The Years After

Chapter 32

Two Days Later

Today I really felt like not doing anything. I just grabbed my shoes and some jeans and a red t-shirt and I just left the Palace and started to walk into the main city. It has been a long time since I haven't been to the forbidden ground and I wanted to go and simply disappear from everyone and everything. The city was very calm. Spring time was settling in, birds started to sing and fly in groups around the shining skyscrapers and since the city was left unattended, flowers and small grasses started to bloom on the cracked sidewalks and on the edges of the main streets of what once was the largest city in Southern North America. I thought about it and this was probably how the cities started to look like during the economic fall. The city was warming up, and small droplets of sweat started to form on my forehead. I decided to cool down inside one of the larger corporate buildings of downtown. As all the buildings, it was completely empty, fairly dusty, and over the dust unusually left organized. I climbed the elevator and hit the button to the highest floor. I was looking at the elevator ceiling waiting for, oh there it goes, ding! I got off and went into the roof of the building, for observing. I could see the city from here. It was beautiful. Many dots on the floor of all those houses left unattended. Blocks of many colors desintegrating from negligence. Flat spaces rounded by clusters of green trees. The Forbidden Ground with trees and reflecting the colors of the sunrise. The white Palace on my right and the Texas State Fair on my left. I turned around and such a beauty appears. The blue sea. Right there. The moon setting behind it. On the distance you saw the Third Town Sea Exchange, the most beautiful sea bridge I had ever seen. The shining metals reflected the sunrise too. All the way until it's end, Starfish Island, our main attraction for the tourists. Hard to think any of these beautiful things are completely empty, but oh well, one day we will occupy them.

I left the tower and headed on to the Forbidden Ground, the clock was hitting ten A.M. so I hurried before I had to be at the Palace for lunch. I wanted a long wanted peace, I wanted to fly away from this completely messed up reality that I called my life. I wanted to feel the breeze sweeping through the field shaking the flowers, I wanted to feel my mother. I wanted to bring back those few memories. I was only five and since that day my life has been everything but normal. Stay Positive, I tell myself every morning. I just wait for my life to take that turn, but first I got to get through this. I arrived at the Starfall river and crossed the overly neglected bridge into the rusty barb wire fence that weakly separated my world from the world I want. I crossed and climbed up the hill and then ran down like a child onto the field of flowers. I sat down, the green forest ahead of me and the cityscape peeking through the hills as if silently wanting to become part of this world. I layed down and looked at the cotton candy clouds in the blue sky, streaming slowly like fish. I wished I could fall into the sky. Sink into the sea of clouds and rotate slowly and peacefully in the sky. I plugged in my earphones and pressed play on my cellphone. The mixes and remixes of vocals and sounds bursted into my ears. They flowed freely into my head becoming my thoughts and emotions. They ran like fire in my veins. They became my blood. This was what I wanted. I wanted to become one of the sounds, why? Because they always took me away, away from this cruel world I live in. Goodbye cruel world.

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I woke up laying down, but I was in an empty and white void. My mother was coming towards me, I got up, but I couldn't speak. My mother took me into her arms, and her hair guarded me from an immense light bursting out of her.

"Hello Carlos, I heard you were feeling down." I nodded. "Don't worry, everything is going to be okay. You are golden, you can do more than you think. You will do great even though life is pulling you back. Just don't let problems get into you, they will sink you." She said. "I love you son, tell your father that I said I love him too. I love both of you very much and I will be with you both, forever. Now I will leave, I am leaving, I love you Carlos. Now wake up."

I gasped for air, "No mother stay a little longer!"

"Wake up!" The scene went dark and I woke up.