Sombras (parte 2)

- ¿Y como te has sentido? - preguntó Gabriela una vez que se habían sentado en las sillas de la ventana que daba a la calle en la heladería.
-Bien, con mucho más ánimo ya- Dice fran con una sonrisa.
-¿Duermes bien?
-¿Lo dices por las ojeras?
-No, no...
- Ayer me desvelé un poco, pero en general duermo bien...
-¿Muchas pastillas?
-No, no muchas en realidad. Cada vez menos, y nunca para dormir. Me cagan los sueños ¿sabías?
-No, no sabía- Dice Gabriela con alivio.
-Si. Ayer soñé que estaba en un cementerio flotante--¿has visto ese video de gorillaz donde la niña va en una isla que tiene un molino?
-Si, es bueno.
-Era como esa isla, sin molino y con un cementerio. Una reja negra grande...
-Tu idea me recuerda el cementerio de venecia...
-pero yo no la podía abrir. No se por que no podía; de hecho ni siquiera lo intentaba, porque no podía.
-Asi es como funciona todo.
-¿Como?
-Si crees que no puedes, no lo vas a lograr.
-Claro, pero eso no funciona al reves; no hay viceversa para lo que dices.
-¡Por supuesto que si! Si de verdad crees que vas a hacer algo, lo haces. Todos los entrenamientos son una reafirmación para la voluntad de algo que podías hacer desde el principio- Dice Gabriela con una sonrisa que le cubre la mitad de la cara.
fran y Gabriela rien, fran mucho más rato.
-¡fran!-Dice Gabriela con verguenza o preocupación-¡Para fran!
-Perdón...es que hace tiempo que no me reía. Además no podía parar de pensar que si-
fran vuelve a reirse, pero poco esta vez.
-que si alguien de mi familia te escuchara diciendome esas cosas te retarían mucho. "¿Como se le ocurre meterle esas ideas en la cabeza? ¿no se da cuenta que es enfermito?"
-No eres enfermito.-Dice Gabriela seriamente.
-¡Ay, no te pongas tan grave! Además es un poco como piensan en mi familia. Siempre cuidandose de que no vaya a volverme loco de nuevo.
-fran...
-Hey, eso tenemos que aceptarlo todos; estuve loco. Porque si no lo aceptamos, entonces tenía razón, las cosas son mucho más terribles de lo que creemos y yo me pasé un tiempo horrible en el manicomio y drogado por pastillas cuando salí del manicomio solo porque no entendieron mi punto de vista...
-¡fran!
-¿Muy pronto para hablar de esto?
-No es eso-dice Gabriela con cara de frustración- es que...
-No me tienes que dar explicaciones. Es incomodo para todos, creo. Pero tampoco te puedes tomar las cosas tan en serio. Si yo no me rio...-dice fran con voz muy grave- ¡Ah! Acabo de encontrar un punto debil en tu teoría de "creer es poder". Según tu, si yo creía todo eso, entonces eso era verdad. Pero no era.
-Es que ese es el punto, fran. Yo creo que de cierta forma si lo era.

a vague and rather free account of a simple afternoon (Draft, I don't know where I'm going with this)

He opened the second bottle of wine of the evening, his friend was leaving the next day and that bottle had stayed closed for long enough now. There was a certain air of minute festivity in the air, something between a specially cooked lunch and christmas. It was dark already and he put the rabbit back in his cage, Ian looked at him doing that, certain pets confused him and rabbits were one of them, although it's technicly a hare, he thought.


The conversation went on in the same kind of randomly ramified pattern like suppossedly human evolution did and it occasionally went back to Michael saying how much he enjoyed music, he decided to put a Sublime DVD to explain and show Ian how simple and perfect Sublime was. Ian never really talk much to Michael about the music he liked to listen to, he thougth that this might have drawn a discussion about different types of music which could have only ended in the agreement of both that it was just a matter of taste, he would not have been able to bear that, it was too much of a cliché even for two drunk friends.


- I think one of the reasons I hate football is because I couldn't play, I was too fat


Ian pictured that, a young Michael with blond curly hair, tired, breathing violently, frustrated. He empathised with him, he hadn't been fat but he sucked at football as well, he told him that he also was the last one to be picked and how the team that was forced to pick him didn't give a damn about showing their disconformity.


Michael told him that he was in a grammar school and he was constantly picked on by his classmates because he was fat and he didn't really fit in that school because it was too posh, even the teacher would bully him at time until one day he told one of the teachers to shut the fuck up and too lick his ass, his parents then were stronly suggested to move him into another school.


Things were not that different for Ian, he explained Michael that he was a bit thick in primary school and that his classmates used to call him a retard and passed his chair around to smell it because they said it had a horrible smell. From that moment on, he went on, he had lived only to prove himself he is not a retard, he also felt extremely anxious when he had to deal with people, faces terrifyied him, the possibility of reviving those years seemed likely to happen everytime someone new looked at him.

Ian felt a bit ashamed that he hasn't been through completely yet, not as Michael, he still struggled with the burden of fear of the mockery of children more than ten years before, he thougth that it was either because to destroy the confidence of someone by laughing at his lack of intelligence was more corrosive or because he was stucked, he tried to dismissed the second option.

The next day Michael left Ian in the train station where he would catch the connection to the airport, when he finally arrived to his house late in the night he took out the lunchbox that Michael's girlfriend's mother prepared for him, while eating his ham sandwich he thought of that lady that prepared that for him without really knowing him, he thought of the other gifts he got from Michael's familiy and the beer and wine and food he ate. Having all these in mind, he went to bed, and when he put his head on the pillow he cried, he felt as if something had broken inside him, something made of glass maybe or chalk, he couldn't pinpoint that.

no se que estoy haciend

Sombras(parte 1)

Fran cerró la llave de la ducha. Sabía que el shampoo no tardaría en llegar a sus ojos, pero necesitaba el silencio para escuchar. ¿Había escuchado algo o lo había imaginado? Concentrandose bien pudo escuchar la musica de las casas vecinas, a esta hora del dia programadas por las nanas que cuidaban a los niños. Pero el ruido había venido de su casa, de eso estaba seguro. Cuando ya no pudo soportar el chorrear del shampoo y sin haber escuchado la continuación de algo que pudo haber sido una puerta cerrandose o unos pasos volvió a abrir la llave de agua y se enjuagó.
Intentó recordar mientras se secaba cuando habían empezado esos ruidos que sonaban cuando se sentía más desprotegido; al bañarse o en medio de la noche. Varias veces había seguido escuchando golpes suaves, sonidos de movimiento después de despertarse, pero el terror lo paralizaba en la cama. Después de un rato el ruido cesaba y con el puñal que le había regalado su abuelo recorría la casa sin encontrar nada que le diera una pista.
Se vistió con ropa limpia dentro del baño, cruzó la puerta que daba a su pieza y el movimiento de las cortinas lo desconcertó. Había dejado todas las ventanas cerradas. Pero era imposible que alguien hubiera entrado, las ventanas tenían barrotes para ladrones y rejillas para animales más pequeños. Salió de la pieza al otro espacio de la casa; el living comedor cocina americana. Las ventanas estaban abiertas ahí también.
Los ruidos habían empezado hace poco, pero ¿como estar seguro? mientras tomaba las pastillas su vida era una masa informe, nada importaba realmente. Quizás los ruidos estaban, pero no le importaron nunca. Pero claro, quizas los ruidos nunca empezaron, y eran parte de su paranoia.
Después de todo, antes de las pastillas sus problemas eran mucho más que ruidos. Todavía sentía miedo al recordar esa sombra que se acercaba en las noches, que le tocaba la cara o que lo despertaba ahogandolo con la almohada. ¿Estarían volviendo las alucinaciones? Pensó en una alternativa a las dos vidas que había vivido hasta ahora. Luego pensó otra y desarrolló un plan.

The Shopping Bag

Through Talbot Street people seemed to simply appear, women with scarves, short old polish women, youths with ignorant arrogant looks, and then he appeared from under the green rail bridge. Walking fast although he was not in a hurry he could feel minute -maybe invisible to the eye -perspiration drops between the border of his hat and his forehead; he did not wanted to take out his hat, he had not washed his hair in while, he was too self-conscious as to walk without his hat.
His left hand was getting tired of holding the shopping bag with things he would not eat. While he strangled slowly his fingers with the plastic handle of the bag he was thinking rather too serious on what to do with the contents of the bag, the first and easiest option he could think of was to simply put the bag in the closest dustbin. Somehow the idea of doing such a thing started appearing most apalling and the moral revoltion caused by this idea was creeping in accelerating speed throughout his rather hypersensitive sense of guilt.
The best thing to do then was to give it to one of the beggars in the city centre. The city was very crowded, it was a sunny day, and he had to insert himself into one of the people flows in the right sidewalk of O'Connell street, he felt dragged by the multide thinking that he stopped walking either the movement of the rest would take him somewhere or that he would died runover by too many Dubliners.
He got to cross the river and in the bridge he saw the first beggar, he was sitting on the floor looking down between his knees while holding and empty cardboard cup in front of him. He considered the posibility of giving him the bag for too long and he finally got to a decision it was too late and the people ebb had took him too far, he was crossing the street now, he thought that if he wanted to do that he would need to be quicker in both the spotting of the candidate and the selection of it. He saw an old man with an odd hat sitting in a what seemed to be an empty wooden box of apples or maybe fish, he try to stop but the velocity of the people in front and behind him was to high, he had to wait until he got to the street light in the corner to go back, he saw that the old man had an open suitcase with old random clippings and some even older objects, there was a sign written in a piece of cardboard with a black marker, it was something about being proud of being Irish, or was it that he was praying all the time for the happines of everybody in the world? maybe both, but the words written did not suggested that he was begging, there was the possibilty that was not under any circumstances asking for anything, therefore giving him the bag would become an insult, a sign of prejudism, social paternalism and snobbery that would ultimate upset the poor old man that was just praying for the world and feeling proude of his irishness, he did not want to upset that man, that would upset him as well.
The quest continued with some other unsuccessful attempts until he saw a rather young man sitting on the sidewalk with a dog, that man was certainly not irish he thought so that reduced the chance of running into another nationalist, but again he could not stop, he really tried, there was frustration and guilt arousing, how could an invisible -possibly inexistent -urban force be stronger than him. He had had enough, he stopped turned around, bump into one or two people, ignored some mumbling insults, walk streight in the direction of the young beggar and ask him if he would like to have some bread, apples and milk, before hearing an answer he handed the bag, the young man said something he did not understand well, could have been a "thank you" or a "fuck you", he did not care, he could not be bothered, went into the flow and let Dublin guide him.

Javier

Javier se puso en el marco de la puerta construida para este momento con las manos y los pies tocando cada esquina. La pareja esteril lo miraba asustada, pero convencida. Ellos lo habían buscado despues de todo. Javier empezó a recitar y sus palabras hicieron que el vientre de la mujer cada se hinchara más hasta que su fuente se rompió en cosa de minutos. Javier cayó y sintió como otras veces la sensación de estar naciendo.
No era el mismo en el sentido de la conciencia. no podría controlar, al menos facilmente, lo que el niño haría, ni este haría lo que Javier haría. Era otro individuo, pero el Espiritu era el mismo.
(extracto)