Flowers in Blood

by Carlos Santiago

  Flowers in Blood

  Carlos Santiago

  CHAPTER I - THE PEOPLE OF THE HOUSE

  Calmly I watch and light another cigarette. Damn I try to quit addiction for years. I thought that wouldn’t get anything, but how I was already there, decided to let things follow as showed. Until then, it seemed that the night would be long, rainy and unprofitable. I was with cold in my hands, my feet, the entire body drenched. With the wristwatch, I marked the time since I arrived.

  Hours ago I was taking a whiskey without ice in the Recanto Solidão, bar I frequent, where, ironically, left a company, promising to return shortly. The noise that place sometimes bothered me. I like the silence and also I’ am of those who prefer a song with a slightly lower volume, where you can talk to, not those bangs that nobody understands what is said. But even so, I frequent this place long ago. I just think that the name, Recanto Solidão, it suggests a more proper place, with less noise, and not touch those ballads with such a high volume. I finished the drink and got out of there, was going now to the place where would stay almost the entire night.

  I drove me to Antônio Lisboa street, in the Casa Amarela neighborhood. I was stopped for almost an hour and a half, when decided to leave the car. The rain it is falling heavily, and the wind it beats in my face like a whip. At a little distance the place where I was, realized that in a dark part of the street, a few pedestrians they were walking on there. I looked more closely. They were two. They began to run. A little behind them, I saw someone else. Then I listened four shots fired, whose gunfire echoed in the cold and rainy night, and one of them fell to the ground. Without letting me involved, I entered the car again. I gave up taking a shot of whiskey at the bar that was still open a few feet from where I was with my vehicle.

  The people what heard the shots, some hastily they left the bar, while others looked and continued to drink and talk. I live in the capital. Believe me, over the years, the time it creates a strange thing in some people. Nobody cares about you. They just live and take care of their own lives. Find out the facts is to get involved, and nobody wants to be next. Thus, another body was lying in the street for the scientific police came for him the next morning, under the curious who heard nothing and know nothing.

  Inside the car, I feel uncomfortable with what happened and my heart beats faster. But I am determined and I can not quit now. My hands tremble and my breath is gasping at what had happened. I light another cigarette. The time is passing slowly. The bullets make me remember personal facts. I prefer to forget them, but they come to the fore. From inside the car, I look at the corners, and the rain which it descends from the rooftops, it is also the same that carries the blood from that body that was thrown. I can not stop thinking about him. Minutes ago, he was walking with another pedestrian who ran desperately. Where is he from? And the other, who was he? Where they came from? Too many die that way. It is an urban war for nothing. People kill and die for no reason.

  I'm trying to concentrate on what I came to do here, so far from my house. Now, I was wishing to be there lying and making change of TV channels, looking for something interesting while the sleeping does not come. For me, it is so obvious what is the reason I think to be here, in the middle of the night in this neighborhood, what even if I see the death to walk on street corners, I insist on staying. But inside me, the fear visits my soul.

  I was some distance from the house whose address it was on my hand for at least two hours. I needed to use the bathroom of the bar, I wasn’t resisting it anymore. My car it was strange in the neighborhood, and likewise I was still stranger to those people who were sitting there. A song plays. They are voice and guitar at night.

  Gloomy as blended harmony of the strings of the instrument and the rainy night, minutes after the murder that many witnessed there. They are drinking, eating and dancing like if nothing happened.

  I walked towards the waiter, asking him where the toilet was, and he told me to walk to the first hallway to the right, continuing to serve the table which was near where a couple. They stopped to talk, now were looking at me. Without show reaction, I walked away. I realized that they were commenting on anything about me. Nothing much, I guess. But I realized that the woman accompanying a dark-haired man at the table stared into my eyes, watching my steps, as I approached the waiter. I did not intend to become disagreeable there, and after using the toilet, I got out by the other door which was a little farther that woman of very short dress and thick legs who was sitting at the table accompanied by a guy who seemed of doubtful character.

  But, a look so piercing and a mouth as fleshy prevented me from removing me from the site without looking for her again. That drug! And she uncrossed her legs, looking at me, showing that not wearing panties, giving a smirk. He most certainly did not like the gesture that she did, and I walked away without looking at him, walking to my car, even with the rain falling, because I could not lose sight of the movement of house number fifty and eight, Antônio Lisboa Street, which is why I had directed me to that place, and I did not want stay to see what would happen next.

  I was excited, of course, with what I saw underneath that dress, all her intimacy exposed, a pair of thick thighs and a meaty mouth. But I let the moment happen, and I fled the danger, the venom of a woman who could have any man to destruction.

  Inside the car, with another damn cigarette on and still excited, I wonder. Let me take a few memories that the previous scene brought me while I wait some movement in the house. My two outputs of the car worried me, because I didn’t know if there were changes in it, there was a body lying in the street, whose blood ran down with rainwater, and a provocative woman wanted to put me in a real cool in an unknown place. Neither I didn't have to turn to because my cell phone, as always happens in these times, when we need, the battery is discharged.

  I am watching the dark sky. I see the light pole on the other side of the street. The rain is falling illuminated by its light. I try to forget the woman in the bar and the extended body. When I was a child, I liked to do so to try to forget something that made me anxious. From window of my bedroom, I was looking at the sky on winter nights or summer. I was different from other kids because I was not afraid of those things, like darkness, heavy rain with lightning and thunder, but excitement of the unknown, and insomnia has always been my roommate. My father thought I was asleep, when in fact, I kept looking at the dark corners of the room on lonely nights until sleep came, because he never did let me read any book in the room at bedtime. Sometimes, I opened the window to look at the stars in the sky. But when the rain fell, with the lightning tearing the sky and thunders rumbling in the room and shaking the window, I imagined myself in those horror movies I watched hidden from my parents, and the feeling was very strange, because the excitement left my heart beating stronger. Why tell stories of ghosts for kids?

  My shoes and clothes were wet, and I got cold feet with those two outs I gave out of the car. Inside it was hot now; the fogged glass it was blocking my vision. I was having a mixture of feelings like cold, heat, fear, care and excitation. I did not want to go back to the bar and see me in that situation that put me the girl without panties or thinking in the extended body which had bothered me. I just wanted to know of my purpose, the reason for my wait here in this place. The hours are spending slowly. How I would like to take a whiskey now.

  The rain was falling, and the waters came down the street. I looked at the light beam on the pole, and saw the raindrops slowly disappear into the sky. I open a little the glass of the car on my side. I caught in my shirt pocket a chewing gum to relieve the tension of waiting and all things what I had seen and experienced. The mint flavor in my mouth softened the taste of cigarette and I gave to my stomach something to fill it. Three hours
passed.

  Gradually, with the passage of rain, and ending the night, the people were withdrawing from the bar. I saw the waiter, with whom I had spoken, now talking to that woman. Both were standing and her companion was not close. She was wearing an elegant blue dress and very fair in the body. She has the brown skin and curly hair. She made certain gestures that gave me the impression that the waiter asked something about me. She looked in the direction of my car while was on his back, a couple of times, showing her prominent curves, and the waiter looked at my car while talking with her. Until that moment, the man who accompanied her did not appear. Perhaps they had already passed ten minutes of conversation.

  I kept looking at the house, which was lit with a light since I'd arrived, but there wasn’t movement inside it. I took care not to stay in evidence, but it was not possible because I had been noticed by the episode of the bar.

  The woman now retired with his man, heading towards the house I was watching. They passed by it and looked at the front door. They were walking at a slow pace, with fine raindrops wetting her blue dress. She looked back again toward me, as he was holding your right hand, then they rounded the corner. Some people were still at the bar. The spell of the brunette took me arrested. These things we never forget, because the imagination it stays weaving scenes in our mind.

  A moment just what I looked away to the curves of the brunette, I did not notice the changes that occurred within the house. Someone approached the window and made me stand on alert, but nothing happened. The day was almost dawn. The singer was getting out at the bar. Now was coming over a Sunday morning. I turned on the car stereo, and my head touched the support of the chair, because the tiredness came. Wet clothes bothered me. The waters were decreasing volume and ran down the sidewalks with less violence. The music playing in the car made me relax. I lit another cigarette.

  I was hoping finish the night and then think about something the next day, at my house, when the door of house number fifty-eight opened. It was a blonde woman, who after looking into the street, and set the view in the direction of my car, as if afraid of something, locked it again. Was it that she approached the window moments before? I waited a few minutes after its appearance. It was still dark and few people on the street. Who was still there, certainly would not want to know what was happening. It is the law of silence. No one saw, no one heard, no one knows. At the bar, the waiter has kept the chairs. I turned off the car stereo and the silence of the street was deep. The night finally slept. I looked around and I saw no one. Even the waiter was inside the bar. I left the car, and looking in all directions, walked to the house quickly and cautious in fear that I was seen by someone. Approaching me, I heard voices, distant and muffled, it seemed people arguing, because the tone of voice showed that, besides the fact that I was not so close to the house about to understand the conversation that took place there. Discreetly, I got closer, when a noise of falling crockery came

  from inside the house. Eye sideways again to make sure no one watches me, and I approach the door. Now everything was in the greatest silence, and the lights remained lit.

  Damn cell that discharged the battery. I needed to make a call. The voices I heard in the distance as an argument and the sound of breaking glass when I found myself almost at the door let me tense. The thought now was my biggest problem since told me that I should depart from, and while I approached ever closer to the door. I stopped for a moment in front of the house, waited to see if anything else was listening. It is a profound silence. No one was speaking, no one was moving inside of the house. I looked at the door and realized that it was not locked, as I had thought before. It was slightly ajar. I touched the doorknob, after looking at the street, and pushed the door, and managed to see part of the interior of the house, which did not show me any abnormality that might have occurred on there. A few more steps as if instinctively and I was inside the residence. I was panting, looking in all directions. The tension was strong, and my hands were sweating. I could come across with any reaction. But where were they? Certainly, the woman appeared at the door was not alone. I walked cautiously and slowly, into the house, even to the living room, where a TV was on, and dumb, and saw the couch remote control of it, along with a cell phone vibrating. I approached the phone and saw a name. Marcelo was calling. It was the name that appeared on the screen.

  At that moment, all that was in thought because I have decided to go in there without even having a clue that was in the house and what could happen to me. The guy who was killed a few feet away and the woman who almost put me into a problem at the bar was not enough? I need not have moved on, but I continued because I was already involved in the situation. Why that blonde woman approached the door looking in all directions from the street, and gazed in the direction of my car forgetting the door open then? And the woman in the blue dress, now looking into the house? What she was talking to the waiter while he looked at my car? Had not directed me here, or I approached the house, none of these questions would go through my mind.

  What led me to that place were other reasons, not those people I had seen and that too was looking at me now. I needed to clarify a few things, but just to see me involved with some facts that intrigued me. Maybe they were just things in my head. I thought if I walked into that house, would clarify some issues that made me uneasy was already a few days, and could also know about the couple that the bar looked at me, among other things. The events that followed seemed no coincidence.

  Does anyone here know me? Or worse, they were waiting for me? Did someone knew the day that I would come here? I began to think that I should not have directed me to that place. Perhaps, it was the most obvious, too: I stood there for a long time and woke attention.

  The only person who came to mind that could meet me there was only one that asked the waiter to deliver this to me a napkin that night at the bar Recanto Solidão four days ago with the reasons that made me get up there: one cell phone number and an address.

  CHAPTER II - THE BAR RECANTO SOLIDÃO

  This is the story: Once, when I was sitting on a bench in that bar counter, someone went through my back slamming with some violence. It was a jerking who I thought unnecessary. I expected an apology, but, this time, was not what happened. I was angry, but caution is providence that whoever comes out at night must have, after all, with all the violence of today, death can come at any time. I kept taking my doses. Occasionally someone what I knew passed and talked with me. I answered cordially, but I was not really in the mood for company that night. I just wanted to take a good dose of that a old whiskey, and then go to my house, when I got fatigue. Then, after a few minutes, the waiter arrived with this napkin that contained such a number. I took the paper in my hands and asked:

  - What is it? Why are you giving me this napkin?

  - Do not ask me. Just asked me to deliver to you - answered Fabio - the waiter that I knew a long time.

  - Who was that? Is a woman? I asked.

  - Yes, a woman.

  He said, turning away to take a tray.

  Was it she who hit my back? I thought now. But I was not bothered in that moment. The night was not really nice to me. I did not want any company at the time. I turned to the other side and stayed watching people dance and talk. I breathed, pulling air from time to time that I lacked, and took the rest of the shot of whiskey I had ordered. It’s time to retire. I left the bar at around two hours a.m., when the night is just beginning, and people are getting involved. I left behind the music at high volume and walked to my car, which was about fifty yards away.

  The day was tiring for me, so I decided to go. Next to the bar Recanto Solidão had a group of prostitutes, waiting those who failed company and perhaps wanted an hour of sex cheap to complete the night out and their vices. Not much has changed. Occasionally, some of them appear in the police news, or involved in some confusion with customers, or dead. I knew some of them.

  I am driving on the way home; came to my mind the napkin what the waiter, Fabio, h
ad given me. Who would be the woman who gave me the napkin and why she did not wrote your name?

  As I was a bit far from my house, I decided to read the paper again. That seemed to be a cell phone number. I thought about calling for such the number of mysterious woman midway. They know how to make you interested.

  The road was a bit deserted and I could drive slower, taking me a chance to make a call while I was driving. I just wanted to know who the woman was and why gave me her number without even leaving a name. Only one address, it was Antônio Lisboa Street, number fifty-eight. I picked up the phone that was in my pocket, connecting the interior light of the car then. The phone battery was weak, with one dot on display. Four typed numbers. With one hand on the wheel and a romantic eighties music playing at low volume in the car, I was preparing to make the connection. There were many expectations, and now, with these ideas in mind, I thought what I should have called in that moment, when I got the napkin. At least I would not leave so curious, wondering at least her name.

  Honestly, who gets a phone number and address with no name? This never happened to me. But for everything in life there is a once. Over four digits and a few seconds and I would be hearing her voice on the other side ... A loud bang almost pulled me off the road! I raised my head quickly, stunned and wide-eyed, the phone fell from my hands, and I strongly held the steering wheel to avoid losing control of the vehicle, braking shortly thereafter. I passed through the ring road of the complex Salgadinho in Olinda, when two vehicles collided, almost in front of me at that moment! I was stunned when the silence of the morning was broken by the sudden roar that sounded like an explosion to me, or was something going on with my car. For very little, I was not hit too, and saw the cars in front of me twirling, shortly after, one of them flipped several times, followed by a morbid silence and strong smell of gasoline on the road. They broke a traffic signpost in which was wrote: “Danger! Road in maintenance. Reduce speed”. The traffic signpost so nearly struck the passenger side of my car. With panting breath and frightened, I tried to keep me calm. In seconds, everything happens on the road. This is the small difference in time between life and death for someone. Seconds that change the lives of people. Don't drink and drive. That always happens when you do not know the limit. I stood for a moment, standing there in the car without a reaction, trying to understand how it happened. The smell of gas was very strong, and perhaps it was the vehicle that flipped several times. Were eternal seconds to me, nearly I went along on collision that destroyed one of the vehicles. The sound of that collision still echoed in my ears. I did not hear the sound of tires ripping up, that leaves the known black marks on the road. It was, above all, a terrible accident. Some lights came on in the houses nearby, and I saw people opening their windows to see what had happened. I was still on shaky legs. I decided to leave the car to help. I approached the vehicle that was overturned, with the tires up, because I thought that these people needed assistance more urgent than the other vehicle, which was in normal position. It was a white Fiat Palio with number plate of Rio de Janeiro. It was with four people inside. How they were away from home. Most likely, they would not send more news for their family. All they seemed to have died and the seats of the car were full of blood. A silence that gave me chills down in my spine as I looked the likely bodies within the last place of their existence and I could smell gasoline giving me nausea. I didn’t know what to do. And there was a risk of explosion. So I decided to get away. I walked towards my car, while some people approached the macabre event.