The bus driver heard the noise and stopped the bus. He came up to see the reason of the shouts. Celestino kept on there at the back of the bus, sitting on a single seat on his own, with a white head and legs crossed, quiet without saying a word. I looked at him before getting off the bus. They threw my back pack through the window.
I saw Luiz’s disapproving glance in his eyes that he threw on me through the window. They hardly believed that I could get that far at the point of getting off the bus. Celestino continued the trip with them.
Two days later after them, I arrived home. I arrived home tired and hungry. I had spent all my economy for the bus ticket. As soon as it got dawn, I went to work without talking to anybody at home. So, the rush of the work filled my day. In the evening, as I arrived home, I saw all the lights off, and with some mistrust I opened the door. That was the greatest surprise in my life. There was the whole class who went on trip with me. They hugged me, scolded and, moved we cried all together. Celestino hugged me and sobbing, he said something to me that I will never forget. ‘If everyone had that so strong feeling of friendship you have, in fact many things would be different’.
This was more than twenty years ago. Many more water ran after that. I moved out of my town, got married, got separated, and married again. Sometimes ago I came up to know that Celestino had died from osteoporosis problem. He’d done lots of surgery on his arm and lost one more leg before dying. Who told me that he had died by sending me a letter was Décio who also after the ride we had, became ones of Celestino’s best friend. I was told also that, he’d left one son for his wife to raise. His wife’s name was Rojani, the lovely brunette from our tour.
...
When I tell this story many people don’t believe by the tone politically correct, but those were other times, manners and customs.
VAMPIRE
Nothing came to his mind.
He tried to get in vain the reason of everything or even a sign of what would happen.
However, his attempts have revealed unsuccessful.
Out there the day rolled on like any other day for anyone of 9 billion of human beings. But there was only one guy like him who knew that, that was not an ordinary day
Even the sun seemed to understand that and navigated showing his face, leaving in the air the sensation of its existence due to the infernal heat that burned us all.
Somewhere, out there, there was someone who implored so that the star-king should get out from his crazy lethargy and shine with all its glow.
He, not the sun, but 'him', he hoped this not to happen.
His pain, sorrows, his resentment, endured them all, however, the sun that for others was life, for him meant suffering and death.
He turned around, sitting on writing desk and sat with his backs on the window side of unbreakable glasses.
His big and frightening eyes swept the length of the place where he was. Mentally he made the measurement of the space where he’s been. There might have been four meters of width and about six meters long.
He was allowed to write in the hope that, that’s the way he should describe the rest of his victims whenever they found him. Beside the writing desk, there was also one day-bad, where he could do some kind of self-analysis in front of a suspend video camera on the ceiling top five meters of distance from the floor. They calculated that even if they turned the writing desk vertically on the sofa, he would never reach the camera.
"He" got the notebook and the pen (of feather, to avoid possible troubles, like the non-spiral notebook) then he walked towards the bathroom.
In the bathroom the walls were made of translucent glasses, and there was also a camera on the ceiling to watch his movements.
.All this hindered any desire of privacy, because summing up in all, there were five fixed cameras on the ceiling, and three horizontal with rails that followed along the horizontal line and two with rails on vertical line. This became necessary, when some day he made a pipe with the paper and pierced the throat of a psychiatrist who got too close when HE pretended to have had an epileptic seizure.
These cameras transmitted the images even from up above the three upstairs checkpoint opposite, he was being kept inside an escapes-proof room, almost about thirty meters under the ground.
There was another part of the ceiling self-retractable from where his food came down every twelve hours. A study made before when his foods were on smaller intervals revealed that, the less contact he got from the world outside, the more he reacted with the feather and the paper, exposing his points of views and also with his terrible memories. He was he discovery for the forensic psychiatrist. A true relic who the students and professionals of the area examined and discussed about in the class.
Of course he was careful so that certain changes of his treating wouldn’t reach the ears of the Human Rights stuff, only some highly qualified people knew what really occurred there inside.
He was an outcast, a renegade.
The stuff of the Department of Psychiatric Evaluation of F.P found out that the name he used to use, was fake (they had found the owner’s documents, or better saying what left of it, in an armadillo’s hole at the edge of a road) and could not go on dysoscopic investigations. It was as if He had never existed. That’s why they used to call him by “He”.
He got out from the bathroom and slept on sofa.
He looked at the camera up.
‘And hey yo there, buddy! Did you see me making shit? What’s up? Hey you all up there, don’t get blind?’ he spoke pointing his right hand’s finger up. ‘I beg my apologies!’ he said after one minute.
He put his hands behind his head, on the nape, and stretched his legs on the sofa.
He was tall, with 1.93 centimeters, strong and could lift up 230 kg, could stand shocks beyond imagination. His room was always very tidy, everything put in their right place, as if he was a true gentleman. Hair brush, toilet soap, towel, everything in order. But it had not been always like this. It has been five years that he was there.
‘You know that I have the right to privacy, however you pretend not to know that! Alright, but I pretend that I don’t know that you don’t know! HAHAHAHAHA’ then he suddenly burst out into a roar of a laughter.
All at once his eyes seemed to widening, his pupils dilated and looked like as if they wanted to jump from the eye sockets.
‘I’ll get away from here, you’ll see, or better saying, you won’t see!’ his anger outbursts were always followed by some instants of tranquility, totally uneasy, like a bomb which seemed to blow up each instant and slowly. ‘And I’m about to run out of toilet paper and this toothpaste is disgusting. Would you not change it?’
From the very same place where the food descended, that’s where the things he asked came from, those which they thought were necessary. In the beginning they had hard work with him, because after defecating he used to take the wastes and threw them everywhere, leaving the cell full of shit on every glass walls. He used to break down the retractable elevator from where his food and objects came through. But they tried to dissuade him with good doses of tranquilizers then followed by sessions of “Punchinello” a kind of physical torture where the guy remained with the two hands locked on a steel cable, the maximum open, and the legs in the same position, forming an X where the baton ran loose. And in the end the water flooded the room, turning it into a true aquarium, which left him nearly close to death, freezing and with lots of pains.
Of course that the inspectors and securities had lot of work to do with that, then the narcotics were being used and the results got better considerably, then there came up the idea of the room to be used for self-analysis.
A psychologist and neurologist watched and followed daily the occurring of the routines in the cell.
‘I sometimes write, sometimes I write what I say, then sometimes I don’t write, so I speak.’ Said “He” talking back with the camera. ‘My mother used to work out as well as my father, I killed a dog when I was twelve... my brot
her became gay... his words were disconnected, maybe because he knew that there was a psychologist on the other side. It rested with her to join the phrases and understand what he meant. ‘Some day... I had no friends... never had... a bike... I grew up in a kindergarten... there we managed ourselves...’
He turns himself on the sofa, as if he was looking for a better angle for the camera high up focusing.
‘My father... he ate my brother... said that he was a believer’ ‘close your eyes’ ‘One day... I was twelve... killed a... dog.
Three stairs up there the Psychologist associated the dog with his father. That was the part he constantly repeated, maybe for being the first death. He died with his skull smashed by an ax.
She remembered that “He” had been to an institution for minors, for the mother didn’t want him at home. She was afraid of him.
At the institution, after a week he was put into a boys cell who had commanded a sexual abuse the day he arrived there. Later, the prison Officers said that the head of the detainee named John Marcos, “the ugly”, was torn apart and his neck torn into bites.
“HE” was found sleeping peacefully in his cell. They took him at the solitary where he remained forty one days without seeing the sunlight. Whenever he went out, the clarity caused him sharp pains in the eyes. He did not talk to anybody during those days at the solitary, unless the day he arrived, after the rapist, he never said any word to anyone else in the institution. Whatever, maybe it was there they did or told him not to say a word to anyone.
Few days after getting out the solitary, some young delinquents noticed that the sunlight caused him problems and he always tried to escape away from the sunlight. They started to call him vampire. Many of these boys respected him, for, in a space of thirty years of solitary life at the institution, no one with twelve years, could stand for more than thirty days at the solitary. He barely went out of the cell. Meanwhile, his body developed rapidly in the damp gloom of his cell.
On his way going at the solitary, the guards beat him so bad that broke most of his teeth. However, this fact served just to increase even more in the story that people talked about him. Thirty days after getting out from the solitary, “He” got a young black and strong boy as a cellmate. He used to use tied hair and had an athletic body, with a well-defined muscles.
The Young man’s name was Marcos Pinheiro "nego pinho" and at half an hour on his way back, he seemed to have some magazine into the cell besides the marijuana.
One day "Nego Pinho" wanted to used his bed, because was up and also “He” was weaker than him, so he should stay in bed under according to him.
At night the guards were called quickly to end up with a screaming; the uproar was in the pavilion B, where "Nego Pinho" agonized with "He" on his jugular. The force of his gums were enormous. Three men pulled him hard besides using the baton to make both bodies get separated.
Even without the front teeth the twelve years old boy stuck the gum on the carotid and burst out. When they took him out from the cell, they saw his face full of blood looking at them steadily, but meekly. That look, shivered the guards.
They beat the boy too much that his legs and arms were broken when he tried to defend himself from them over his head. This time he got 90 days at the solitary. When he got out, he was already known as Vampire
No one knew well how or why he used his mouth to free himself from his opponents, perhaps he conjectured the psychologist, for being still very young to go into prison. And it’s known that, when the kids fight, they like to bite very much. From that moment on his routine never changed.
Until three years later, there was a rebellion and the Vampire ran away, he and other eleven detainees.
As he escaped from the minors institution he went to revenge the person who sent him at the reformatory. They found her mother naked on the bed with her mouth gagged, legs and arms tied.
Her neck was torn apart with teeth, the body of his brother who was gay, was impaled on a chair leg.
From that day on, it was discovered that the boy had got the taste of drinking his victim’s blood. A dirty cup of blood was found into a sink.
He was never caught anymore, since the last five years. Nobody knows about his life during this break of time.
From then on, twenty years have gone by. It was calculated that the number of his victims had exceeded the double-digit barrier.
‘People are weak! They have got wishes, desires, but the society is restrict and castrates in these dreams and wishes... life is only the death door... death is for everyone... I belong to everyone... heard that, you suckers!!! Is that bitch Doctor Margaret there?’ ‘HAHHAH AHAHAHAHAH HAHAHAHAHAH’ he stood up again in a jump, his countenance changed quickly, he looked more serious!
‘The best thing you have to do, is to kill me all at once! If I get out... when I get out... he is quite near... I feel his presence...’
Suddenly he started sweating like a hell.
He sat down behind the writing-desk, and as if he was before an audience started to speak. His voice was strong, firm, thick.
‘Blood is a blessing! Invigorates, strengthens... oh, yes... Of course... the lapdogs! You know, he said me that they want the lapdogs of bodies, now, and do you think that would I do without a good dish?! HAHAHA the acid... HAHAHAHA... the acid was the sauce...’
The diabolical laughter reached the ears of the watch man who controlled the cell.
He talked to himself as if another person told or instructed what to say.
Doctor Margareth Rosa arrived together with other two officers.
‘Mother fucker! Did he become a cannibal?!’
‘Is there no chance left to find the bodies of his victims?!’
‘Unfortunately no!’ said the Doctor taking the glasses off and rubbing her eyes.
‘Bastard!’ Said one of the FP officers who had lost one daughter, ‘ your death will be slow, you miserable’.
Desolate, the doctors abandon the watching post, in the control room of six million dollars’ cell. One officer turns off the light and everyone leaves.
Five minutes later someone enters the dark room. The hand presses some buttons and an engine with the capacity of pumping ten liters per second is turned on. The engine rotates every twenty minutes.
The Vampire’s laughter is heard, on the monitor screen.
The water begins to flow inside the cell.
‘HAHAHA HAHAHA , Time to bath?! But soon after, he got startled when he realized that the water was not decreasing like the other times.
DEATH IN THE CAMPING
The blond girl put her head in the doorway of the cottage.
‘Hey! The group has made the campfire! Will you be long there?
The man who was inside the cottage looked around frightened.
‘Well Carla! You scared me to death! I’ve already told you to respect my privacy!’
‘Oh, what a bullshit! come!’
‘Ok, I’m going! Just in five minutes! He said and kept on the counting he was making when he was interrupted.
The camping was an open-air place. With short grass and a lagoon with a serene clear water that was less than meters from where the tents were set. However, anticipating the danger of a flood, the grass where the tents were, exactly with the cottages, they were set in a kind of stalls which prevented the water from ending the fun of people who went there.
A campfire burnt in the middle where there were three small stalls and the cottage where the people settled. Around the campfire, there were eight boys sitting and talking. Some drank wine, the others were drinking a traditional Brazilian cocktail (caipira). They were three men and more five women. A part the man who walked with them now as a leader.
He was of a medium height, unshaven and with a not so cheerful face.
he brought in his hands a bowl in which there were sweet potatoes.
‘Hello guys! Sweet roasted potatoes on charcoal, is what we’re gonna have for our dinner today!
‘Hey! And
what about the meat? A young man with a smart looking and intent asked.
‘Tomorrow Leonardo! We still have two more days of our camping! One thing at a time!’ Said Carla who was the eldest of the group.
‘I really don’t know! You’re different from other guides! They’re usually cheerful and party-goers.’ Said one of the girls who was trembling from cold in a sweatshirt. Her hair was still wet from her recent diving.
‘I know! The problem is that, they are those kind of modern guides. I still show the old ways of doing things. For instance, if things depended on me, your tents would have been set up only when the fire was out. We could dig a hole, throw the charcoals, I’d put the soil upon them, then only after that the tents would be set up. And you couldn’t even need blankets. The soil would retain the heat.’
‘Ah, doubt it! Said another boy who was with a Brazilian -cocktail glass in his hand.’
The bearded man took the glass with ones of his hands and with the other put one potato in the middle of the embers which he’d taken from the fire.
‘I will set up my tent like this! Then you can take your conclusions from that.
‘I want to see that! So, why are you with the cottage?’
‘And where would you keep the things? And if one of us had one of those family tent, with a balcony and everything.’
‘My father had one. But Carla said that was not necessary!
‘It was you who said to tell them not to bring that!’
The man laughed showing his white teeth.
‘Have you already imagined coming up in the woods with such ones of those tents in your back? Or the size of a backpack to carry something like that? Even if you had a backpack, soon there would be lots of Quasimodo out there.’
Ivair Antonio Gomes Page 2