It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining brightly, and the birds were singing. This could easily have been one of those picture-perfect postcards you might see in all the known tourist traps if it hadn’t been for my damn tears. It’s all my grandma’s fault.

“People are unforgiving,” she used to say. “They don’t care about other people’s misery; they only care about their own. Don’t expect to get any sympathy from them. Oh, and crying. Crying is the worst. Then you’re labeled as weak for all eternity. No, whatever you do, Anna, don’t let them see you cry. If you really feel like crying, you should go to a cemetery. Nobody should look at you funny, not there.” That’s the part she would usually sigh and put some of her world-famous home-made chocolate ice-cream on my plate. And to think I was only seven at the time.

As I was sitting there, on that cemetery bench, an ocean of gray and white headstones before my watery eyes, I couldn’t help but wonder what my grandma would have thought of me had she still been alive. My grandma, the real iron lady who had survived Auschwitz and lived not to tell about it—talking about that thing was a big no-no in my family—the same woman who had never dared to shed a tear no matter what happened, had a sissy granddaughter, a wuss who cries over what? A man? Really??? Yes, it’s safe to say that I’d reached the lowest of the lowest. I’d been wanting to visit Portugal for the longest time, and now that I was finally here, I was wasting all my time sitting in cemeteries and crying?

But, then again, Tom wasn’t just any man; he was the man with whom I had been planning on getting old, he was supposed to be the father of my theoretical, unborn future children, he was the unequivocal love of my life, the one person that had made me forget how my life used to be before I met him. And now it was all over, forever.

A chubby black cat lay on one of the marble headstones. He opened one eye, looked at me like he owned the place, and resumed with what cats do best—absolutely nothing. I wondered if he chose that specific headstone because he missed his owner. Was it like that famous Japanese dog, Hachikō, who looked for his owner years after he had passed away? A black and white image of a young, beautiful woman had been engraved onto the headstone. She had long, dark hair, a small nose, and two almond-shaped smiling eyes. She couldn’t be more than twenty-five years old. I tried to read the engraved words that had accompanied her image: “Maria Delgada, Filha, irmã, mãe e avó amadas. Que você descanse em paz interior. 1930-2017.” My Portuguese consisted of about ten words, but as a Spanish speaker, I managed to understand something about her being a beloved grandmother and the RIP part. Although she died at the age of eighty-seven, her family chose to immortalize her beauty and youth, before time touched her with its greedy hands. Two years had gone by since her death.

“Who are you crying over little Miss?” I heard someone ask.

I looked around me, but other than that lazy black cat, nobody was there.

“So, are you just going to ignore me? Is that it?” The voice asked.

I got up from the bench and walked toward Maria Delgada’s headstone—the theoretical deceased owner of the fat black cat. “Kitty, is that you?” I asked in between my sobs. The cat tilted his furry head. He observed me with his yellow-brown eyes and seemed to be completely and utterly disgusted by my stupid question, as if saying: “Why in hell would you expect me to talk? Can’t you see that I’m a cat, lady?”

“Here, little Miss, here,” the voice said. I turned to my left and saw a seagull popping his head from behind a thick bush. He left his hiding place and walked in slow, confident steps on the ground, his black bird eyes looking right into mine.

“So, are you going to answer my question, little Miss?” The seagull’s beak opened and closed. He was the owner of the voice.

“Are you one of those people who can’t speak, or are you deaf, or maybe both?” Now the seagull was standing right beside me and Maria Delgada’s headstone.

“What are you looking at?” He asked Maria’s theoretical cat, who stared at him with a disinterested face.

“What the hell?” I walked back to the bench, collapsing rather than sitting on it.

“So, you can talk!” The seagull announced victoriously.

“Of course, I can talk!” I felt like I was stating the obvious, although there was nothing obvious when a talking seagull was involved.

“What’s your name, little Miss?” He asked and reached for a gummy snake he had found next to Maria’s headstone. Probably one of her grandchildren had dropped it here.

“Stop calling me little Miss!” I demanded. “It’s annoying.”

“Well, if you tell me what your name is, I can stop calling you ‘little Miss’ and start calling you by your name.” Although the seagull didn’t have any expression on his template-like bird face, I could have sworn he rolled his eyes.

“How...why can you talk?” I asked.

“What sort of rude question is that?!” The seagull seemed utterly disgusted. “All animals can talk, even that obnoxious cat,” he gestured at Maria’s cat.

“So why can’t I understand him?”

“Because unlike me, lazy boy here chose not to be understood by you.”

“Oh, and you did, little seagull?”

“Yes, I actually did.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted, I want to know why you’re crying.”

“It’s none of your business,” I blurted.

“Bitch alert!” He spun in his spot.

“You’re one rude bird!”

“You’re the one to talk!” He jumped and sat on the bench beside me.

“What?!” I glared at him.

“You heard me. Coming unannounced to my graveyard and patronizing me with your human privilege. Ah!”

“Ew!” I slid to the other side of the bench, trying to distance myself from the bird as much as possible. “You reek of fish!”

“Believe it or not, but it’s not like you smell of roses yourself...” It suddenly hit me that I’d been wandering aimlessly in his cemetery for the last several hours, crying my eyes out and sweating my soul out...Rather self-consciously, I tried to sniff one of my armpits through my yellow summer dress without having the bird see it. I didn’t know though, that like many other birds, seagulls have a 360-degree view. My God, the bird was right, I realized, quite petrified. The salty sweat that had been covering my entire body in places I didn’t know existed, was quite apparent. It was early June, and it wasn’t supposed to be so hot. But I chose to visit Portugal during an intense heatwave. The air was heavy and sticky from humidity. My long curly hair was moist with sweat and stuck tightly to my back. I used the rubber band around my wrist to pull up my hair in a bun. By then, my hair was a tangled mess. I took out my phone from my backpack. 3 PM. So I had been crying for five hours straight. Great. My tears mixed with my sweat and there wasn’t a single dry spot on my entire body. Even my eyes felt sweaty. I used my phone to examine my reflection: as expected, my slightly slanted eyes were swollen, the upper lids made them appear almost shut. My cheeks were puffy and red, and so was my pug nose. I’d never seen it look so unattractive.

“Bird, leave me alone!” I demanded. “This is not your cemetery. You’re just a bird. Let me wallow in my misery in peace!” I got up and started walking away, hoping that the seagull, who must have been nothing more than a freaky hallucination, would vanish. But he didn’t. He flew above my head and landed in front of me, literally blocking my way.

“You’re wrong, little Miss. This is my cemetery and I’m not a bird,” he insisted, trying to sound authoritative in his annoying seagull voice.

“Whatever. Can you please move aside so I could leave your precious cemetery, go back to my room, and die?”

“Only if you tell me what happened to you.”

“Why do you care, bird?”

“A., I’m not a bird. B., I can’t not help a damsel in distress.”

“Oh, my freaking G!” Who are you? Damsel in distress? Really? It’s 2019, no, seriously.”

“I’m Ivan, thanks for asking...” Did he really just smile at me? Can seagulls even smile?

“And you?”

“I’m Anna, ’kay? Listen, I feel shitty and I want to be alone now. So please...”

“Something really bad must have happened to you if you want to go back to your room and die,” he said.

“Oh, gee...No, it’s just a figure of speech. I don’t really want to die-die.”

“You talk funny, little Miss...”

“The name’s Anna,” I cleared my throat.

“Right.” Ivan was beating his wings in the air, his bird face right in front of me, and his eyes glaring at me. “Did someone you love die? Is that why you’re here? Is that why you’re sad?”

“No.”

“So why are you here?”

“You won’t leave me alone unless I tell you what happened, eh?”

“Pretty much.”

“Can we please sit down? I’m getting tired,” he added. He did beat his wings for some time when I came to think about it.

I looked at him disbelievingly and walked back to the bench beside Maria Delgada’s headstone. He followed me and jumped back up on the bench. He looked at me with his creepy, stuffed-animal-like eyes, until I had no other choice but to spill it out. “I broke up with my boyfriend,” I answered, defeated.

“That’s it?” He looked at me incredulously.

“What do you mean ‘that’s it?’ I’ve just lost the love of my life, bird head!”

“I resent that!”

“Well, that’s what you get for pushing your nose..eh, beak into other people’s business.”

Ivan seemed like he had another smart-ass remark to make, but before he had the chance to open his sharp yellow beak, I got up and walked away. Maria Delgada’s black cat rolled on his back, revealing a chubby white tummy. He observed me from the corner of his eye while chewing on the fresh pink rose petal which must have been placed there by a loving family member.

I made my way through the gray maze of headstones. Some of them included a smiling portrait of the deceased ex-person lying six feet under. Others presented quotes from what I imagined to be well-known Portuguese poems. Cold shivers went down my spine as a sudden, disturbing realization took over me; this wasn’t just another cemetery in which I could cry undisturbed. Nope. This was a place full of endings, full of unfinished lives, of unrealized dreams; a place full of broken hearts that either didn’t live long enough to get a second chance or lived an entire lifetime without one. Instead of exploring Obidos, Portugal’s fortified chocolate capital, and a famous (and might I add rather decadent) tourist destination, and taking more shots of heavenly Ginja, there I was, wasting my time in its small, weird cemetery. No, I couldn’t stay there a minute longer; all I wanted was to get the hell out of there and catch the bus back to Lisbon.

“Hey, Anna! Wait a minute!” I heard Ivan’s squeaky voice behind me. I continued to walk, the entrance of the graveyard a few feet in front of me. He flew over my head, getting in my way, again. “You should go Guru Emi.” Ivan sounded a bit out of breath. I wondered how tiring it was to fly. Was it like walking for us humans, or rather like jogging?

Truth be told, that name did ring a bell. Two guys at my hostel were talking about some famous Guru the night before while we were all in the kitchen, making dinner. I stopped and turned around.

“Do I look like one of those people who would worship some Guru?” I asked and made sure to roll my eyes for the dramatic effect.

“I didn’t know there’s such a look,” he said. I couldn’t figure if he was cynical or just plain oblivious.

“All I’m saying is that I’m not into cults and Gurus. I don’t need to pay someone a lot of money all so he would brainwash me. No t-h-a-n-k-y-o-u! Society has already got it covered.” I winked at him, then sighed. I thought about all those people, like myself, who constantly bitch about society. At the end of the day, don’t we all comprise the same society we love to hate?

“You’re saying all of this because you’ve never met Guru Emi. I had. Trust me, if there is anybody in this world who can help you, he is it.”

“Oh really? How would you know?” I wondered if there was anything else inside these two shots of Ginja I had taken earlier. Even for me, a rambling seagull and some famous Guru were a tad too much.

Ivan was fluttering his wings, mere inches from my face. “Because I met him. I mean, I saw him. It happened three years ago in Lisbon’s old quarter; the journey from Spain was exhausting and I needed a break. It wasn’t my first time in Lisbon, so I chose to fly over the old quarter which I absolutely adore. The scent of incense rose in the air – Jasmine. I had been drawn to it and couldn’t help myself. It led me to a windowsill on the fourth floor of a pinkish building. I stood behind the peppermint planter which had observed the incense scent that flew in slow motion through the open window. And there he was, Guru Emi. Not that I knew who he was at the time. He was standing in the middle of the room, radiating health and happiness. I’ve never sensed such vital energy from another creature. He was surrounded by his students and followers. They were all sitting on meditation mats, their legs crossed. They were wearing rather loose, comfy clothes and seemed young. The oldest one there couldn’t have been more than forty years old—”

“Ivan, I appreciate the very detailed love story between you and that Guru guy,” I interrupted his banter as I looked at my phone and realized it was nearly 4 PM, “but I don’t feel like missing the bus back to Lisbon. With all due respect to this chocolatey heaven, I want to be in Lisbon now.” Obidos was a lovely, picturesque fortified town covered with cobblestone. It looked out to open green fields and I could imagine it as the perfect place to shoot a movie that’s supposed to take place in Medieval times. Sure, there was plenty of chocolate there for an entire lifetime and I was pretty smitten with that Ginja—my official post-breakup drink—but the average age of the visitors I had seen there was about sixty-five and the nightlife didn’t seem to exist there—it was one of those places that completely shut down after 7 PM….After nearly six hours of crying my eyes out, I could do with a happening Lisbon bar filled with hot Portuguese men. I still couldn’t believe that Tom and I were over. I wasn’t one of those people who believed in true love nor did I believe in “the one”—in a world comprising eight billion people, it’s not very likely to match only one person perfectly. Statistics, math, and numbers are far more reliable than some childish fantasy society feeds us with.

For the first thirty years of my life, I had managed to successfully avoid love. Yeah, I dated some guys and was in several unsuccessful relationships. Two men even told me they were deeply in love with me, but I was faking it. If I did tell someone that I loved him—or rather, responded with “me too,” when hearing those three dreaded words—it was because I felt I needed to be polite, or maybe because I hated letting people down. The point is, while I may have had the occasional crush, I had never been swept away by anyone. I’d never loved anybody. As time progressed, I began to think that something was wrong with me—I thought that maybe I wasn’t capable of loving, romantically I mean.

Of course, I love my parents and my sister, Talia, but this is an obvious kind of love. Yeah sure, every now and again my parents and society would nag me and ask me when I was planning on settling down. They’d keep reminding me, as would any stranger I had met on the bus, train, or anywhere for that matter when they’d discover that I was thirty-two, unmarried and unchild, that time was ticking. The usual finger tap on the wrist would usually accompany these words. I had to stop myself from reminding them that time was ticking for us all, not just for me, and that each passing second was bringing us closer to death...but I didn’t. At first, I actually tried to be polite and tell them I simply haven’t found the right person yet, but after getting these third degrees on a daily basis, I couldn’t handle it anymore and told them to mind their own business and get the hell out of my uterus.

When I turned thirty, a major crisis made me buy a ticket to Ecuador and escape reality for a while. My childhood never seemed so far away as it did on that birthday and my youth also seemed to escape me by the minute. That’s probably how I ended up spending the night with Ricardo, an adorable Ecuadorian guy whom I had met at a Quito bar. When I returned to my hostel in the middle of the night, I made up my mind to settle for the next half-decent guy I’d meet. Instead of living happily ever after together, we’ll pass the time together until...well, until death, of course. Shortly after, when I returned home to hipster Tel Aviv, I met Rani—a friendly lawyer who was good in everything he did, but whom I knew I could never love. So, when he asked me to move in with him seven months into our relationship, instead of saying yes and living up to my non-New-Year-related resolutions, I broke up with him. Needless to say, my parents were furious with me; they were both crazy about Rani and they were sure I was too. They had no idea that during all those times they had asked me whether I could see myself living the rest of my life with Rani, I lied when I said yes.

It all went south during the last dinner Rani and I had at my parents’ house. Rani was discussing Tarantino films with my mom—another film enthusiast—and I drifted away, caught in thought. I looked at Rani from the corner of my eye and tried to picture us old and gray for the one-millionth time. Could I really settle for a friendly companion who’s an okay lover and an okay partner? As much as I tried to convince myself that I could, I knew that unlike most people, who live in reality rather than in an unreachable fantasy world they had built for themselves—yup, guilty as charged—and know when it’s time to settle and give up on their hopes and dreams forever, I couldn’t. I was too weak and way too childish. Accepting the fact that life is not what we think or want it to be when we’re still kids, was something that I had failed to do. My parents were right when they said I was delusional; if only they had known how much I struggled to act like an adult when all I really wanted to do was run away and leave it all behind: my responsibilities, my obligations, the expectations everyone had from me, my fears. It could be so nice to have a fresh start somewhere nobody knew who I was and how much I had fucked up in my life.

On the same evening, Rani drove me back home in his car. He asked me if I wanted to move in with him. Instead of saying “yes,” I ended it. He loved me, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel the same way. Four months had gone by since our breakup, and I was still agonizing for having broken his good heart. My guilty conscience was working overtime and the only thing that could put it to rest was sports, ironically. Right after I told Rani goodbye, I took myself to Tel Aviv’s beach and started jogging there every evening after work. The beach was full of people who, just like me, took advantage of TLV’s amazing stretch of sandy beach to get in shape. Truth be told, most of them, both men and women, already seemed quite in shape with their carved, supermodel bodies. Although I was slim, I didn’t mind becoming more athletic. As time progressed, some of the other sporty people there even welcomed me with a head node. Things were beginning to look better for me: I got a promotion at the posh advertising agency I worked for as a copywriter, I had never felt so fit and healthy, and I stopped agonizing over Rani when a mutual friend told me that, unlike me, Rani had moved on and was now with a gorgeous yoga instructor.

It all changed that afternoon I met Tom, though. From there on, it’d been a slippery slope. I was after my workout, doing stretches near the pull-up bars. I sat on the cement-covered space, stretched both legs, and reached for my toes.

“Oh, thanks for reminding me,” I heard a deep bass voice say. A man sat down beside me and hugged his perfect muscular legs. “I always forget to stretch after working out,” he said and smiled with his toothpaste-commercial-white teeth.

I immediately turned red and shifted my gaze to my own legs. “You don’t need to thank me,” I said quietly. I could feel his eyes on me, which of course only caused me to redden further.

“I actually do,” he insisted.

“Okay, sure,” I mumbled. I flipped onto my stomach for that Yoga Kobra stretch—at least that’s how I called it.

He flipped onto his stomach and followed my lead. “You seem to know what you’re doing,” he grinned.

“Do I?” I asked and snuck a glance at him with a small smile. The guy who was now flirting with me was ridiculously cute. He had a gorgeous light-brown skin tone and his hair was thick and black as were his eyes. And his hands. They were quite big and masculine.

“Oh, don’t be modest,” he laughed. At that very moment, without even knowing his name, I knew I was already his. He had the perfect laugh, warm and genuine, and I loved his voice. He must have caught me staring at his hands because he smiled to himself mischievously. He, too, must have known I was his.

“My name is Tom,” he said when he saw I wasn’t going to say anything. “I just moved to Tel Aviv,” he added.

“Welcome to Tel Aviv,” I said. This time, I mustered up the courage to look into his black eyes. My redness also seemed to have faded away. Oh yes, I could tell he was into me. What I didn’t know, was that he was about to become so much more than a fling, much more than simply a boyfriend. This was the man I would want to spend the rest of my life with.

Yeah, I admit it. It didn’t start out as anything serious—after all, both of us were recent breakupees. Tom also turned out to be six years younger—he was twenty-five when we had first met. I don’t know when or how, but before we both knew it, we were in a committed relationship and I was hopelessly in love with him. We even talked about future kids one night before falling asleep. Normally, such a topic would freak me out, but it didn’t. As far as I was concerned, this was it. I finally loved someone, and he loved me back. So, I was able to love someone after all.

For the next six months, I felt high all the time. I couldn’t get enough of him. I was about to ask him to move in with me—after all, he did come over every single evening—when he spilled out the news: he had been accepted to a student exchange program in Berlin. That meant being six months away. When he told me about it, he had already accepted it, his eyes shining. I remember swallowing the aching lump that had threatened to burst out of my throat as an uncontrollable cry fit and forced a smile. I told him I was happy for him—a lie, of course. Ever since we met, he had been wanting to go on that student exchange program. He was an environmental planning student and Berlin was THE place for that. Naturally, I assumed that his plans would change—we were hot and heavy and pretty much inseparable—but they didn’t. He was so excited. We even went out for dinner to celebrate the occasion. Usually, I was the chatty one, but that evening was all about Tom. I let him go on excitedly about all the things he had planned to see in Berlin, while I sat there and smiled lovingly at him. That’s when the dreadful fear started making its way inside of me. It was the beginning of the end and I knew it. What could I do? Cry and beg him to stay in Tel Aviv with me? Convincing him that I was worth it? I knew I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want him to resent me for having made him give up on his dreams. Of course, I told him nothing about my desire to move in together, not when he was about to leave in three weeks.

Nothing was harder than having to hide my frustration and agitation behind a cheerful smile during those three weeks before Tom’s departure. The thought of letting him go drove me crazy. From a lone wolf, I became a needy, pathetic woman who can’t go on without her man even one day apart. When I say “needy,” I mean an emotional neediness. He was the first man I had dared to completely open up to, and he was my best friend. I let him see my less pretty sides, knowing he wouldn’t go running away. How would I be able to survive six months without him? Why was he so damn happy and glowing when I was so miserable? Didn’t it bother him not to see me for so long? Bitter thoughts started to hover in my head like vultures waiting for their prey to breathe its last breaths and die. Was it possible that he didn’t love me as much as I loved him? I shook that horrible vision into some dark corner within and continued to play business as usual with him, waiting for him to realize how I was feeling. But he didn’t. He was caught up with the arrangements for Berlin.

“So, will you come to visit me in June?” Tom asked me on our last night together before his flight. He was spooning me and softly kissed my neck.

“You know I will,” I fought the tears that threatened to burst out of me with fury. Tom didn’t like to see me cry. He said it made me seem weak—although he knew I wasn’t—and he couldn’t handle me when I cried. I guess I should have seen this buzzing alert sign, but I chose not to.

“I’ve already given the dates to my boss and he’s cool with it. In June, we’ll have ten whole days together!” I completely faked my excitement. Ten days were nothing compared to six months apart.

“Nice!” he tightened his grip around me.

“Yeah, nice,” I replied dryly. Several rebellious tears managed to escape my eyes and sink into my pillow. I was thankful my back was turned to him. That was it, this was our last night together—EVER. I wanted to tell him that I’d never loved another man like this before; I wanted to tell him that he was my best friend, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, that I wanted him to be the father of my theoretical future children. But I knew he’d probably freak out, so I kept my big mouth shut for once.

The first few days apart were torture. He said that he was busy and only sent me short text messages. He didn’t have time to talk. I wondered how I managed to find this time even with all the overtime at work. In hindsight, I did what I always did during our relationship; I ignored the sirens that were wailing in my head and shooshed them.

“We are meant to be together,” I reminded myself when in doubt. Time and time again, Tom let me down, yet I chose to look the other way and classify his selfishness as a mere misunderstanding.

I kept on texting him, and he kept on taking his time writing back. He always had a convincing excuse at hand: I was out with friends, I was busy studying for an exam, there was a blackout, I overslept, I was in the shower. Without even realizing it, I found myself checking my phone every two minutes or so. I completely lost my mind. How could a man who claimed to be crazy about me, act so different now that we were on two different continents? I started hating the person I had become: an insecure, self-doubting shadow rather than an actual person. I lost all the power I had. Tom was in control, and I was forced to cross the few red lines that I still hadn’t crossed for him.

We had our first real phone conversation three weeks after he had left. By then, I was too shaken up by his behavior. And too angry. Tom called and acted as if nothing was wrong, as if it was okay that we hadn’t talked for three whole weeks. Everything that had been built up inside of me burst. I lashed out at him and criticized him for only thinking about himself. Now it was his turn to give me a piece of his mind. He raised his voice, something he had never done before, at least not with me. Tom told me that I was too weak after I had said that I can’t stand being apart. He said that he had a lot of things on his plate, and this relationship was a burden for him. He wanted to be free. He even asked for my permission to sleep with other women. Needless to say, how hurt I was. I hated him so much at that moment. He had consistently worked his way into my heart, and now I was suddenly his warder? I hung up the phone after thirty minutes and cried my eyes out. There was another angry exchange of text and voice message, but that’s it. I wanted to tell him that I’d never loved another man the way I loved him, but the momentum was gone. I held that piece of information deep inside my heart. He never knew about it, not that it mattered. He didn’t love me, regardless of what he had told me and written me. I felt like someone was shaking me up, trying to wake me up from a dream I never wanted to end. I was finally awake, and the dream was dead. A month and a half after our break, in June, instead of flying to visit him in Berlin, I changed my travel plans and flew to Portugal, hoping it would help cure my broken heart.

“Little Miss? Are you here?” Ivan’s annoying voice interrupted my toxic chain of thought.

“You’re right beside me, bird, so what’s with the stupid questions?! And, for the last time, the name is Anna. A-N-N-A. Not little Miss. Kapish?” I could hear myself sounding like a total bitch, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop. Part of me felt thankful for having someone to lash out at. The fact that Ivan was a bird and not a person made it easier to feel less guilty.

...

Title: The Guru (temp.)

Genre: Romantic comedy meets urban fantasy

Word count: 57,532 (ongoing, target word count = 75,000-80,000 words)

Age range: 25-45

Author name: Hadar Badt

The project’s fit: I saw that you also represent humoristic novels about or with animals. I’m also a big fan of Esther the wonder pig!

The hook: What could possibly go wrong when a bewitched seagull, a captivating guru, and a gorgeous bestie of THE EX join a young woman on her journey to rediscover herself?

Synopsis: Thirty-two-year-old Anna thinks she has her act together: she has a nice paying job as a copywriter for a posh advertising agency, a nice flat close to the beach, lots of friends and going-out buddies, and she lives in Tel Aviv, the hipster beach and party capital of the Middle East and one of the greatest cities in the world. It all comes crashing down when her boyfriend, Tom, the love of her life, breaks up with her. Heartbroken Anna realizes that she’d been blind; everything in her life is wrong: she doesn’t like her job, her dream of becoming a screenwriter for SNL is as far away as the moon, and she will probably never be able to love again. She decides to take a vacation and fly to Portugal. But instead of enjoying herself, she’s busy crying in cemeteries, the only place she lets herself cry at. There, she meets Ivan, a quirky, bewitched seagull and a mysterious black cat who keeps on appearing in her dreams. Ivan tells Anna about a world-famous Guru who can help heal her broken heart—Guru Emi. He just so happens to be in the Israeli desert, as part of a big, spiritual festival. With nothing left to lose, cynical Anna, who’s not into cults, gurus, and spirituality, travels to the desert with Ivan, only to discover that Emi is a gorgeous man, whose charm she simply can’t resist. To make matters worse, Tom’s best friend, Amit, asks her out, and Ivan claims to be under a curse, a curse that only she could break: if Anna succeeds, he could regain his human form. It’s only when everything falls apart, that they start making sense for the first time in her life.

Target audience: Young people (both men and women, but especially women) who live in big cities and know a thing or two about the urban single life and the endless search for love.

Bio: An Israeli-German writer, I’d recently returned to Israel after four years in Berlin. Having studied business anthropology, traveled the world alone, and lived on four continents, cultures play a big role in my writing. My short stories and journalistic articles had been published both online and in print. Speculative fiction is my absolute favorite genre both as a writer and as a reader. My preferred sub-genre is magical realism - I am fascinated by unorthodox relationships between people (and possibly also fantastical beings) and the “interaction” between magic and reality. I work in Tel Aviv as a content writer (English and Hebrew).

Platforms:

hadarbadt.com

@HadarBadt

https://www.facebook.com/HadarBadtWriter

https://medium.com/@hadarbadt

https://www.inkitt.com/hadarbadt

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hadar-badt-4820a948/

Education: As a teenager, I attended an art school for 3 years, in addition to my regular school. I was in the creative writing department. I also took a course on the principles of the short story in one of Israel’s top art institutions. I hold a BA in Economics and Management and an MBA with a focus on business anthropology.

Experience: I’ve been working as a content writer and copywriter for more than ten years. My specialty is commercial writing. I also worked as an English-Hebrew-German translator and wrote for a popular magazine while still in Berlin.

Writing style: I’m a goofy person, and that reflects in my writing. I have so much fun writing quirky, humoristic stories and making myself laugh. I tend to include talking animals in my stories and I like to create unusual friendships. I always showcase cultures in my writing, and I like to set my stories in different places around the world. I’m a polyglot (I’m fluent in 4 languages), but I only write in English and Hebrew at the moment.

Hobbies: Traveling (not relevant in 2020 because of COVID-19 :( ), learning languages, reading books, buying books, jogging, volunteering with stray cats, engaging in the social media (I’m an addict, guilty as charged), doing fun stuff with friends, hiking and being in nature, and Netflixing, of course.

Hometown: Karmiel, Israel

If there’s one thing I learned in this life, it’s that you better not mess with the universe. If you piss it off, you’re bound to get slapped BIG TIME; I’m talking about a nasty slap that only an immense and endless universe like ours can carry out; a slap that tears the soul apart, dismantling it into millions of minuscule particles that scatter in outer space for all eternity, never fully returning home, to us. I should know—I excel at pissing the universe off.

I was thirteen when I made the universe angry for the first time. It was another late-summer Friday evening. We were sitting in Ronny’s balcony and playing Truth or Dare, “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys was playing in the background. The spinning bottle stopped in front of me. In a desperate attempt to avoid the necessity of revealing my deepest secrets to the other girls or embarrassing myself forever with a foolish dare, I pretended to see a UFO.

“Where? I can’t see it,” Noah called.

I pointed at a random point in the sky, and then I saw it—a real falling star! In complete panic, I rummaged through the pile of wishes that rested undisturbed in my subconscious, trying to decide which of them I should choose.

“You’re just making it up!” Yaeli said, completely breaking my concentration.

And so it happened, that instead of asking for the boy, with whom I was secretly in love, to finally know that I was alive and even love me back rather than ignoring me and acknowledging my existence only when he needed to copy my homework, I wasted my wish on a pair of purple Dr. Martins.

Several weeks later, I learned that shooting stars are meteors that burn once they penetrate the atmosphere, and then it hit me: the universe didn’t send me billion-year-old galactic dust just so I would make one stupid wish. No, it sent me its first message, not that I knew what it wanted me to do.

Time escaped from me, and I was already in my twenties. The universe kept on sending me complex messages, though: an earthquake right before my secret crush called me for the first time, a sudden downpour on a hot summer day, a rainbow that appeared after I lost my way in the desert, and unlikely coincidences. But I didn’t realize these were all signals due to language gaps; instead of learning the cosmic sign language in which the universe conversed with me, I chose to learn German and Spanish. As it turns out, languages that were invented by human beings are of no help when trying to understand the universe. If you can’t talk with the universe, you can’t talk with yourself, and if you can’t talk with yourself, you’re bound to make every mistake in the book and aggravate the universe beyond words.

Even today, after years of knowing one another, I don’t always manage to understand what it’s trying to tell me; just like the sparkle of the stars reaches us hundreds of light-years later, my comprehension also doesn’t bother showing up on time. Sometimes, when Mercury isn’t retrograding or another astrological/astronomic event I know nothing about happens, the sleeping butterflies in my stomach (yes, the same ones that confuse me immensely once awake), suddenly speak fluent Universic. When they feel like it, they serve as my interpreters and help me synchronize with the universe, even if for a few magical moments. When this happens, all the darkness within is washed away by light and the chaos somehow rearranges itself. The universe smiles its gloating smile at me and protects me from all the bad things—we are both together in this journey. But then the frequency goes bad and the abyss between me and him widens again—I go back being the small and lost Shira down here, and the universe goes back being huge and scary up there. Just like a protective parent, it doesn’t hold a grudge or gives up on me, though, sending me fresh encoded messages all over again, as if I hadn’t screwed up for the zillionth time.

I will never understand how the universe could be so forgiving, beholding from high above how I make more stupid decisions. Maybe it’s boring for it to be all alone, detached from the rest of us; maybe the universe wants us to disobey the rules every now and then; maybe it wants us to be rude, so it would have a good excuse to remind us of its existence, to remind us that although it seems that we are not part of it, we are nonetheless entwined: each little thing we do in life has a ripple effect, for better or worse. Who knows? I sure don’t. The only thing I know for sure is that I better master the language of the universe at one point to avoid making more mistakes. Until that happens, I know it will continue talking with me, waiting patiently for our language gaps to close, for once and for all.

I was flying carefree among the trees, swirling and flip-flopping as I pleased. I breathed in the fresh young morning air and marveled at the tiny drops of dew that dotted the leaves. It was as if the entire forest was adorned with sparkling pearls. Golden glitter came down from the sky, landing on my hair and my wings. Wait what? I have wings? I tried to catch a glimpse of them while flying, but I lost my balance and started diving down, to the ground below me. I was so scared, that I couldn’t even scream during what seemed to be a never-ending free fall. I managed to stop right before crashing into a puddle that came out of nowhere. That’s when I saw it: my reflection. A beautiful blue fairy with delicate yellow wings and purple hair was hovering in the air, exactly where I was. Am I a fairy? Could it be? I dipped one of my toes in the puddle and observed the gentle wavelets that tried to escape its watery boundaries. I’m a fairy! Woohoo! I rose in the air again, enjoying what I knew must be one of the greatest dreams ever, when a shimmering, blinding light sprang into my eyes. The sun was making its way through the foliage, casting its warmth on the awakening forest. No, I don’t want to wake up! Please let this wonderful dream last forever. But the light was too bright, and it hurt my eyes.

I opened one eye, blinded by the ray of sun that rested on my face. Of course, it made sense; I had forgotten to close the shades before going to sleep last night, and now my entire room was sun-washed. I could hear the birds singing cheerfully outside. There was a huge oak tree just outside of my window, and the damn birds always had their choir practice when I was trying to sleep. I reached for my pillow, wanting to cover my face with it, but when I tried to grab it, nothing happened. The pillow resumed laying there undisturbed on my bed. I looked at the time; it was already 7:30 AM. I might as well get out of bed and get ready for work, I thought. But not before my morning cuddle with Oliver. Oliver was my gorgeous, blind black cat and I couldn’t make it throughout the day without our pre-work quality time.

“Oliver,” I called. “Oli, come to me, sweet cheeks!” I made kissing sounds, expecting him to jump on me straight away, as was the usual case with him, but Oliver was a no show.

“Oliver, where are you?” Reluctantly, I got out of bed and walked to the living room. Oliver liked to sleep underneath the black and white, zig zag Ikea sofa. I bent down and peeked under the cover. All of Oliver’s toys were there, in his lair—Oliver had built it himself, snitching a towel and blanket from my laundry rack, then carrying all his favorite toys and bringing them there; Oliver was the only one missing.

He’s probably hiding in one of the kitchen cabinets. I stood back up and dragged my feet to the kitchen, letting out a big yawn. I desperately needed my pre-work coffee. I placed my hand on the water kettle when the weirdest thing happened: I couldn’t feel it. I was touching it and not touching it at the same time. What in heaven’s name? After ten failed attempts to pick it up, I gave up and got down on my knees.

“Oliver, it’s time to wake up, you sleepyhead,” I said. Oliver liked to sleep in the cupboard under the sink. I touched the brown knob of the awful, mustard-colored cabinet, but just like with the kettle, I couldn’t sense anything, let alone open the cabinet. What’s going on here?

As if not being able to touch anything for some reason wasn’t enough, the kettle—my kettle!—rose in the air, all on its own. Then, the cold-water faucet opened, filling the kettle, which had managed to fly all the way to the sink. I screamed and ran to my room, trying to close the damn door, with no apparent success. With a racing heart and a spinning head, I crawled under my bed, hugging both of my legs.

“Oliver,” I whispered. I begged him in my heart to come to me. Well, now I was also part of the statistics; I had a ghost in my apartment. I had been living here for the last three years of my life and nothing. Why did the ghost (or whatever it was) in my kitchen suddenly choose to appear now, after all this time? I heard noises coming from the kitchen: cupboards opening and closing, a spoon stirring inside a ceramics cup, keys moving inside the keyhole. This can’t be happening. I’m still dreaming, I’m sure of it. My heart was beating so loud, I was sure the ghost would hear me and find my hiding place. I covered my mouth with one of my hands, hoping this would prevent me from screaming my lungs out. Another panic attack was on its way. Every breath was a struggle. If I hadn’t known any better, I’d think that I was dying now; that weird sensation, that mysterious, ancient knowledge that it was all about to end, that invisible wall of fear that, just like a sharp guillotine, came down on me, cornering me and blocking all the escape routes.

Nope, ghosts and people who suffer from an anxiety disorder don’t mix well together.

I had no idea what time it was. The clock on my wall wasn’t visible from my hiding place. The noises from my kitchen had stopped, but I was still afraid to crawl out. My stomach started growling and I needed to use the bathroom. I wondered how my boss would react when I tell him I had missed the much-anticipated morning meeting with our biggest client because I had a ghost in my apartment. Although I was a junior copywriter, my boss still wanted me to be there at the meeting. The entire staff of the posh advertisement agency I had been working for was asked to attend. We fought hard with other big, Tel Aviv-based agencies to win this campaign. I knew this could be my big break, my one shot to make a name for myself as a copywriter not just in Tel Aviv’s advertisement scene, but in the international one as well. Of course, the ghost chose to show up at the most inconvenient time. What was I going to do?

“You can come out now,” a masculine voice said.

My heart sank. Oh no! The ghost found me. “Please don’t hurt me,” I sobbed, my eyes firmly shut. I wasn’t prepared to meet a ghost. I couldn’t bring myself to watch horror films, so how could I face a real, live ghost? “I’ll find another apartment, I promise. You can stay here and haunt this apartment for all eternity,” I added.

The voice broke into a wild fit of laughter. “You poor thing,” he said. He had a deep, bass voice and his laughter matched it perfectly.

“Please, I’m begging you…”

“There’s no need in begging. I can’t hurt you. Neither can they.”

“Uh? They? There are more…more ghosts?” Cold shivers went down my spine.

“There are more ghosts, but it’s not what you think,” the man-ghost said, then giggled.

“What do you mean?” I couldn’t believe it. I was talking with a ghost. I expected the fear would knock me out, but apparently, I was still awake. Or was I still dreaming?

“The voices you heard didn’t come from ghosts; they came from people.”

“What? But I saw it with my own eyes; the kettle was flying on its own, the faucet, the keys—”

“You can’t see them, and they can’t see you. That’s how it is. The person who lives in your apartment was the one who picked up the kettle, opened the faucet, and filled it with water. He was the one drinking your coffee and putting his keys in the keyhole before leaving for work. Because you’re a ghost, you’re not able to see him.”

None of what the voice said made any sense. I was gasping for air, a stabbing pain tearing apart the insides of my stomach. Was this some sort of torture technique he was using on me before going for the kill? My kill?

“I can’t believe you still haven’t figured it out after the time that has gone by since your death,” the manly voice let the words slip. “The reason you can’t see that person—his name is Anthony, by the way, he’s an agonizing writer who had moved here from England six months ago—is because you’re, well, you’re a ghost.”

No, no, no. This isn’t happening. I slapped myself three times, hoping it would help me wake up from that terrible dream within a dream in which I had been stuck. Needless to say, nothing happened; I was still there, under the bed, listening to a voice tell me that I was dead, that I was a ghost!

“I’ll give you whatever you want, ghost, but please leave me alone. Please, I just want to wake up and go to work.” I wiped away the tears that burst out my eyes, but new ones kept on coming out. It was mission impossible.

“We all freak out in the beginning, don’t worry, it’s perfectly normal. Once you get used to it, it’s not so bad anymore.”

“Who are you?” I mustered up the courage to ask.

“I’m Dan. I used to live here fifty years ago, until that car accident ended my life.” He sighed and grew quiet.

“I’m Grace, and I’m late for work.”

“I can assure you that you’re not late for anywhere,” Dan said and laughed. “That’s the upside of being dead; there are no schedules and no responsibilities.”

“I’m not dead!” I insisted. “I woke up feeling thirsty and hungry, I have a craving for coffee, and I need to go to the bathroom. I can even hear myself breathe and my heart is beating like it always does. If I were dead, would I have felt my body?” I was sure I had a winning argument there. Let’s see him now.

“Oh, that’s because you’re a newbie ghost,” Dan said, his tone annoyingly all-knowing. “You, newbies, cling to the memories you have of how it felt to be human. You’ve been dead for almost a week now. In about one to two weeks, you’ll stop imitating your ex, human sensations.”

That’s it. There was only one way of knowing who this Dan person-ghost-whatever really was. I crawled out slowly, with only my head and arms sticking out from under the bed. Oh, Dan was a ghost, alright. He was hovering in the air, right next to my bookshelf. He looked like a pale, see-through man with no legs. He was actually kind of good looking: he had dark brown eyes (well, relatively dark, he was still a pale ghost), long, black hair, a wide smile with two dimples, wide shoulders, and an athletic ex-human body.

“Come on, Grace, come out. I won’t bite,” he winked at me. “But that’s only because I don’t have teeth.” He giggled playfully.

I dragged the rest of my body, then stood on my feet. I took a deep breath and walked to the long, narrow mirror next to the door. A terrifying scream came out of me, although I don’t remember screaming. I wasn’t standing on what I had believed earlier to be my feet. Just like Dan, I didn’t even have legs. Not that it made any sense, as I felt my legs. I looked like a paler, sicker, see-through version of myself: My curly hair was all tangled up, my blue eyes had a sickening shade, my skin had lost all of its summer tan, and my body, or rather, upper half body, slimmer than I had remembered. I closed my eyes, then opened them again. My ghostly reflection was still there, looking at me disbelievingly from the other side of the mirror.

“So, I’m a, I’m a ghost,” I mumbled. “Dear God! Wait, if I’m a ghost, then what about Oliver?” I was afraid of the answer. If I was dead for a week, and this Anthony dude was in my apartment for the last six months (the time gaps didn’t add up, but I figured ghostly time must be different), then where was Oliver? Why were all of his toys still there?

Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/sciencefreak-97947/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=602060">Karin Henseler</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=602060">Pixabay</a>

On that day came the unknown White. It was just another Mediterranean afternoon. Only a few days before that, the majestic sun shone brightly, sending its godsent light to the rain-craving soil below. The familiar dry warm wind danced above the land, hopping from tree to tree, from head to head, reminding all that autumn is still not ready to move aside and let winter take its place.

What for years had been considered to be a myth, told to children at bedtime or coming out of veteran mouths, those who had been around long enough to witness the great White with their own eyes, once, when they were still young, became a fantastical reality.

It had caught them all off guard and there was no time to prepare; there was no time to adjust. On that day, strange clouds appeared in the sky, pushing the color aside, yet no rain came down. It was all unnaturally still and quiet, too quiet, so quiet that it seemed the end of the world might just be around the corner. But nothing happened. The silence spread around, bringing everything to a sudden stop, with an unexplained feeling of expectation, of yearning for something no one thought to be possible, beyond the realm of words, beyond the realm of knowledge. And then, tender small flakes started falling down from high above, one by one. The air grew cold and filled with millions of tiny flakes, somewhat resembling dandelion seed heads. But unlike the dandelion seeds, which would always fly away and dissolve after an encounter with the wind or a birthday wish, the white flakes didn’t leave. They stayed. Was it? Could it? No, it couldn’t. What are the chances? The unknown White couldn’t be real. Not here, where it’s mostly warm and sunny; not after all those years no one had seen it.

Everything happened so fast. The White kept on piling up, covering the land, covering everything, discoloring everything, bringing the unknown with it. The ancient olive trees, which had been there long before the people came, stood still in their confusion, not knowing whether to fear or to embrace the foreign whiteness enveloping them. It was the end of the autumn harvest and the people had left them bearing no life, as the unknown White rested on their branches. Even the venomous creatures and the nearly invisible insects hadn’t seen it coming and only barely managed to escape the freezing veil of the White, crawling to some hidden spot deep in the ground and out of sight. The people themselves were suspicious at first, afraid to leave their houses, but gradually they caved into the luring shine of the unknown White. They stepped outside, their feet sinking into the thick icy layer, mesmerized by the white quilt covering their land.

Despite the warnings of their parents, the children couldn’t resist the mysterious White which rested beneath their feet. They bent down and touched it! They touched the unknown White, giggling in excitement and taking a handful of it in their gloved hands. They formed icy balls and threw them at each other.The concerned parents, who had realized no danger was in store, joined them. What a sight that was! Hundreds of people rushing out of their houses and jumping onto the White, rolling in it, their eyes not quite believing what they were beholding. So many smiles, so much laughter after a long time no one had laughed; after a long bloody summer, which had destroyed too many crops and lives, taken away before they were due.

So it was true! The unknown White wasn’t just a figment of their imagination! It was nothing short of magic! A white fairytale-like landscape looking nothing like their war-struck home. The world seemed so different, so pure, so gentle. The White had covered it with its loving layers, stroking the rivers with its frosty fingertips and uniting the waters residing in them, adorning the trees with a glowing ghostly freshness and the roofs with sparkling glacial drops of rain. The unknown White was so powerful, that it could even give the breaths coming out of them a shape, a form, a visibility. Or were these their own souls, swirling out of their mouths and flying free in the crispy air? They wished the enchanting unknown White could stay there forever and help them forget. Forget the long, unbearable summers, forget the droughts, forget the screams, forget the fear, forget the rage and the picture of grieving families standing over freshly dug graves. They wished the benevolent White phantom could haunt them for as long as it wishes, so they won’t have to see the world hidden underneath it; so they won’t have to face the tangible truth clearing its way through the heavy snow and following the footsteps they had left behind.

When you hugged me on that rainy Tuesday five years ago, I knew I’d never see you again. You told me you wish you could stay with me on the sofa instead of having to go to that company event, but your soft brown eyes told me another story; they told me the truth, tossing a million silent goodbyes into the room. You couldn’t do it any longer. You couldn’t be what I needed you to be, and I wasn’t what you wanted. Not anymore. Our eyes locked just like they did that first time we met, but instead of longing, of yearning for me, they reflected an agonized guilty conscience. I stroked your warm cheek and ran my fingers through your thick brown hair, trying to imprint that final touch into my soul. You kissed me on the lips, opened the door, and left. It was then that I realized I was incurably in love with you. But it was too late. You were already gone, and your heart had no home for me. For you, it was the end, for me, just the beginning.

Before I met you, I was like a stray cat who had been tossed out to the streets: I trusted no one, I loved no one. You picked me up when no one else would and took me in. You became my home, you became my sanctuary when the outside world seemed to be going to hell. Nothing else mattered. You were the only one who managed to unlock the rusted lock around my heart. How was I to know I’d end up being homeless again? Left with no other choice, I continued to wander aimlessly through life, waiting for a chance encounter with another heart who’d perfectly fit the growing space in my own deformed heart.

They say time makes us smarter. I don’t feel smarter, I only feel restless. You see, I couldn’t wander forever, because the lock around my heart was broken and I was exposed. I longed to find my forever home. Needless to say, I made some grave mistakes along the road. But one day, I saw him at a bar. He was with his friends. Although his mouth smiled widely, his eyes remained frozen. When he asked me for my name, I could sense the distress in his voice. No one else but me knew he belonged nowhere. How did I never realize I could also be a home to someone? Someone like him.

Five years went by and I still find myself thinking about you from time to time in the darkness. I hear him breathing next to me, his hand resting carefree on my stomach. I smile as I remember the sound my lock made after crashing to the ground. I guess I am smarter. By clearing the unpassable path to my heart, you gave me the best gift anybody had ever given me: you enabled others to follow and enter this no man’s land. Now I am his home and I have you to thank for that.

*This chapter follows a prologue

Chapter 1

Friday, December 5, 2014

It was already getting warm outside when he made his way up the narrow dusty trail. His feet felt heavy and the ground beneath them was almost too hot to walk upon. He followed the spiral trail up on the steep ocean-facing cliff and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a stained handkerchief. The rays of sunlight, those endless sky-piercing swords, seemed to wink at him, as if encouraging him to continue climbing. The higher he climbed, the better he could see the ocean opening out before him. In this quiet afternoon hour, there was no living soul around. Now the ocean was his and his alone. When he reached the peak, the world he had once lost revealed itself to him in its renewed creation: a silent ocean, cloudless skies, and the lonely cliff under his feet. He sat on the edge of the cliff, his feet dangling in the air, and looked down at the deep abyss. Far below lay the ocean in its siesta-like stillness. Every now and again, a few hungry seagulls disrupted its slumber, diving into its waters and coming back up with fluttering fish.

The ocean made him happy. It always did. He took a deep breath as if it were his first in this world. A clean breath that felt so right. He heard heavy footsteps approaching. They crushed whatever came their way and grew louder and closer. The ground shook and started crumbling around him. He didn't need to look to know who was standing behind him. The air filled with the familiar stench of gin, a smell that would linger and linger and not go away even after he was long gone. As always, he managed to show up at the worst possible time and destroy his dream, the only undamaged possession he had left in this world, except for the white rabbit, of course.

He awoke to the sound of a phone ringing. Lerin wasn't surprised. Destroying his dream wasn't enough for General Dolen. Oh no. He sat up in the squeaking single bed at that cheap motel and stared at the phone. He hadn't seen a receiver phone for years. A strange feeling of nostalgia crept inside him for a moment, though he wasn't sure why. Or was it déjà vu?

“Couldn't you have waited for the morning to come?” Lerin moaned, picking up the phone. It was two in the morning. His skin was wet. Cold sweat. Again. If only it were a nightmare. Whenever he had to talk with him he felt weak and nauseous.

“I'd forgotten how grumpy you can be,” General Dolen said and laughed. He had the laugh of a heavy smoker. “I can control many things in this world, but when it comes to time zones I'm completely powerless, so it would be nice if you won’t hold it against me.”

Lerin could imagine him there, sitting in his office, wherever it was, his shiny black boots on the table, smiling his hideous smile with those yellow teeth. It made him shiver in disgust.

“Why are you calling me?”

“There's a tech issue with the website. It doesn't send automated messages to your email address once a client books your service. I'm on it, don't worry. It should be fixed soon.”

“Terrific,” Lerin moaned. The last thing he needed was to start receiving daily phone calls from the General. It was bad enough having him disrupt his dreams. “Where to this time?” Lerin asked, trying to keep it short. Every second he had to listen to the General's voice was torture.

Snap. The red wooden chest standing on the floor beside the bed suddenly opened.

“What is that sound? Is that the chest?” the General asked.

The chest! Lerin's heart sank as he rushed to the chest and closed its heavy lid, almost losing hold of the receiver. He sat on top of it, trying his best to use the weight of his this-time-around slim old body to prevent the stubborn pains trapped inside from breaking free in the room. How did he forget to lock it?

“No, it's just the window. My fault. Should have known better than to leave it half-open with those Patagonian winds out there,” he said, gasping for air from the effort of keeping the chest closed. Trapped pains tend to be persistent. All they want is to go back to their rightful owner, and they never stop trying.

“Are you sure? It sounds awfully like your chest,” the General said in his all-knowing voice.

“Yes, I'm sure,” Lerin muttered. Amazing. Nothing escapes his attention. He should have known better than to lie to the General. And now he's going to hold it against him for all eternity. Well, let him! That wretched magician's chest. How he hated it! For years, he had to drag it along wherever he went. That was part of the deal. It contained all the materials from which his magic was made: A black top hat, a blue blanket with which he could conceal things and bring them back with one hocus-pocus, two flying oranges, a camouflage net, and his magician's wand, which looked more like the baton of a conductor. That and the endless amount of trapped pains they had caught over the years. Luckily, the pains of all those thousands of people didn't take up volume and could be contained, but unfortunately for Lerin, they still had weight. He could never understand why he needed that big wooden chest. It wasn't like the trapped pains couldn't be carried in his backpack, as he did when he was required to take flights. But the General wouldn't have it, saying that the net with its trapped pains should be stored inside the chest whenever possible.

“Given the alternative of leaving the chest unattended in the airplane's baggage cabin, carrying the pains inside your backpack is the lesser of two evils,” the General told him only a few weeks after he had started working for him. He appeared in one of Lerin's dreams and his voice echoed inside Lerin's head, dictating the protocol. “But never forget a pain inside your backpack for too long, or it will lose its freshness. Pains which are not fresh are worthless to me,” the General added.

At least there was still enough room inside the chest to include the few clothes he had, so he was spared the inconvenience of an additional suitcase. The power of looking on the bright side. Yeah right.

“I'm disappointed, Lerin,” the General said. He didn’t bother hiding the smugness in his voice. Here it goes, Lerin thought.

“You’re always so cold and distant with me. Always straight and to the point.”

What? Was he not going to catch him in the lie? Well, that's a first. “You'll survive,” Lerin mumbled, a bit confused and surprised.

“How is that bunny of yours?” the General asked.

“Rabbit! Rabbit! Goddammit!” Moiko jumped out of his small basket on the carpet and onto Lerin's bed.

“Oh, relax you white furball,” the General said. “You are too sensitive for your own good. You should take care—all this stress could kill you one day.” The General laughed again. He sounded like a gruff donkey.

“Just tell us what you want, you bastard!” Moiko screamed into the receiver. Lerin hurried over and put his hand on the rabbit's nose.

“Are you crazy?” Lerin whispered, covering the receiver with his hand. “You can't talk like that.”

“That little guy always had character!” the General laughed.

“So where to this time?” Lerin asked once again, irritated.

“Well, I am willing to let it slip this time,” the General said, “but you should know that I'm already working with this HR specialist. We have an entire feel-good strategy we want to implement in the agency. This bad blood between us has been going on for too many years and it's not good for business. I am determined to change it.”

“Here's an idea—let us go,” Lerin said, muttering quietly but loud enough for the General to hear.

“Unfortunately, I can't do that and you know why.”

“Then please stop with all this 'feel-good' nonsense. You make it seem like you are an ordinary boss and what we do is normal.” Lerin sighed and looked at his wristwatch. It was already 2:10 a.m. “Nothing could make us hate you less, and you know it, so please, cut to the chase and let us go back to sleep.”

“Hell yeah!” Moiko said. He reached out his front leg and raised his paw in the air, shaking his small head from side to side. Lerin couldn't control himself and giggled. Ever since Moiko had seen this episode of Ricki Lake with those two women fighting over the same man and saying something like talk to the hand 'cause I ain't listening—Lerin couldn't remember exactly—Moiko would always do that gesture with his paw when he was trying to make a point.

“I see,” the General said. Lerin could tell from his voice that he was amused. How he hated picturing the General all smug.

“Feedback from my employees is always welcome. I'll take it into account.”

“Whatever. So what about it? You still haven't told us our next destination,” Lerin said, yawning. All he wanted was to go back to sleep. Oh, that goddamn Dolen! He always had the worst possible timing. He had clearly done it on purpose. Yet another of his torture techniques.

“Alright, alright. What's the rush? Hmm, let me see, ah, one minute,” the General said.

“Ah, here it is. Well, we have four bookings in Berlin. I'll send you an email with the details in a few minutes.”

“When do we need to leave here?”

“The first client booked Tuesday, which means you need to be there on Sunday. Taking some buffer time for orientation is always good. Besides, Berlin is such a great city! I love it so much, I'm thinking about heading there once the pension kicks in.”

“Ha, for some reason I can't seem to imagine you as a retiree.”

“That makes two of us,” the General said. “The problem is that I love my job too much.”

Lerin could hear him lick his lips and imagined the dry saliva forming at the edges. Ew yuck! If there was something he found absolutely repellent, this was it. And those thin lips of his. Even when Dolen wasn't smiling, his lips—nothing but a dry, thin line—seemed to be smiling, as if saying, “I will always be a step ahead. Don't bother trying.”

“I'm sure you'll manage to find something interesting to do there before the week begins,” the General added. “After all, it's Berlin we're talking about.”

“And how long are we supposed to stay there? A day? Two days?” Lerin was so sick of all these business trips around the world. He and Moiko spent more hours up in the air than they did on the ground.

“This time, it will be more relaxed,” the General said. “Eight days.”

“Moiko will be pleased to hear that,” Lerin said, more to himself than to the General.

“And the flights?”

“It's all taken care of.”

Lerin could hear the raven's loud purr in the background.

“Your flight is booked for tomorrow, 2 a.m., which means you need to take the 6 p.m. bus leaving here. Be sure to be on time. Those Patagonian roads...”

“Will do,” Lerin said. “Now, can we please go back to sleep? We worked until 11 p.m. last night and we are exhausted.”

“Of course,” the General said. “Then, I guess I'll be seeing you two in Prague once you are finished with your assignment in Berlin. I haven't seen you in person in ages and I would love nothing more than some good old catching up. How does that sound, eh?”

“Like a dream come true.” Lerin rolled his eyes.

“Cynicism doesn't suit you, Lerin. It makes you seem older and more bitter than you actually are.” He could hear Dolen pause and sip his drink. Probably his fruit-based gin. It was his favorite drink and he drank it as if it were water.

“But I am old and I am bitter,” Lerin replied, flat and emotionless. It wasn't really the case, though, seeing that he had been thirty-two years old for the last seventy years. What makes a person old anyway? Is it just his aging body? What about his dark thoughts? His dying dreams? His anger and disappointments? “I'll email you once we land,” he added.

“Very well. Then have a good night and a safe journey.”

“It's funny you say that, given the situation,” Lerin said, laughing bitterly.

“You know how much I value you, don't you?” the General asked.

“As long as you need me, I am of value to you.” Lerin didn't wait for a reply. He put the receiver down.

“You should go back to sleep, Moik,” he said. “Apparently, we have another long flight ahead of us this evening.”

“What's new?” Moiko said. “I don't think I can go to sleep now. I'm too upset.”

“I know. I feel the same way. But we really need to try.”

“Fine,” the rabbit moaned. He jumped off the bed and hopped into his small cushioned basket. They had found this basket at some Sunday market in Istanbul about fifty years ago and Moiko insisted on having it. He told Lerin that baskets make the best beds. It had been midsummer and unbearably hot. The small fan in the basic inn they were staying at just wasn't enough. Not when it was 104 degrees outside. So they left the room at noon and decided to visit a nearby market. The old peddler told them in his broken English that he had made all the baskets at the stand himself. He petted Moiko's head and laughed, revealing a toothless smile. Moiko dodged the peddler's sunburned hand in suspicion, pretending to be a regular rabbit like he always did. He wasn't supposed to talk in public places. Lerin had tried explaining to him time and time again that it was better that way. What if someone were to find out about Moiko and place mobile uploads of him on Facebook and YouTube? What if these digital-entertainment junkies discovered Moiko's potential and turned him into one of those circus animals, forced to entertain people for the rest of their lives? Moiko, for his part, didn't find the idea so awful. He needed that attention from people, being the aspiring actor that he was.

The cold Patagonian wind managed to penetrate the narrow crack in the window and make its way into the small room. Lerin also went back to bed, trying unsuccessfully to fit his long body to the sleep indentation in the middle of the mattress. Those awful metal coils. Who could sleep on such a thing?

“Are you asleep?” Moiko asked from his basket.

“No.” Lerin stared at the darkness surrounding him and listened to the strong winds howling outside.

“Me neither,” the rabbit said.

“Do you think we will ever be free again?” Lerin sighed quietly. Only in the darkness of night did he let himself cry soundlessly. No one could see him now, not even Moiko. His tired eyes filled with silent tears.

“Yes, I'm sure of it.”

“Then if you're sure, so am I,” Lerin said, even though he wasn't. He was tired. Really tired. Too tired to fall asleep. The irony. He soon heard Moiko's light snores. Despite Moiko's declarations of not being tired, here he was, sound asleep. Poor guy. How did Moiko put up with him? Lerin smiled sadly and looked at the starry night through the small window. Even though Moiko would never admit it, Lerin knew how hard it was on him. Who could have known things would turn out this way? Seventy years had already gone by since that cold winter day he stopped being Daniel Cohen and became Lerin, or John Smith, or Michael Richardson or whatever alias General Dolen chose for him. How could it be seventy years since he signed the contract and started working for the General? Seventy terrible and miserable years somehow had gone by so quickly. Time doesn't stop for anybody. It keeps on running no matter what happens. Maybe this meant that eternity wasn't as far away as he had thought.

Nighttime was always difficult. It was then, and only then, when little pieces of himself came back. Little pieces from the past. Fragments, not even fragments, but delicate, barely noticeable cracks of the person he used to be. Quick glimpses of the life he used to have before the war, before it all went to hell.

                                                                 *

It was early evening in the small Patagonian town of El Chaltén. Despite the cold winds blowing outside, Lerin chose to stand at the entrance of the small central bus station. He feared his red magician's chest might raise the curiosity of the other people sitting inside and waiting, like him, for the 6 p.m. bus to El Calafate's airport. It was bad enough having to go through airport security. He tried telling himself, as usual, that there wasn't really any reason for him to worry—only he and Moiko could see the trapped pains inside the chest. No, it was better to stay outside. He still didn't like too many questioning eyes directed upon him.

A wandering magician—that was his cover, who he had been forced to become. How he hated that person. How he hated that he had become that person, despite his resistance. Yeah, that's him. Lerin the Fix-Wiz, the Quick-Fixer who will fix you in a heartbeat. What a joke! What a fucking sad joke! Welcome to the world of 2014. A world full of time-obsessed people, of gullible people, impatient people, lazy people always on the search for the easiest way out. It was definitely different from the world he had known back in 1944. Lerin glanced at his wristwatch. It was 6:15 p.m. and the bus still wasn't there. The cold wind sent shivers down his spine. It started raining. Even though it was just a light drizzle, he knew it was only a matter of seconds before it could turn into a Patagonian storm.

“Are you okay in there, Moik?” Lerin asked, making sure the rain cover was sitting firmly on his backpack.

“Hmm, let me see,” Moiko said from inside. “Even though it's warm and dry in here, it doesn't mean it's not stinky as hell.”

Lerin smiled. He couldn't have made it this far without Moiko. That capricious drama queen of a rabbit.

“Just so you know, to make it perfectly clear, it doesn't mean that I like one bit of it.” Moiko's voice was hoarse. The Patagonian winds were not good for him. “So many human rights are being violated here.”

“So it's a good thing you're not a human,” Lerin said and laughed. Many long and frustrating arguments in the past had led them to compromise and agree that Moiko was to stay put inside the green backpack while they were on the road. They couldn't afford to have unwanted attention directed at them. Of course, this compromise didn't come without a price. Not when it came to Moiko, being the attention junkie that he was. It cost Lerin an unprecedented amount of carrot cakes and other goodies. That was his future debt to the sugar-craving rabbit.

The bus finally came. Twenty minutes late. Lerin was already soaking wet. He squeezed his wet snarled beard and climbed onto the suburban bus, walking along the narrow aisle. He dragged the heavy red chest and took a seat in the back row. Luckily for him, it was completely free, with no nosy neighbor at his side. He placed his backpack on the seat beside him, opened the zipper, and looked inside. Moiko was asleep. Thank God he's dry, Lerin thought. He couldn't imagine what he would do, should Moiko become ill. Moiko was all he had left in this cruel, lonely world.

The bus took off, driving slowly on the pit-filled road. His stomach growled, but he couldn't eat a thing. The bumpy ride made him a bit nauseous. There were only a few other people on the bus— what a relief—most of them sat in the front, minding their own business, covered beneath their winter clothes and their thoughts. He hated drawing attention, and even more so being asked to perform magic outside of office hours. He looked through the tiny window at the world passing outside. The green cornfields, the barn houses, the flocks of birds in the skies—they were all just another passing landscape, a passing world he needed to leave, again. He moaned heavily. The heating in the bus stroked his face. It induced a distant pleasant feeling he must have felt once, long ago, when he was still a young boy, sitting in front of the fireplace in his parents' house. He couldn't explain it, least of all to himself, but he was sure the boy he saw was him and the blurry people next to him were his parents. Daniel's parents. It was one of those things the heart knew, rather than the mind. His eyes opened for a moment, trying desperately to translate those sudden flickering images in his mind to something he could hold on to, but there was no point. The black void in his head spread and swallowed any remnants of memories from that time. Another memory had tried to come back, but was pushed away forever. Clearly it was the General's doing.

Eight days in Berlin. Eight entire days. He wondered what it would be like. He hadn't stayed so long in one place for years. Most of his interactions with people were limited to his street shows, posing for pictures, saying hello to bus drivers and other passengers, or talking with waitresses in cheap diners. Throughout the years, he had seen many places in the world, but he hadn't been to Germany yet. He would have never thought about going there if it hadn't been necessary for work. Just thinking about Germany made him feel uncomfortable, as if they both had some unfinished business.

That Friday morning, after receiving the flight details from Dolen, Lerin sat down in front of the motel computer and tried reading a bit about Berlin. Apparently, most of the Internet in El Chaltén was provided via satellite, which made it painfully slow. Slow and expensive. According to the endless search results on Google, Berlin was the “place to be” in 2014, and “one of the hottest cities in the world.” That sure got him curious, well at least until he read about Berlin's weather forecast for the upcoming week: below freezing temperatures throughout the week. And that was during the day. Well, at least they'd have some time to recuperate from the long journey. He didn't even want to count the hours they would need to be on the road. From El Calafate's airport, they had to take a flight to Buenos Aires, and from there an early morning connecting flight to Madrid. But it didn't end there, oh no. There was still the need to wait for their connecting flight to Berlin.

Even after all these years he was still not used to this endless travel and he definitely wasn't immune to jet lag. Sure, flying was faster than traveling by those heavy ships they used during the last century, but it didn't change the fact that he hated being in the air. It felt so unnatural to him. And then there was the headache of getting on airplanes with a rabbit. All those quarantines, all those flights Moiko had to spend in a small cage in the baggage compartment. How he would complain afterward to Lerin, not sparing him any of his horrific ordeals with those savage mindless house pets; how nothing in this world could be worse than listening to their pathetic dog and cat chatter. And it was even worse when there were parakeets on board. Not only did Moiko have to hear the cats huff and puff, promising in their cat-like spoiled meows to leave their stupid owners once they land—they were too common for their liking—but he also had to hear those wretched parakeets repeat it all in their high-pitched screams. It was just too stressful and time-consuming, and so Lerin had no choice but to call the General and ask him for a favor. It must have been sometime in the early 1950s.

A few years before that, during World War II, Lerin and Moiko had traveled quite a bit throughout Europe. Many people were in need of a Quick-Fix. The war did that to people. Back then, their entire operation had been underground. They had to stay off the grid throughout the war. Despite having numerous fake passports and identities, Lerin would still be stopped from time to time, questioned by policemen or soldiers. It was absolutely nerve-racking. The hours spent in smoky interrogation rooms, the bizarre questions. Did he really look like a spy to them? With his ever-changing appearances?

Not wanting to further draw the attention of the authorities, General Dolen had given Moiko a special watch. This golden watch had a special feature: the Emergency Mode, which enabled Moiko to become invisible in emergency situations and showed him the exact amount of time he had left to remain invisible, down to the second.

“A man traveling with a rabbit? They will never understand it,” the General said.

According to Moiko, he had been almost eaten once, during an interrogation. The soldiers’ blood-thirsty Rottweilers, who knew he was inside Lerin’s backpack, were just waiting for their owners to give them the green light to tear the backpack to pieces—the backpack and Moiko along with it. At least that’s the version Moiko chose to tell the General, which had led him to add another feature to Moiko's watch, disguising Moiko's scent.

Moiko had always carried the watch in his silver sequined pouch and it proved to be quite handy in times of need. And there were too many of them during the war. Since then, Moiko couldn’t stop bragging about his newly-gained superhero powers, as he called them. But once the war was over and they started to travel by airplanes more often, the use of the Emergency Mode had been drastically limited. This meant Moiko was often caged in the baggage compartment with the rest of the animals.

After Lerin’s call to the General, yet another mode had been added to Moiko’s golden watch: the Flight Mode. Moiko could now become invisible and odorless not only in emergency situations, but also while flying in airplanes. The General usually charged the watch before each flight, taking into account airport security, travel time, and possible delays, but that was it. He didn't want them to take advantage of his generosity. Unlike the original Emergency Mode, which never contained any surplus—they never understood how the General managed to charge the watch, let alone calculate the additional time needed for unforeseen emergency situations—the Flight Mode did. When they arrived at the new destination earlier than planned, Moiko often tried to use the surplus from the Flight Mode just for fun, but as he quickly discovered, the watch didn't work upon arrival. Other than displaying the time, it was useless. Moiko’s disappointment was immense, of course. Lerin, for his part, wasn’t surprised. He knew how stingy Dolen was when it came to giving them magical powers—God forbid he should make their lives a tad easier.

Moiko had been using his special powers for more than fifty years, allowing him to sit with Lerin in the passenger cabin, run back and forth along the aisle, and eavesdrop on people's conversations. Despite the obvious advantages of airplanes, Lerin still thought it was quite a shame nobody traveled by ship anymore. As far as he was concerned, the only good thing about airplanes was that they didn't make Moiko sick. Who knew that rabbits could have such a severe seasickness? He could never forget the long and miserable hours they had spent on boats; he could never forget how much he feared losing the little guy to the sea. In fact, Lerin could remember everything that had happened since the day he had signed the contract: everything but his past. Everything but Daniel Cohen. When he didn’t blame the General, he blamed Google and Facebook and smartphones. They made that other world, the old one he was born into and grew up in, the one he fell in love and got married in, seem so far away, like an unreachable star.

A loud siren woke him up. He must have dozed off, he realized. It was quite dark outside as the bus entered El Calafate's airport. At the entrance stood about seventy taxis, which seemed odd for such a small airport. Some of the drivers were standing outside their cabs, having a smoke and drinking coffee. Apparently, the strong Patagonian winds didn’t bother them. He took his few belongings and got off the bus. Bright neon lights welcomed them as they entered the main hall. He hurried to look for a trolley. The chest was unbearably heavy. It was no wonder. By then, it contained the pains of thousands of people. Pains which had been captured throughout the years and wanted nothing more than to come back home, to their rightful owners.

His shabby black military boots led him, unwillingly, to the departure gate. There were only a few flights scheduled to leave that night, so it wasn't very difficult to find what his tired eyes were looking for: Flight 204 to Buenos Aires, one of two connecting flights on their long way to Berlin.

I will never forget the day I met Raphael, as it happened to be the same day I finally stopped believing in love, and everything else, for that matter. It was a gloomy winter Wednesday. Absolutely horrific. The rain was coming down like crazy. I was almost certain it did so out of spite, knowing I had forgotten to bring an umbrella. I was walking along a quiet street in Berlin—yes, we have dull streets here, too, believe it or not; it's not Schicki-Micki1 überall—soaked to the bone, and far too busy indulging myself in self-pity, trying to make up for all those years my pride had prevented me from doing so, when some mysterious urge compelled me to look down and behold a weird business card:

Raphael: Personal Guardian Angel

rapha@yaya.com

Raphael? A personal guardian angel? Oh, puh-leese! I can't say I was surprised. After five years of living in this city, I found myself reacting as does every fellow—or wannabe—Berliner when encountering another obscenity or oddity: a shake of the head and a smirk, accompanied by the notorious shrug. People warned me about Berlin, saying how incorrigible it is, but I thought they were exaggerating. Well, they weren't. Impossible things happen daily in this fun-loving hipster paradise: From those weirdos who talk with their imaginary friends on the subway; to that stranger last week who claimed to have met me in a former life; to that French bartender at my local Kneipe2, who also happens to be a psychic for pets. Say what? God only knows what led me to pick up the card and put it in my pocket—but I promptly forgot all about it, for the time being.

Caught up in thought and my own misery, I let my feet carry me home. I had left work early that day. My excuse? I said I was sick. I wasn't really sick-sick, but it wasn't a lie-lie either. I just had to get out of there. I couldn't stand even one more second sitting there, in my cubicle, the same cubicle I'd been sitting in for the past five years of my life, forced to listen to that never-ending, meaningless chatter of my coworkers. I really don't know why I lost it that particular day. It wasn't the first time my heart had been broken. Shitty days happen—that's life. Get over it, right?

One minute I was sitting at my Mac, going through a tiresome financial report my boss had sent, and the next I felt like I was about to throw up, cry, scream, pluck my hair out, and tear down that fucking cubicle, all at the same time. But I didn't, of course. I sat there for one more hour, staring blankly at the ninety-eight-page PDF report in disbelief. Five years. Five years of my life had vanished—just like that!—for a job I hated. It wasn't that the job was boring, or that my boss was an asshole—he was actually a nice guy, decent and fair, and so were my colleagues. It was fear: Would I still be doing this from now until retirement? From now until death finds me? From now until the end of time? Life was so full of promise on graduation day. They told me great things were in store. Where were those great things? Eh? Fucking liars! How did I end up being one of those people enslaved in a cubicle, like some “Dilbert” character? And what was this? Was I finally having the nervous breakdown I’d always expected? At twenty-eight? Aren't you supposed to be older when this shit happens? Alright, I was being a tad melodramatic. But we're all entitled to embrace our inner diva-bitch from time to time, right?

I was so busy hating the entire world during those fifteen minutes that separated me from my beloved bed, I hadn't even noticed the fancy-suited business woman appear from around the corner. She was running on her pointy high heels, trying to avoid the rain. The collision was inevitable. The folder she carried flipped open, her papers flew above our heads in all directions, then dove straight into the puddles below. I mumbled a few distressed Entschuldigungs3 and knelt beside her, handing her some soaked papers I had picked up from the pavement. She swore quietly in German, assuming, as most Germans do, I would not understand—after all, my American accent was quite noticeable. But I did understand. I forced a fake smile, pretending to not have heard her insults while I held back tears, then ran the hell out of there, leaving her passive-aggressive grunts behind me. Why did my walk home seem so long all of a sudden? I didn't want to think about all that had happened, yet I was forced to, because I was walking in the rain, hating myself and everybody else, and there was nothing better to do.

How could I have been so stupid? So fucking stupid? Me and love? Who am I kidding? We've never really got along. Even when we did get along, we didn't. I don't know why it took me so long to see that—twenty-eight years, to be exact. It's funny when you think about it. I don't really have any reason to complain about my life compared to others less fortunate than myself, but when it comes to love, I feel like it's a battle I’ve already lost even before it had begun. I mean, there were signs all over the place—hell, sirens, alarms, you name it. I just chose to ignore them. Nothing is easier, right? There's a problem? Ignore it and hope it goes away by itself. The truth is overrated, trust me, I know what I'm talking about. From my own experience, I can say the truth usually sucks. After you hear it, you're never the same. You're either scared to death, inconceivably sad, frighteningly angry, or deeply disappointed, all of your dreams utterly crushed.

I don't know who's responsible for our belief in romantic love. Are those pink and red Valentine's Day cards and heart-shaped chocolates to blame? Or those chick flicks? What about those ’80s songs we grew up on—“I Want to Know What Love Is” and “The Power of Love”? Are they to blame? If I didn't know better, I'd say that romantic love is a universal religion. All humans believe in it. Complex rituals surround it: holding hands, hugging, kissing, caressing, yearning, flirting, and more, much more, but also chest pain, difficulty breathing, sleepless nights, unwanted tears and swollen eyes. Oh yes, and self-hatred. Like many of you, like every true believer, I let them—whoever they are—convince me that love exists. Blindly, without asking questions or doubting its existence, I kept on looking for love in all the wrong places, hoping it wouldn’t be long before I found it. Until that unfortunate Wednesday.

Earlier that same morning, I was still in bed with Lucas—a gorgeous six-feet-two Argentinian to whom every possible positive adjective could be attached. I ran my fingers through his thick brown hair and blurted, “I think I’m in love with you.” Lucas was lying on his back and I was by his side, looking at him while he stared at the ceiling.

Lucas chuckled, his blue eyes still avoiding mine, and said, “You are something else, Jules! Always such a goofball!” He laughed, turned on his side, and started to tickle me.

“Stop!” I demanded, laughing as well. I didn’t even have time to grasp what had just happened; what I had just told him. The last thing I wanted to do was to laugh, but those damn instincts forced me to.

“Say the magic word!” Lucas said, refusing to stop. I was twitching and laughing hysterically when Lucas brought out the big guns and said, “Any man would be lucky to have such a good friend with benefits like you, Jules. Really. You are by far the best friend with benefits ever!”

“¡Por favor! ¡Déjame en paz!4” I called out of breath. Lucas stopped and flipped on his back again. I sat in bed, my back turned to him, and gathered my breath. Shit. What did I do? What the fuck was I thinking?! This has got to be the worst moment of my life! I have to get the fuck out of here!

Lucas patted the bed and touched my bare back. “Come on, Jules, get back in bed, we still have time for another round before work.” He wrapped his arms around me and kissed my neck.

God only knows how I managed to play it cool, acting as if he hadn't crushed me completely. I forced myself not to shed any tears while still in his bed, threatening to punish myself if I did—If you cry now, no dessert for the next six months! If you cry now, no vacation for the next two years and you will suffer all winter long in Berlin!—that sort of thing. I released myself from his grip and stepped out of bed. “I can’t,” I said, “I have an early meeting.” This was a lie, of course. I ran to the shower, brushed my teeth and washed my face, put on my clothes as quickly as possible, and left his place. Without an umbrella. I couldn't wait to get to work—that's before I knew about my upcoming meltdown, mind you—so I wouldn't need to face the cold, harsh truth: Lucas didn't feel the same way about me, nor would he ever. You can tell by looking into the other person's eyes. You know when there's something there, and you know when there isn't.

Only a few days before, we had been hanging out at some Kneipe in Neukölln, Lucas, me and some friends, talking about this very topic—love. After a few shots, Lucas had declared that all emotions were merely caused by a chemical reaction in the brain. We are basically only flesh, bones, and organs—according to him—a walking mess with millions of atoms. Because we can't deal with this truth, we tell ourselves that we have souls, that we each have a density, and that love really exists. Well, after having been his...whatever for nearly seven months, I concluded he must be a robot, like many other people I had met in Berlin. Too bad I had realized this at roughly around the same time I finally admitted to myself that I was in love with him, despite my attempts to deny it, to fight it. He was the first guy in the world to whom I had said such a thing. I was determined to make him the last. I will never get my hands dirty again with this BS, I thought.

***

1 Schmancy

2 Pub

3 Pardon

4 Please! Leave me alone!

I will never forget the day I met Raphael, as it happened to be the same day I finally stopped believing in love, and everything else, for that matter. It was a gloomy winter Wednesday. Absolutely horrific. The rain was coming down like crazy. I was almost certain it did so out of spite, knowing I had forgotten to bring an umbrella. I was walking along a quiet street in Berlin—yes, we have dull streets here, too, believe it or not; it's not Schicki-Micki1 überall—soaked to the bone, and far too busy indulging myself in self-pity, trying to make up for all those years my pride had prevented me from doing so, when some mysterious urge compelled me to look down and behold a weird business card:

Raphael: Personal Guardian Angel

rapha@yaya.com

Raphael? A personal guardian angel? Oh, puh-leese! I can't say I was surprised. After five years of living in this city, I found myself reacting as does every fellow—or wannabe—Berliner when encountering another obscenity or oddity: a shake of the head and a smirk, accompanied by the notorious shrug. People warned me about Berlin, saying how incorrigible it is, but I thought they were exaggerating. Well, they weren't. Impossible things happen daily in this fun-loving hipster paradise: From those weirdos who talk with their imaginary friends on the subway; to that stranger last week who claimed to have met me in a former life; to that French bartender at my local Kneipe2, who also happens to be a psychic for pets. Say what? God only knows what led me to pick up the card and put it in my pocket—but I promptly forgot all about it, for the time being.

Caught up in thought and my own misery, I let my feet carry me home. I had left work early that day. My excuse? I said I was sick. I wasn't really sick-sick, but it wasn't a lie-lie either. I just had to get out of there. I couldn't stand even one more second sitting there, in my cubicle, the same cubicle I'd been sitting in for the past five years of my life, forced to listen to that never-ending, meaningless chatter of my coworkers. I really don't know why I lost it that particular day. It wasn't the first time my heart had been broken. Shitty days happen—that's life. Get over it, right? 

One minute I was sitting at my Mac, going through a tiresome financial report my boss had sent, and the next I felt like I was about to throw up, cry, scream, pluck my hair out, and tear down that fucking cubicle, all at the same time. But I didn't, of course. I sat there for one more hour, staring blankly at the ninety-eight-page PDF report in disbelief. Five years. Five years of my life had vanished—just like that!—for a job I hated. It wasn't that the job was boring, or that my boss was an asshole—he was actually a nice guy, decent and fair, and so were my colleagues. It was fear: Would I still be doing this from now until retirement? From now until death finds me? From now until the end of time? Life was so full of promise on graduation day. They told me great things were in store. Where were those great things? Eh? Fucking liars! How did I end up being one of those people enslaved in a cubicle, like some “Dilbert” character? And what was this? Was I finally having the nervous breakdown I’d always expected? At twenty-eight? Aren't you supposed to be older when this shit happens? Alright, I was being a tad melodramatic. But we're all entitled to embrace our inner diva-bitch from time to time, right?

I was so busy hating the entire world during those fifteen minutes that separated me from my beloved bed, I hadn't even noticed the fancy-suited business woman appear from around the corner. She was running on her pointy high heels, trying to avoid the rain. The collision was inevitable. The folder she carried flipped open, her papers flew above our heads in all directions, then dove straight into the puddles below. I mumbled a few distressed Entschuldigungs3 and knelt beside her, handing her some soaked papers I had picked up from the pavement. She swore quietly in German, assuming, as most Germans do, I would not understand—after all, my American accent was quite noticeable. But I did understand. I forced a fake smile, pretending to not have heard her insults while I held back tears, then ran the hell out of there, leaving her passive-aggressive grunts behind me. Why did my walk home seem so long all of a sudden? I didn't want to think about all that had happened, yet I was forced to, because I was walking in the rain, hating myself and everybody else, and there was nothing better to do.

How could I have been so stupid? So fucking stupid? Me and love? Who am I kidding? We've never really got along. Even when we did get along, we didn't. I don't know why it took me so long to see that—twenty-eight years, to be exact. It's funny when you think about it. I don't really have any reason to complain about my life compared to others less fortunate than myself, but when it comes to love, I feel like it's a battle I’ve already lost even before it had begun. I mean, there were signs all over the place—hell, sirens, alarms, you name it. I just chose to ignore them. Nothing is easier, right? There's a problem? Ignore it and hope it goes away by itself. The truth is overrated, trust me, I know what I'm talking about. From my own experience, I can say the truth usually sucks. After you hear it, you're never the same. You're either scared to death, inconceivably sad, frighteningly angry, or deeply disappointed, all of your dreams utterly crushed.

I don't know who's responsible for our belief in romantic love. Are those pink and red Valentine's Day cards and heart-shaped chocolates to blame? Or those chick flicks? What about those ’80s songs we grew up on—“I Want to Know What Love Is” and “The Power of Love”? Are they to blame? If I didn't know better, I'd say that romantic love is a universal religion. All humans believe in it. Complex rituals surround it: holding hands, hugging, kissing, caressing, yearning, flirting, and more, much more, but also chest pain, difficulty breathing, sleepless nights, unwanted tears and swollen eyes. Oh yes, and self-hatred. Like many of you, like every true believer, I let them—whoever they are—convince me that love exists. Blindly, without asking questions or doubting its existence, I kept on looking for love in all the wrong places, hoping it wouldn’t be long before I found it. Until that unfortunate Wednesday.

Earlier that same morning, I was still in bed with Lucas—a gorgeous six-feet-two Argentinian to whom every possible positive adjective could be attached. I ran my fingers through his thick brown hair and blurted, “I think I’m in love with you.” Lucas was lying on his back and I was by his side, looking at him while he stared at the ceiling.

Lucas chuckled, his blue eyes still avoiding mine, and said, “You are something else, Jules! Always such a goofball!” He laughed, turned on his side, and started to tickle me.

“Stop!” I demanded, laughing as well. I didn’t even have time to grasp what had just happened; what I had just told him. The last thing I wanted to do was to laugh, but those damn instincts forced me to.

“Say the magic word!” Lucas said, refusing to stop. I was twitching and laughing hysterically when Lucas brought out the big guns and said, “Any man would be lucky to have such a good friend with benefits like you, Jules. Really. You are by far the best friend with benefits ever!”

“¡Por favor! ¡Déjame en paz!4” I called out of breath. Lucas stopped and flipped on his back again. I sat in bed, my back turned to him, and gathered my breath. Shit. What did I do? What the fuck was I thinking?! This has got to be the worst moment of my life! I have to get the fuck out of here!

Lucas patted the bed and touched my bare back. “Come on, Jules, get back in bed, we still have time for another round before work.” He wrapped his arms around me and kissed my neck.

God only knows how I managed to play it cool, acting as if he hadn't crushed me completely. I forced myself not to shed any tears while still in his bed, threatening to punish myself if I did—If you cry now, no dessert for the next six months! If you cry now, no vacation for the next two years and you will suffer all winter long in Berlin!—that sort of thing. I released myself from his grip and stepped out of bed. “I can’t,” I said, “I have an early meeting.” This was a lie, of course. I ran to the shower, brushed my teeth and washed my face, put on my clothes as quickly as possible, and left his place. Without an umbrella. I couldn't wait to get to work—that's before I knew about my upcoming meltdown, mind you—so I wouldn't need to face the cold, harsh truth: Lucas didn't feel the same way about me, nor would he ever. You can tell by looking into the other person's eyes. You know when there's something there, and you know when there isn't.

Only a few days before, we had been hanging out at some Kneipe in Neukölln, Lucas, me and some friends, talking about this very topic—love. After a few shots, Lucas had declared that all emotions were merely caused by a chemical reaction in the brain. We are basically only flesh, bones, and organs—according to him—a walking mess with millions of atoms. Because we can't deal with this truth, we tell ourselves that we have souls, that we each have a density, and that love really exists. Well, after having been his...whatever for nearly seven months, I concluded he must be a robot, like many other people I had met in Berlin. Too bad I had realized this at roughly around the same time I finally admitted to myself that I was in love with him, despite my attempts to deny it, to fight it. He was the first guy in the world to whom I had said such a thing. I was determined to make him the last. I will never get my hands dirty again with this BS, I thought.

***

1 Schmancy

2 Pub

3 Pardon

4 Please! Leave me alone!

Chapter 1

Aurora had been given two things as she came into this world: a life to live and a name to be called by. The woman wanted nothing to do with her. The man also wasn't particularly fond of her when he first saw her disfigured face—the face of a newborn who knows what's waiting for it—but he had a feeling she might come in handy. So he ordered the woman to bring her into their hostile home and take care of her until the girl would be old enough to take care of herself. Reluctantly, the woman complied.

Time went by, and the baby turned three. By then, she was old enough to comprehend her misfortune, yet too young to understand the meaning of life, and, more importantly, the meaning of death. Little Aurora was scared all the time, but there was no one to hold her, to stroke her black silky hair, to kiss her, to comfort her and tell her it's all going to be alright. As long as she kept quiet, they didn't bother her too much. The few times she dared to cry, though, had cost her gravely: her food and her one-eyed, one-legged miserable-looking, stained teddy bear. After that horrendous experience, she promised to never cry again or ask for anything as long as they let her keep her Teddy. Even the hunger hadn't bothered her so much when her Teddy wasn't by her side. He was all she had in this world and she couldn't fall asleep without him. When Teddy was away, the complete darkness in her room would take the form of evil monsters, of invisible claws only waiting for her to close her eyes so they could cut her open. But when Teddy was there, lying beside her on the big ripped pillow on the floor and sharing the blanket with her, the darkness was her friend again; its soft layers of blackness stroking her young face, carrying the singing wind and the tenderness of the smiling moon from the open barred window and wiping away the mute secret tears coming out of her eyes. With Teddy, she could see how beautiful the darkness really was; how it swallowed all the noises of the day, all the screaming; how clean everything looked when it was dark, how kind and quiet. Sometimes, she would hold Teddy real tight and ask the darkness, the nice darkness, to take her with him. As far away as possible from this place, from these people.

The house was always dirty, she was always dirty, and she needed it to be clean; she needed to be clean, so badly. Indifference was the answer. Indifference meant survival. That much she knew. It wasn't easy, though. During those long hours, in which she had been sitting somewhere inside the closed small county-side house, hearing them scream at each other, or on the front porch, or even on the dry, yellow grass which stretched from the wooden porch to the steel barred gate, she would practice. She would stare at the filthy soles of her feet and the unattended nails, which made her seem like a small animal rather than the little toddler that she was. She would stare at the junk-covered floor of her room, which was actually their storage room; she would stare at the piles of old newspapers which were scattered on the dusty wall-to-wall brown carpet covering the floor of the small living room; she would stare at the television set, with its sellotaped antennas; she would stare at the peeling yellowish flower-patterned tappet, at the empty bottles of whiskey and beer on the crooked table, at the always full ashtray, and close her eyes. Then, she would concentrate very hard and try to turn them all into nothing in her head. The first stage was to stare at them until they stopped making any sense to her; until they turned into a blurry mixture of images and colors. Then, with a blink of the eye, they would be gone, just like that. Only then, when she was surrounded by beautiful nothingness, could she fill it with trees, flowers, blossoms of all possible colors, skies, birds, sunshine, shimmering flying lights and kind hands, not the evil claws from her nightmares. Hands that would lead her through the house; hands that would follow the exact path of the soft rays of sunlight which somehow managed to penetrate through the closed shutters, guiding her to the locked window, to the open world, waiting for her, outside.

*

Little Aurora’s training had payed off. She was indifferent when the man stamped his big feet; she was indifferent to his shouts, to his threats to kill the woman, to the woman's screams and cries, to seeing the woman being shoved against the kitchen table or wall, over and over again; she was indifferent to the blood streaming down the woman's face, to the dishes which would sometimes be thrown onto the floor, right beside her.

Little Aurora was like a ghost. She had become so good at staring soundlessly at the nothingness she had created, the man and the woman would sometimes forget she was even there. Luckily for her, the man had taken all of his anger out on the woman, but he never laid a hand on Aurora. Neither of them did. She had been spared, for some reason. Although Aurora hated the woman, hated them both, she didn't like seeing the man hit her. Somewhere, deep inside, she felt something that resembled empathy towards the woman; the same woman who had wanted nothing to do with her; the same woman who had told her how much she loathed her when it was just the two of them, blaming Aurora for binding her in an eternal bondage to the man, whom she hated even more than she hated her own daughter.

Not a day went by in which the woman hadn't emitted grunts and snorts, complaining about the hassle involved in caring for such a spoiled, evil girl like Aurora. Not wanting to be in any future debt towards the bitter woman, Aurora had tried her best to grow up as quickly as possible. She wasn't even two years old when she had potty-trained herself after reluctantly observing the man and the woman in the bathroom—they never bothered to close the door. She had no other choice—it was either teaching herself how to use the little plastic toilet in the bathroom or being punished by not having her diapers changed for hours on end, her own stench unbearable to smell.

At the age of three, Aurora started to dress herself, all on her own. She also learned to brush her teeth. She saw it on some commercial in the television—she was peeking at it from under the kitchen table as the two of them sat on the sofa with their cigarettes, watching their shows.

At the age of four, Aurora learned how to wash herself. She had been given permission to wash herself daily as long as she showered in less than five minutes. The thrusting of shoes against the closed door of the bathroom had been the man's subtle way to remind her that shower time was over. He was the one who had to pay the fucking water bills, he called from the sofa, his usual post-workday place. Aurora didn't mind the short shower, though; at least she could now wash herself on a daily basis. That was progress. Before that, when the woman had been in charge, she usually washed her only once in two weeks, and it was very hard staying clean in this house. As far as Aurora could tell, it had never been cleaned.

At the age of five, Aurora learned how to speak. She could understand everything the man and the woman said as early as the age of three or so, but she didn't dare to speak with them. Other than them, there was no one else around, so she never spoke. The first word she had ever learned was “bitch.” This was followed by “fuck” and “whore.” The words “Daddy” and “Mommy” had never been heard in this cursed house, nor did the word “love.” But, somehow, Aurora knew that the words she had thus far heard were bad, were evil. She had known it long before she could fully understand their meaning. She didn't want to hear these words; she didn't want to say them out loud.

The house, which she refused to call her own, was orphaned from books, toys, and games. All there was, were old newspapers, scattered crossword puzzle books, and a television set. Thanks to the television set, the “words and pictures emitter,” Aurora could expand her vocabulary dramatically. Words like “deal,” “best price,” “shop,” and “enjoy,” had become very familiar to her. Every day, she learned new words and these new words, enabled her to classify all of her thoughts and give each image, each notion, each feeling, their own name. At night, she would name in her heart all the good names she had learned thus far, so she won't forget. She would think about the dark skies, silently naming them “high sleep.” She would think about the faraway stars, which had received the name “gold high.” Aurora's moon was “white balloon” and her teddy was “Arturo” or “friend.” But her secret language had been hiding inside of her, never daring to leave her mouth. She didn’t want them to tarnish it. She needed this language to remain all hers, to remain pure and clean. Time and time again, Aurora heard the man and the woman as they mocked her, saying how stupid and slow she was; how she was a useless piece of shit that doesn’t understand a single thing. When they weren't looking, she would allow herself to smile determinedly, reminding herself how important it was for them to continue thinking this way. Her survival relied on her ability to deceit. 

*