Keep Breathing

Keep Breathing

Chapter 1: Sunshine

Recurring Characters of This Chapter

Mare: a nurse, mid thirties, seems like she's living a 1000 lives, but only in her head.

Dr. Chess: the oncologist that Mare works for, late sixties. Good in only one thing, medicine!

Voice: one of Dr. Chess' patients. Mid twenties shy, creative and equally troubled as Mare.

I watch sick people all the time, and also watch them recover from their sickness. It's creepy how humans can be so ungrateful, that they go back to their normal lives so as to do the very same mistakes over and over again, as if they learned nothing.

It pains me the look on the eyes of someone who's dying, but what's more fatal is the look on someone who's dying but does not really know this fact. Despite the simplicity of the fact, death continues to freak humans out of their skin.

Due to the excess exposure to such feelings and situations I became somehow immune against heart ache, at least the heart ache that comes from the acceptance of the simplest and most true fact in the whole world "Death", but I've always been concerned over myself, I'm always afraid that someday I'm going to wake up to find myself feeling nothing, to find myself losing what makes me who I am, I'm afraid I could be lost in my own mind.

Sometimes I stare the ceiling out, well not necessarily the ceiling! Could be the floor, but most probably the ceiling, never knew the true reason for that. May be because my head got tired of reality, and finally chose an imaginary outlet for its silent outbursts.

While my eyes were roaming the place as usual, I saw something. How can I describe it, it? Really? It's not an "it"! It's a "him"! Let me put it this way. It was nothing special, except that his eyes were like strong sunshine on everlasting deserts of hard ice!

I melted!

I mean, I took his information for a quick consult, one of the many voices in my head told me: "Wake up! He's a patient! You work for a doctor who's all patients are probably dying! Yes! These ocean blue eyes are soon to be pinned in a coffin and stuck where the sun does not shine"

I tried to expel that fact that I work for an oncologist from my brain, simply kick it out, and put instead it a picture of the ocean-blue man on the beach, surrounded by beautiful people, oh no! Surrounded by ME! Oh that's better, and then weird stuff barged into my fantasy and ruined it. Had no choice but to look at his medical record, praying he would not be a cancer patient, although inevitable, but worth the shot.

Before I opened his file, he stood up, walked steady steps towards my desk, oh poor desk! You must be dying now! Introduced himself as "Voice", how can the word "Voice" can be so NOT boring at all!

Voice: "I'm sorry it's always hard to change oncologists, and nurses get stuck up with all the hard paper work"

Mare: "oh paper work is not so hard, you see it's "Paper" work, so it's definitely not as hard as it seems"

Voice: "so Mare, when am I going to be able to see Dr. Chess Regularly?"

Mare: -how does he know my name! Oh crap the name tag! And congratulations Mare! That means he is a Cancer patient- "Soon enough"

Voice: "You're really sweet; the last nurse of my former oncologist was really mean!"

Mare: -how can anybody be possibly mean to you- "Thank you, you'll be in with the Doctor any minute now"

To Be Continued

The Loner Village. Chapter 1

Chapter 1 : Fake Peace

Recurring Characters of This Chapter

Joub: 43 year old farmer, strict and straight forward. Married with two teenage boys.

Deeh: 17 year old boy, the older son, who helps his father in the field.

Beeh: 15 year old boy, the younger, misunderstood for staring at the fields instead.

Rain: Joub's wife, and mother of the children, a highly sentimental woman, married to a very practical man. Never really told her boys or her husband about her real age. And they never asked her either.

Hot wind blowing his bright brown hair on his cheeks, he always hated getting a haircut, so he won't miss the steaming wind all over his head every morning, something that his father "Joub" never liked, and considered only little winey girls would like, not all grown up 15 year old boys would die for, his name is "Beeh".

He loved observing the delicate dance of golden wheat fields, choreographed by the very same steaming wind! They live in a farm on the outskirts of the city. Somehow he had this special relationship with all of the surrounding elements in which he lived in. something his brother "Deeh" would call "Staring at chair-legs/goats"

His father did not prefer his brother over him, nor had a favorite child; he is a man who never believed in such a thing, he loved both of his boys alike. But that never cancelled the fact that a lot of things about "Beeh" he never let go lightly.

"Joub" is a hard working, faithful, straight forward & harsh man, and he also likes things to be done his way, and that’s the main issue or argument that he always had with his wife. They always fought over the same things, they never thought of changing anything, not even the things they disagree upon. As if they're not willing to change for each other, not for the better or the worse, and they're also not willing to leave each other. They have reached a compromise, where both of them accepts the fact that they have to fight over some default stuff, and that they love their children and they would never wreck the family over an issue like "who sleeps on which side of the bed"! an issue they fight over for about 18 years!

Rain, the mother & wife of 18 strong years, was an example of sacrifice, pure love & excellent food! Beeh was her consolation during the long hours in which "Joub" and "Deeh" would torture her alongside with the television set while watching football. She would escape and get out of the house and stare at the wheat fields whenever she's down, the golden waves would wash away her pain. And that is the habit that "Beeh" inherited, and upgraded it to a new sophisticated level.

Things were going alright, with all its ups and downs, all the beasts inside each one of them were caged well and under control until one thing happened…

A huge grey van marched into The Loner Village, marked by all witnesses as a foreign object driving around, walkers gazing at it in wonder! Asking themselves who on earth would possibly come live here willingly! The van parked next to "Joub's" house, where there's a house on lease owned by a really old woman living in her supermarket which she also owns, on the entrance of the village.

To Be Continued…