Short Story- Part III (First Draft)

The world once again changed and without given a forewarning the two of them were placed now in a desert.

The warm climate highly different from the past one; owned a wind which stroke their cheeks and burned them with its presence. Coughing and lost in a sand storm they could not see anything and hold to each other. 

Suddenly, the storm ceased and the two of them face each other again. Surprisingly they did not feel any thirst or another essential need; this once again reaffirmed their placement in another plane different to their own. 

The little girl with her fresh skin and disappointing face expression asked in a bitter tone:

 “Nobody ever touched us? Is that what you are saying?”

The other one clearing her throat just to spit a lie responded:  “Nobody ever touch us”

Once again another sand storm started as brutal as the last one forced the two of them to become closer and could only support each other by embracing themselves.

While this occurred the older one could only think of the truth behind her lie. She lied in order to conceal her embarrassment and misfortune. Her younger herself was indeed too young to even have knowledge of the malicious and unfortunate incident that occurred when the older one was eleven years old. 

If only she knew how a piece of her innocence died on that day at the hands of a malevolent and depraved man whose intentions were polluted. He touched and tainted part of us in an instant, frozen to react and to scream we could only respond when the dishonest man’s lips almost touched ours. The memory almost gone but never forgotten with repercussions which include but did not limit to: distrust and a ruined self concept. 

Whispering to the small ear placed next to her lips, the older woman whose glasses were useless due to the sand, repeated those words “we were just never good” once again only to be followed by the same apology “I am sorry for not making our wish come true”

The memories of cold, bitter, dishonest, and uncaring people who only approached us appeared and disappeared as shadows on the sand while the storm calmed itself down. The sun rapidly came down and in its place a moon came to be the light and guide to nowhere.

“Myself, I think I hate you…We were supposed to find love and be happy, be beautiful, smart and successful. I only see a dirty, stupid and pathetic woman who didn’t change and found no love. I despise you and I am glad you are dead!”

The little girl pushed the depressed and disgraceful woman away from her; just when she was falling down to the orange ocean of sand another memory escaped her unconscious and became vivid. She had a pain on her abdomen on that rainy day, and just when the tired young woman was about to cross the wet street; a car approached her at high speed and the last thing she saw and remembered were the lights of a car and a blurry sky that cried on her as she collapsed on the ground.  

Staring at the starry night only these words came out “you are wrong, I did find it and I…I fell in love with love, but he did not fall in love with me”

Short Story-Part II (Second Draft)

After crying her heart out, the young woman stood up and once again had a glance at the fake paradise, which in a blink of a second disappeared and everything turned to darkness once again. “What happened?” but before finishing any thought,  both of them felt the sensation of falling down, but who knows what exactly happened or what the experience it might have been.   

There was nothing up or down, no sounds and nothing to assure their existence with the exception of the warmth coming from their hands. Having their eyes closed or open didn’t make a difference. A floor to stand up didn’t exist and they could only talk to the nothingness.

“Are we floating?” “Falling?” “Should we be afraid?”

The flow of thoughts in their heads was unsettling and vast like the ocean itself, which they could never be able to see again. In the mist of doubt and in a reflex to fear, the same person split into two let go of each other’s hand to touch themselves in order to reassure their presence; seeking a physical body that by logic should contain that flow of thoughts. The conclusion: they were there and they were not. 

The kid remained silent for a moment and the young woman could only feel something worse than her earthly fear. She thought that rejection could be the worst thing in her world but in here the nothingness penetrated her being as a cold air on a snowy night. 

 “Why is my younger self not talking, is she not afraid? What could she be thinking? Perhaps, she no longer is there…” unconsciously or consciously she tried to reach for the only company in the afterworld, but who could tell if her mind or if her body reacted to her wish?

“Am I talking out loud?  Am I only thinking? Do I have a voice?  Can I cry and be heard? Am I here? Are you here myself? Do I no longer exist?”

Desiring for tears and longing for something or someone, the frightening moment died with a scream in the infinite. The scream of a child shattered reality and not knowing how or when it happened both ended up  sitting on the edge of a bridge, a sea of different hues of blue and green  were beneath their feet, and a sky as clear and white on their heads felt as if snow could fall from the cosmos at anytime.To their right and to their left only the significance of pi can be similar to what they saw, the bridge had no start or an end and the little girl asked her older self 

“Were you able to find it, to obtain it, did it searched for you?” 

Not knowing exactly what the innocent girl meant with her words, the younger woman couldn’t respond.

“Did it find us? Tell me that we were able to grasp what we desired the most!”

As if the wind existed in that bizarre place, the woman felt a sudden breeze on her face and responded with a straight face “No, our wish was never fulfilled. Love did not love us back” 

The kid with watery eyes glanced down as if trying to see a reflection on the water; to her disappointment she just saw just a frozen ocean. Her facial expression changed and a wicked smile formed on her face, in which only her lips moved to say: “My only wish and desire was never fulfilled? I died without been loved?”

 Giggling at first and then laughing she saw her vivid reflection but older in a way, and tears rolled down her clean and tanned cheeks. In shame the older one moved her sight to the measureless frozen sea and with a broken voice told the girl from her past:

“Nobody could ever love us for who we were and are, nobody could understand our hidden artistic beauty, nobody could see behind the pious lies we told, and nobody could penetrate the darkness of our shield  which we created to avoid pain…”

Trying to restrain herself from crying again and holding her pain like if it was a very expensive jewel, the pitiful woman stopped to breath and then, looked up at the sky.  Staring back at the mirror of her existence, whose face only showed tenderness, the wiser persona could no longer hold her pathetic truth. 

“No man ever hugged us with love, no… man ever kissed us with love, no man ever touched us with love, and no man ever made love to us...”

After taking a freezing deep breath, she told the little girl with now ice-covered lips in a weak and hoarse voice:

“My younger self, we... the you and I that were one at one point… were just never good enough”

Short Story- Part I (Second Draft)

 In Love with Love

It starts where it ends; the two of them who used to be one faced each other in the dark. There was a young woman almost in her mid twenties and facing her, a little girl whose age appeared to be of an eight year old.
The two of them recognized each other and the little girl asked her older self "Did we die?"

The older one, whose mind could not believe her situation, looked around for clues on what had happened. The nothingness embraced the two, and the older one didn't remember how she ended up in that place. The little girl with a frightened face pulled the red long sleeve the young woman was wearing and asked once again "Did we die?"

"I do not know, I am not sure...who are you?" The 24 year old woman responded to the little girl who looked and sounded like herself.

"I am....I don't know, I don't remember my name...where are we? I do not know where we are, but..but are you me?"

"I don't remember my name either, but you do look like me...I guess we did die"

Both of them looking at each other with no knowledge of how they got there or what on earth happened, hold their hands as if they were siblings with watery eyes and confused as ever.

Who knows how much time it passed since and in this case it is irrelevant; for the ones who have reached eternity a minute might be a second or a year. They began to walk to an unknown path, with no destiny taking steps on an invisible road. The little girl were curious and wanted to ask so many questions to her older self. She also could not keep her dark brown eyes from the tall figure next to her. She look very different from what she imagined herself to be in the future, her older self didn't have her black hair, or the same hairstyle, she was not as pretty as what she would have expected her to be, her older self wore glasses, and did not wear heels or a beautiful dress. Instead, the woman wore a normal shirt, with some jeans and black flat shoes, her short messy orange and reddish hair was a different color from her black eyebrows made her seem somehow manly.

On the other side, the young woman felt the girl’s warm hand and began to remember vaguely some of her childhood memories. The girl walking next to her was indeed herself from the past, she felt it and saw her as how she remembered herself to be. The little girl had the short black hair that she dislike a lot at that age because it made her feel like a boy, the white shirt with blue pants that didn't match those pink and white tenni shoes. Both of them were a walking mirror to each other, in the real world they could have been mistaken as siblings, cousins, maybe as daughter and mother.

The silence was too much for the young one and began questioning her older reflection.
 "Are you really me? How come you look like this and not how we were supposed to be? We hate this short hair and these shirts and jeans...how come you don't look pretty and girly?"
Giggling a little, the older woman said "I am sorry, but it is not convenient to wear a dress and heels when you are on your day off..." a piece of memory came to her as she said those words "Yeah, I wasn't working that day" The little girl excited jumped in front of her looking up to meet her eyes on the other girl "Do you remember now, what happened to us? Remember our name?"

"I woke up, on my bed there was my laptop on as usual...my books...I can't remember more" The girl with little disappointing sighed and pointed out a light on the road "HEY!! let’s go over there" she ran towards a light spot but her older self stop her "Not so fast, we don't know what could be there" in her mind, she thought of death and her fear of not been able to go back. The little girl turned around to her and yelled "WE ARE ALREADY DEAD!! let’s just go" grabbing the woman's hand she pulled her towards the light and in a moment they reached it; only to find a place full of flowers almost like a garden but an ending to this one could not be seen.

The woman sat on the beautiful green grass that look as lively and perfect as if coming from a movie. The young woman with red hair let her young self wonder around. The sun warmed her soul and after stretching her arm as to reach the sun with her left hand, she noticed the little girl came back holding a red rose. "Here, for you" the girl with black short hair gave the rose to her older self and thus, the older one began to cry.

"Why are you crying old me? it is just a rose, bet you got many...dozens of roses and flowers from so many secret admirers and men who wanted to go out with you"

Thinking her words would make everything better in fact worsen the situation, and the little girl had a bad feeling about it. "Did we not receive many flowers? Well, perhaps tons of presents, didn't we? I bet many guys gave us rings in order for us to be their girlfriend, right?"

Her older self cried louder and whip many tears inconsolably, trying to stop crying and breathing in between she told and apologize to her younger self "I am really, really sorry but you are the first one to have ever given me a red rose" Trying to clean her tears and shame, the young woman with her long sleeves placed her covered hands on her eyes. Leaving the red rose on her lap and with a breaking heart the young girl also cried a little and hugged her older self.

"We never received expensive presents like you wish, my lovely 8 year old self...We never received any Valentine's present either. We have never been on a date nor has anyone invited us or asked us on one"

Both of them were just there, the older one sitting down and the younger one embracing her for a moment of eternity.