Robert, Jhon and Alexa

About death

Robert was on his way to the Eagle’s Crest when a nail pierced their tyre. Now the three travelling bears were stranded on a rocky mountain road. Tim remembered seeing a gas station. To get there they had to walk through the rarely touched patch of forest.

The trio loved nothing more than to fell adrenaline pushing hard in their blood as it mde its way to their soul. They disliked Paris, London, anything urban; their place was on a raft, in a zorb, hanging from a rope or parachuting into a forest where they would survive on hunting alone.

Now everything was better, joy had killed all emotions. Their off road trip went smoothly with nothing adventures happening until Robert stepped on a viper. He could feel the poison going into his body and with each second that passed he felt himself slipping more and more into darkness. His friends knew too well they needed antivenin fast. The forest eat their mobile phone’s signal. With no help coming they carried Robert on their back. Suddenly the gas station transformed into light.

Branches were ripped off trees, leaves were crushed as they ran as fast as they could to the gas station. All that motion was draining, it made their muscles hurt and their bones like glass but these little details were unsubstantial compared to the what Robert was going trough . This was not the first time that one of them had been hurt and the others had to help nor was it the most terrible, perhaps the most dangerous situation was when Cush tried to jump across the river but he landed on one of the slippery rocks from underneath the water, falling with half of his body on shore and half on the river. That fall also dislocated his foot. As if that wouldn’t have been enough a bear had come along if it wasn’t for his friend’s gunshot the bear would easily have gotten him. Robert and Tim had managed to get him out in time.

It was this memory along with many others that now flashed into Robert’s mind. Memories of a time long forgotten -when he wasn’t himself. They arrived at the gas station, phoned the emergency services. Robert was given antivenin and was taken to hospital. When he recovered he said:

‘’If I had died that day I would have died in peace because I am now who I am “

If you were to look at the fabric of John’s life you would notice something rather unsettling. It was filled with black spots. He had seen death one too many times and had never missed a funeral. Once he was offered a job interview for a position he had wanted all his life, a teaching post at Bancur the most important university of Ciron, but how could he miss the opportunity to see his grandmother for the last time? It would have remained on his mind forever. He placed flowers on her casket as he did with all who entered eternity. He knew if that job was to be his he would get it - one way or another.

After each parting he would hear that cliché inside his head “Life is meant for living” and “All can be taken away in an instant “

“Please write your names on a piece of paper and then pass it on to me” said the assistant teacher to her students. All of them did so even Alexa who was supposed to be near her grandmother, the person that had raised her, had taught her right from wrong. That very person was now reduced to an ice cube.

Her final day, before she became a part of nature, was to be spent without her granddaughter. Alexa felt sadness, she was alone, a ‘one in a field of zeros’ but her porcelain face was unchanged, its smile was now so stiff, it would have remained the same even if it was submerged in sulphurous acid . That smile, manufactured ages ago, was her weapon against unwanted questions or sympathy. Nobody was supposed to know the many attacks life had thrown at her. She refused to have anybody around her attaching to her, she wanted to be free, absolutely free. Her life had to remain the same, she saw inside her mind, the domino pieces falling one on top of the other: such an image deeply disturbed her.

“I will not let this simple fact of life destroy my rhythm” she shouted in front of the bathroom mirror,

About happiness

Alexa was happy as she walked from Sisamelly to Picary. Of course this was rarely the case; her life was usually nothing more than a grey construction made from the hardest of materials. Now, however, things were different, such was her mood that even the flowers were blooming in that immovable December day. How she loved life when everything was the way she planned it! This basic condition was often violated, that was why pain invaded her very core frequently. Whenever she would have to do an unexpected assignment or when somebody dared to visit her unannounced she would feel a knife penetrating her brownish flesh.

One day she had such a visit: it was Roberta, someone whom you would recognise in a million. Unlike many other women she found her happiness in sports such as volleyball, ping-pong, roller-blaideing, mountain climbing, fishing or parachuting.

Roberta was in a relaxing zorbing camp unwinding and recovering from a terrible cold. She was inside a zorb, in front of her sat a handsome young man. A malfunction in the harness mechanism forced his face to fall on her chest. He found himself inside a leather sandwich. How could John not be happy now when the very thing he liked most was now literally in his face. He liked women or rather he liked what they could offer him in a physical way.

Alexa’s mobile phone rang. She would have to go to her mother’s house and not to her own as she planned.

Their lives

The clock rings every morning. Each time it produces that sound I feel a strong urge to go back to sleep. Each morning I feel like a trapped sardine stuffed too tightly into its tin when I get into those rusted buses. In that rather claustrophobic moment all my senses are assaulted but none suffers as much as my sense of smell. I find myself wondering why soup is still - for some at least - one of the great mysteries of the universe and I still can’t figure out why water is seen as something destructive.

Every single day of the week I find myself in a room filled with the most terrible of creatures: the 21st century pupil. They like to fill their iPods with iTunes, they enjoy reading manga and magazines, they like to sent SMS’s all the time even during class or when they go to the bathroom, it’s like they find the greates of pleasures in pushing buttons or touch screens, like they forgot to trough paper balls at one another.

However my position is not the most important part of my life; it is just a step, a job that I use to save up money for my project to open a zorbing camp nearby.

When I think of this I remember my first time in a plastic ball where I met Roberta, perhaps the only woman I fell in love with. We had gone on to date for a few months but she was never truly happy. There was a hint of uneasiness in her. She told me that even from her childhood she had never truly felt herself. She told me she had to change her sex. Even as a man I would have loved her. However she was the one that chose to end it.

Each morning I wake up and take my oval hope; I shower, get into my car and rush to work. I arrive only to be tormented by the name plate on my door. There in black on white Roberta Higtris is written. That name still stings after thirty years.

Now, after so much time, I am so close that it feels like I have lived in a dream and tomorrow I shall wake up to reality. When I’ll look into the mirror Roberta will be gone forever. Hair will cover my face, my jaw line will be straighter, something will vanish and something will appear. All my curves will become straight, that will be it.

“Hmm another day, another opportunity.” This is my time to shine: after all my efforts today I’ll have my presentation. Sometimes I feel like I’m in the army, where discipline is vital; my life is like a game of dominoes such that if one element is hit the rest will fall one on top of the other in a never ending row.”

But none of those pieces included a party, none of them included love. Her life was future-oriented, she saw herself as being someone at some future point in time. But not now. In these moments she was nothing but a very stable chemical reaction that would in the end make her career, her very existence.

Her back was curved from all that sand wasted in the Central Library, where she would enjoy her friends Poe, Dante, Eminescu, Plato, Marino, it was among these bones that she found her peace. She was not such a huge fan of flesh, it was too demanding.

So each day from 4 pm to 8 pm she would be in there. Between the hours of 8pm and 12am she would write her papers at home. She went to every single lecture and seminar available for her specialization.

“Hmm I finished my presentation. I noticed how my colleagues were absorbed in their own conversations but my professor was attentive. Now back to work!”