having the 12-minute test or the Course-Navette, it didn't help that I was quite chubby. After school I stopped taking part in any sport that wasn't skiing, and I think I put on some more pounds. I spent my college years happily living in lazy-land (which happens to be a real land that I've just invented so shut up), I would actually think that people that ran were crazy maniacs, because seriously I'd rather go out at night and sleep until lunch time the following day (Catalan lunch time, which tends to be around 3pm). It all changed in 2012, when I decided that the couch days were over and that I needed to lose weight. I started running around August, but it was something that I did when I had time, or I felt like it, so I ended up running maybe four times per month. Still, it helped me lose weight (there's a post somewhere where I talk about my weight-loss process, but I don't feel like looking for it, so it's up to you to venture and find it). In January 2013 I took up running in a more serious way, I knew my limitations so I started slow and easy, yet by Easter (either late March or early April that year, can't remember) I was already running 15km, and at one point I ran 19. I took part in two 10ks that year, and I loved it, and I decided I wanted to run a half-marathon the following year (I was young, I was "fast", and I couldn't read the future that well). 

2013 happened to be a horribly warm year, and by June I was completely unable to run without melting in a puddle, so I decided to go back to cycling (and I have the feeling that I've already told this story, but again, I'm not going to go looking for it). Tragedy struck. I fell from my bike and broke my left wrist. Badly. I was wearing a cast for a month, including half of August (because I'm this lucky), and when I decided to go back running it felt as if someone wanted to kill me from the inside. I ended up disappointed, and I was soon packed to Mexico where I was completely unable to run because of the pollution. When I came back home I took up swimming (more on this some other time), and I was very afraid to go back to running. I guess that the problem with not running for a long period of time when you used to run a lot is that you know what you were able to do, and seeing that you can't do it anymore demoralizes you. Yet, I endured, and I was able to go back to run more than 12k in October (fresh from my journey in Ireland when I hiked more than 200km (including more than 90 in a three-day journey carrying my backpack)), and the full half-marathon distance in the forests a week after falling from my bike and, probably, breaking my elbow (I know probably sounds weird in here, but I needed to see four different doctors until one of them told me that it may be broken, before adding that nothing needed to be done, which I took as a free-pass to go back swimming). So, I was back to running and I was happy with it. It was time to sign up for a half-marathon. 

This takes us to a couple of months ago, when I signed up for the half-marathon. I was pretty excited because I had wanted to do this for two years, and I decided to train as much as I could to be perfectly fit for the day. I was crushing it, I improved my 10k time twice in two weeks. And then I decided to give blood because I hadn't done it in quite a long time, and because the reserves of blood of my blood type (A-) are always low (and because I happen to be a selfless person, or something). The following week of training was hell, and I fell sick with a cold just last week. I was mentally and physically destroyed, and I was convinced I could never do it. It didn't help that every time I went running this week I felt sharp pain in several places of my abdomen. I was sure I was going to die. Yesterday I spent the afternoon trying to convince myself that I could do it. I didn't need to run fast, only finish before the 2 hours and 30 minutes limit. I could do it. 

Last night I slept terribly, in part because I was nervous, in part because the cat decided to sleep with me and he's a heat source. Still, I woke up rested (I don't fully understand how), had breakfast and headed to the half-marathon, I warmed up with a lab-mate and friend, and I was ready to start the race. I started quite optimistically, feeling great, and naively thinking I could keep up with that pace. By the 5th km I wanted to die, I started feeling cold, and from then on it was a fight of my mind against my body, and my mind against my mind, as some part of it was telling me to stop and give up. My legs worked well, my lungs worked well, but I was cold, and I'm never cold (also the weather was fantastic). I still don't understand how I did it. I slowed down to be able to recover. I ate the energy gel (which by the way was disgusting and I really need to find one that doesn't taste like medicine). And people were cheering for us, I focused on taking the kms one at a time. I wasn't doing brilliantly, but I was enduring, and it also helped that there were some runners that were slower than me (it's cruel, but taking into account that I had gone to finish the race, seeing it was extramotivation). At the 19th km I started feeling even colder, I knew it was my body telling me to cut it off, that I had done enough already, but I was almost there! I think that km was the most miserable in my entire life, yet when I was approaching the final 1,000 meters I found some leftover energy that allowed me to enter the finish line at 2 hours 02 minutes. Forcing myself to keep walking was probably the hardest thing I ever did, because I felt as if I were going to faint at any minute. But I had done it, and faster than I had expected (much faster, taking into account the circumstances (actually the tracker says I did it in 1h 58min, but the tracker is a jerk sometimes, and I think the real time is going to be 2h and something)). 

As you can imagine this is a win for me. Not only because obviously it is, because there's not too many people who run a half-marathon, but because I'm the asthmatic girl who shouldn't even be able to walk due to ligament problems, and not only do I walk, but I run. And not only did I run a half-marathon, but I didn't have any kind of problem with my legs or with my lungs. And this is what I call a win, because I've shown myself that I can do it. Even when I doubt of myself, I can do it. 


Update: official time was 2:00:14! 

3/01/2015

Red

Linda was a young teacher, just out of college. She had struggled to find a job, and when she finally was offered one, she accepted without hesitation. It wasn't her dream job, the school was a private one where all the problematic children of the rich and famous ended. Linda's dream had always been to help disfavoured children reach their maximum potential, help them out of poverty. Yet, the children in her class had problems too, even if they were of a different kind. She was in charge of the younger children, those that were only six years old. All of them had behavioral problems, some didn't even know how to interact with other people in a way that didn't involve shouting orders, others were basically pathologically shy, none of them felt loved at home. 

One of the activities that Linda would encourage was drawing. She would tell the children to draw whatever they wanted, and that opened a window to their souls. Sometimes the pictures were extraordinarily naive, as young-children paintings tend to be, other times they were disturbing. However, one of them stood out. Margo was a small girl, one of the shy ones, she would barely speak, or look anyone in the eye. One day Margo drew something that made Linda's skin crawl, it wouldn't for any other children, but Margo's drawings tended to be realistic, and pools are not usually red. Linda took the little girl aside as soon as she saw the painting. She sat on the chair, her little legs dangling in the air, as it was a grown-up chair, her dark eyes staring at her feet. 

-Margo, I really liked your picture. 

She lifted her head shyly to look at her teacher's face before blushing and retreating to her previous position. Linda decided to continue speaking. 

-However, I'm almost sure that swimming pools are not red. 

Margo mumbled something. 

-Margo, sweetie, I can't hear you. 

-Our pool is. The pool in my house. 

-Is it? 

-Yes.- her eyes widened.- My dad won't let me talk about this. 

Despite Linda's best efforts, Margo didn't say anything else, in fact she became unreachable. Linda decided to meet her parents, after Margo had spent three days without interacting with anyone. That same week she had an appointment with Margo's father, he was a rich businessman who wore tailored suits and seemed to own half of the county. When they met he looked at her with a gleam of disgust on his stare, that told her she would have trouble. He spoke before she had time to introduce herself. 

-What's all this about?- he asked bluntly, making clear he didn't have time to lose. Linda didn't either, so she decided to keep it short. She showed him the drawing. 

-It's a nice picture. What's so special about it? 

-Pools aren't red. Your daughter told me yours was, and then she told me that she wasn't supposed to tell anyone because you had told her so. And then she has just hidden inside herself. Can you explain this?

-This is nonsene. Our pool is not red, and of course I haven't told my daughter not to tell anyone. Also, she does that, Margo. Kids will be kids. If you excuse me, I have to go. 

He left without even shacking hands, and Linda stood in place feeling deeply unsettled. It would only get worse when Margo stopped going to school altogether, and Linda couldn't contact her family. She talked to the director, but he was nonchalant about it, rich people tended to do weird things. Linda decided to go visit Margo's family, she needed to talk to them into taking the girl to school again. Margo's family lived in a large mannor in the forests, Linda drove there and was surprised to find the gates to the terrains wide open, as well as the main door. She entered cautiously, calling for someone. When no one arrived to recieve her she made her way inside. The house was clean, but it felt lifeless, she passed through an indoor garden with a pool, the normal blue all the pools are.  She continued her way, until she found the main bedroom. 

There was no one in that room, that opened into a smaller indoor garden. One that had another pool, although one would call it pond rather than pool. There was a strong metallic smell she could not identify. Also, the pool was red. Linda got closer and felt that the stench came from the pool. Horrified, she realized that it was full of blood. As she recoiled, a hand grabbed her arm. 

-What are you doing here?  

Margo's father towered over her. She could see that he had aged visibly in the span of a few days. Yet, he was still strong as she couldn't set herself free. 

-I was worried about Margo. 

-Margo is okay. 

-I want to see her. I can't trust you, you have a blood pond in your house. 

He tightened his grip on her arm. 

-I do, and you know? Blood is something that's hard to come by. You could be useful in that matter. 

He hit Linda in the head, leaving her unconscious. She would indeed be a good addition to his blood farm. Setting her on a bed next to he daughter, he hooked her into the drugs that would keep her asleep while keeping her blood good enough for his purpouses. When Linda was already sleeping in the place she would spent the last of her days, he looked proudly at his collection. His wife and daughter had been his latest additions, but some of them had been there for almost a decade, and he was still able to obtain blood from them. It was an expensive hobby, but being able to bathe in blood every now and then was worth it.