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Five years ago, on 15 october 2000 I started reading Harry Potter for the very first time. As these books made go in real frenzy for over a year, initiated me on fanfiction on the whole and I got really good friends through it; I find it a very important date (not to say that I pretty much learned English from reading the books, and when I first read the book 1 I didn't understand a thing, but since I had read the spanish version at least 9 times and I knew it almost by heart I managed to figure it out. As of now, I haven't even read the fifth in spanish, and I don't intend to read the sixth one in spanish either.)
So I went and actually translated my own short story, and develped a sense of respect for tranlators all over the world in the process. But actually, it wasn't as difficult as I had thought it would be, only that I had to check a lot of words on the dictionary after I finished. So, hoping you'll like it I present:
Title: Red Pills
Author: Nekare
Words: 1824 (it's actually longer in English!)
A bit darkish, a bit weird. I plan on writing a series of short stories on the same universe.
The darkness is pitch black at the caves, walls of stone damp with the water that filters from the surface, dripping from the stalactites to the floor in a drumming noise and Natalia’s panting breaths are the only thing that can be heard on the tunnels.
Natalia leans back against the stone, trying to get back the breath that she feels she lost an eternity ago. She closes her eyes, for even when the thick black veil of darkness that surrounds her is impenetrable, the far away memory of the midday sun is burnt on her eyelids, the sensation of seeing all light after having gazed directly at the sun for a long time, regardless of her Mother telling her she shouldn’t (and she tries to forget the fact that she tried to forsake it on her own, that she tried to abandon the light for another one much more morbid and lugubrious, but more attractive at the same time.
Oh, but the forbidden is always more appealing, and wasn’t that what had brought her here? The danger and the fear turned into stimulators.
She can hear the footsteps again at the end of the tunnel (and she prefers not to think on the implications of that sentence), echoes bringing them to her ears repeated again and again; and if she concentrates enough she can feel them as vibrations through the stone against her back, the caves warning her of the danger.
She stands on her feet quickly, sweat mixing with the moisture of the moss growing on the caves, and starts to run. She trips a few strides away, and the pain on her knee is nothing compared to the horror that The Creature behind her may have heard the noise. She swallows a moan and stands up again, limping slightly. Natalia takes a hand to her left knee, still running; and she can feel the warm liquid on her fingers, knowing it to be crimson without having to see it.
A few minutes later the adrenaline kicks back, the pain and her limp disappearing without a trace other than the bloody one that will surely stain her white socks.
As she runs she feels heavy with the guilt that’s eating her insides, slow and almost imperceptibly. Natalia had been conscious of the power of wishing in the Nightmare World, she knew what could happen every time she took the little red pill and entered the world of twisted trees and dark blue clouds and she started the imagine, imagine, imagine, The Creature that chases her now with a wicked smile and the face torn into ribbons; bone and muscle dripping with blood at plain sight. She knew it and nevertheless she did nothing to stop it. And now the guilt oppresses her and she can feel it giving strength to her hunter and taking it from her; the prey. (Knowing this World as she does, she doesn’t doubt it at all).
She knows it is her fault entirely, of her own sick fantasies and dark desires, fed by routine and the crazy exhilaration of realizing she had killed a vampire by accident (with fear still running in her veins after having being attacked and surviving on sheer luck) and that in his pocked Natalia had found the magic pills that submerged her in World from the creatures who hid from the sun.
The pills had turned into her addiction, her outlet from the office gray world and her two square meters cubicle; going to the extreme of hiding in the ladies bathroom, tongue and lips getting stained with the crimson red of the pill that melted in her mouth – that she knows is still on her tongue. She runs and remembers when she awoke in the hospital, her workmates around her not looking her in the eye and her boss telling her how they had found her laying on the sterile tiles of the bathroom, eyes rolled up to the back of her head and unknown substances in her mouth.
The official diagnose had been overdose.
She remembers the words as she runs and trips every few minutes, breathing so loud that she knows she’s attracting the creature as much as if she were shining bright neon pink. She remembers the words and she wishes they were true. She closes her eyes again and she keeps on running blindly, and she wishes (prays) for a distraction, something, anything, that may save her. The flutter of wings starts almost immediately, and she can feel the air the bats bring along when the pass over her head in a black spot a bit darker in the color specter of the cave, their radar sounds they use to not run into walls (her multiple bruises are witnesses that she doesn’t possess something alike) breaking the gloomy silence of the tunnel turning into a labyrinth.
A sigh. At least she knows she can still wish, even when she knows she almost run out of that ability when she wished the Night Companion (a name that sounded so poetic back then) that turned against her, apparently preferring the taste of her flesh to the expectative of being together for the rest of eternity (and Natalia knows that had sounded way too corny, even when she had been in that phase of bad poetry and drunk with loneliness, and understands maybe she shouldn’t have let herself being overcome by the seductive atmosphere that could be breathed in this World and their magical creatures that fogged her senses.)
A growl is heard behind her, much closer than expected, and she tries to run harder, sensing the rock and moss with the pads of her fingers (touch, remember the last thing you’ll ever feel; her head says in a sullen tone) and with the heart beating out of control (Hearing, the last thing you’ll ever hear is the sound of your own heart struggling to take more and more blood to your brain, in tune with your footsteps.)
A curve in the tunnel, and she manages to turn just before running into the stone wall. She stops for an instant, because her mind refuses to believe that what she is seeing is a thread of light filtering from an opening barely a few meters than where she’s standing. She forces herself to close her mouth, even when she’s not conscious of when exactly she had opened it. Surprise and a bit of suspicion bubbling in her head, she runs towards the light and she finds the remains of a landslide, an Indian cemetery without a corpse and a name; framing the ray of light (hope) that brings a little light to the caverns.
She climbs over the rocks, eyes blinking fast with the sudden excess of light, after having spent the last few hours (although they feel like years) without seeing another color but night black and the slight variation of coal black. She digs with care, trying not to make more noise than needed as she makes bigger the hole that will take her to freedom. Another growl is heard, and her hands begin to move the rocks frantically, panting breaths and wide eyes.
Finally it seems big enough and she gets her head through it, shoulders getting caught a little while she tries to hold herself up; soil and blood beneath her fingernails. She manages to get out after a few minutes of struggles, her body covered in cuts and scratches, clean paths of tears (a souvenir of the first hour in the cave) over her dust-filled cheeks.
She gets out and the reddish light of the scarlet sky bathes her in its color, she gazes upward and tries to absorb the sky that even when it isn’t the light blue she desperately wants right now, is still welcome after the asphyxiating darkness.
A hand closes around her ankle and she turns quickly, too surprised to make a sound. She uses her other foot to kick The Creature that watches her with hunger and mirth in his eyes, sadist laughter dancing over torn lips.
The hand tightens and her ankle breaks with a creak and a yell of pain, new tears welling up on her eyes. She can’t move the foot, and The Creature goes out of the hole with easiness, rotten nails moving upward steadily, leaving parallel bloody streaks and getting closer to her heart, ready to sink themselves as Natalia shakes and tries to remember her life; and in the moment the claws make contact with her skin—
--she wakes up.
The scent of the orange tree outside her window enters along with the oxygen in a mouthful, inhaling as if she had been underwater. Over her she can see her yellow roof as familiar as always. She cannot feel her ankle, but the uncountable wounds that cover her body are pulsing and aching still. She closes her eyes and lets out a long sigh of relief at still feeling life running in her veins, laying down in the bed where she had taken the pill and had left her body behind so many days ago.
Then comes the moment of clarity, in which she wonders how she could have gotten back if the black pills that got her back to her body had runned out three days ago and she hadn’t been able to find the vampire that provided her with them in the other World, the illegal substance of her adoptive world since the Death Council had started to regulate the passing through dimensions of the night and evil beings of Nightmare.
A hand on top of hers, half done (half imagined) and broken skin staining her with blood. Long and yellow nails sinking into her flesh. She can recognize them and she manages to have a last thought, "it can’t be, it can’t be, nothing can come back with someone else, it is not possible, the laws of Nightmare..." the mantra repeats itself in her head as she is paralyzed with fear.
The laughter of The Creature is heard again, and she starts screaming, screaming, screaming, drowning in her saliva with her eyes closed and halfway through the never ending scream she swallows the pill that was still on her tongue and--
--she is back at Nightmare, alone in the dark of the caverns in the same spot where she had started to run and with no idea of how to return to the Human World (or even if she wants to), the bats flying over her head and a drip of water falls to the moist soil ground in tune with her exhalations. She falls to the ground with her head between her hands and as she understands her mistake, her guilt, her punishment; she can smell the rotten breathing of The Creature she herself made.
She doesn’t think it twice before starting to scream.
So I went and actually translated my own short story, and develped a sense of respect for tranlators all over the world in the process. But actually, it wasn't as difficult as I had thought it would be, only that I had to check a lot of words on the dictionary after I finished. So, hoping you'll like it I present:
Title: Red Pills
Author: Nekare
Words: 1824 (it's actually longer in English!)
A bit darkish, a bit weird. I plan on writing a series of short stories on the same universe.
The darkness is pitch black at the caves, walls of stone damp with the water that filters from the surface, dripping from the stalactites to the floor in a drumming noise and Natalia’s panting breaths are the only thing that can be heard on the tunnels.
Natalia leans back against the stone, trying to get back the breath that she feels she lost an eternity ago. She closes her eyes, for even when the thick black veil of darkness that surrounds her is impenetrable, the far away memory of the midday sun is burnt on her eyelids, the sensation of seeing all light after having gazed directly at the sun for a long time, regardless of her Mother telling her she shouldn’t (and she tries to forget the fact that she tried to forsake it on her own, that she tried to abandon the light for another one much more morbid and lugubrious, but more attractive at the same time.
Oh, but the forbidden is always more appealing, and wasn’t that what had brought her here? The danger and the fear turned into stimulators.
She can hear the footsteps again at the end of the tunnel (and she prefers not to think on the implications of that sentence), echoes bringing them to her ears repeated again and again; and if she concentrates enough she can feel them as vibrations through the stone against her back, the caves warning her of the danger.
She stands on her feet quickly, sweat mixing with the moisture of the moss growing on the caves, and starts to run. She trips a few strides away, and the pain on her knee is nothing compared to the horror that The Creature behind her may have heard the noise. She swallows a moan and stands up again, limping slightly. Natalia takes a hand to her left knee, still running; and she can feel the warm liquid on her fingers, knowing it to be crimson without having to see it.
A few minutes later the adrenaline kicks back, the pain and her limp disappearing without a trace other than the bloody one that will surely stain her white socks.
As she runs she feels heavy with the guilt that’s eating her insides, slow and almost imperceptibly. Natalia had been conscious of the power of wishing in the Nightmare World, she knew what could happen every time she took the little red pill and entered the world of twisted trees and dark blue clouds and she started the imagine, imagine, imagine, The Creature that chases her now with a wicked smile and the face torn into ribbons; bone and muscle dripping with blood at plain sight. She knew it and nevertheless she did nothing to stop it. And now the guilt oppresses her and she can feel it giving strength to her hunter and taking it from her; the prey. (Knowing this World as she does, she doesn’t doubt it at all).
She knows it is her fault entirely, of her own sick fantasies and dark desires, fed by routine and the crazy exhilaration of realizing she had killed a vampire by accident (with fear still running in her veins after having being attacked and surviving on sheer luck) and that in his pocked Natalia had found the magic pills that submerged her in World from the creatures who hid from the sun.
The pills had turned into her addiction, her outlet from the office gray world and her two square meters cubicle; going to the extreme of hiding in the ladies bathroom, tongue and lips getting stained with the crimson red of the pill that melted in her mouth – that she knows is still on her tongue. She runs and remembers when she awoke in the hospital, her workmates around her not looking her in the eye and her boss telling her how they had found her laying on the sterile tiles of the bathroom, eyes rolled up to the back of her head and unknown substances in her mouth.
The official diagnose had been overdose.
She remembers the words as she runs and trips every few minutes, breathing so loud that she knows she’s attracting the creature as much as if she were shining bright neon pink. She remembers the words and she wishes they were true. She closes her eyes again and she keeps on running blindly, and she wishes (prays) for a distraction, something, anything, that may save her. The flutter of wings starts almost immediately, and she can feel the air the bats bring along when the pass over her head in a black spot a bit darker in the color specter of the cave, their radar sounds they use to not run into walls (her multiple bruises are witnesses that she doesn’t possess something alike) breaking the gloomy silence of the tunnel turning into a labyrinth.
A sigh. At least she knows she can still wish, even when she knows she almost run out of that ability when she wished the Night Companion (a name that sounded so poetic back then) that turned against her, apparently preferring the taste of her flesh to the expectative of being together for the rest of eternity (and Natalia knows that had sounded way too corny, even when she had been in that phase of bad poetry and drunk with loneliness, and understands maybe she shouldn’t have let herself being overcome by the seductive atmosphere that could be breathed in this World and their magical creatures that fogged her senses.)
A growl is heard behind her, much closer than expected, and she tries to run harder, sensing the rock and moss with the pads of her fingers (touch, remember the last thing you’ll ever feel; her head says in a sullen tone) and with the heart beating out of control (Hearing, the last thing you’ll ever hear is the sound of your own heart struggling to take more and more blood to your brain, in tune with your footsteps.)
A curve in the tunnel, and she manages to turn just before running into the stone wall. She stops for an instant, because her mind refuses to believe that what she is seeing is a thread of light filtering from an opening barely a few meters than where she’s standing. She forces herself to close her mouth, even when she’s not conscious of when exactly she had opened it. Surprise and a bit of suspicion bubbling in her head, she runs towards the light and she finds the remains of a landslide, an Indian cemetery without a corpse and a name; framing the ray of light (hope) that brings a little light to the caverns.
She climbs over the rocks, eyes blinking fast with the sudden excess of light, after having spent the last few hours (although they feel like years) without seeing another color but night black and the slight variation of coal black. She digs with care, trying not to make more noise than needed as she makes bigger the hole that will take her to freedom. Another growl is heard, and her hands begin to move the rocks frantically, panting breaths and wide eyes.
Finally it seems big enough and she gets her head through it, shoulders getting caught a little while she tries to hold herself up; soil and blood beneath her fingernails. She manages to get out after a few minutes of struggles, her body covered in cuts and scratches, clean paths of tears (a souvenir of the first hour in the cave) over her dust-filled cheeks.
She gets out and the reddish light of the scarlet sky bathes her in its color, she gazes upward and tries to absorb the sky that even when it isn’t the light blue she desperately wants right now, is still welcome after the asphyxiating darkness.
A hand closes around her ankle and she turns quickly, too surprised to make a sound. She uses her other foot to kick The Creature that watches her with hunger and mirth in his eyes, sadist laughter dancing over torn lips.
The hand tightens and her ankle breaks with a creak and a yell of pain, new tears welling up on her eyes. She can’t move the foot, and The Creature goes out of the hole with easiness, rotten nails moving upward steadily, leaving parallel bloody streaks and getting closer to her heart, ready to sink themselves as Natalia shakes and tries to remember her life; and in the moment the claws make contact with her skin—
--she wakes up.
The scent of the orange tree outside her window enters along with the oxygen in a mouthful, inhaling as if she had been underwater. Over her she can see her yellow roof as familiar as always. She cannot feel her ankle, but the uncountable wounds that cover her body are pulsing and aching still. She closes her eyes and lets out a long sigh of relief at still feeling life running in her veins, laying down in the bed where she had taken the pill and had left her body behind so many days ago.
Then comes the moment of clarity, in which she wonders how she could have gotten back if the black pills that got her back to her body had runned out three days ago and she hadn’t been able to find the vampire that provided her with them in the other World, the illegal substance of her adoptive world since the Death Council had started to regulate the passing through dimensions of the night and evil beings of Nightmare.
A hand on top of hers, half done (half imagined) and broken skin staining her with blood. Long and yellow nails sinking into her flesh. She can recognize them and she manages to have a last thought, "it can’t be, it can’t be, nothing can come back with someone else, it is not possible, the laws of Nightmare..." the mantra repeats itself in her head as she is paralyzed with fear.
The laughter of The Creature is heard again, and she starts screaming, screaming, screaming, drowning in her saliva with her eyes closed and halfway through the never ending scream she swallows the pill that was still on her tongue and--
--she is back at Nightmare, alone in the dark of the caverns in the same spot where she had started to run and with no idea of how to return to the Human World (or even if she wants to), the bats flying over her head and a drip of water falls to the moist soil ground in tune with her exhalations. She falls to the ground with her head between her hands and as she understands her mistake, her guilt, her punishment; she can smell the rotten breathing of The Creature she herself made.
She doesn’t think it twice before starting to scream.
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