Haunted by the past
The new life was promising but attacks from the past were still there. Sometimes Julie’s body would freeze and scenes from the past would pop up in her mind.
She is sitting in front of a table doing her lessons. She realizes that he is watching her. She turned to the man and saw lust in his eyes. One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. The man with lust in his look and a smile on his face would tell her she shouldn’t live. She has no right to live. She wished she were dead. One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. She wanted to take the knife and cut the throat of the man with lust in his eyes. But this is not what normal people do. A normal person would turn to him and ask why he was watching. A normal person would do that but not Julie. She was absolutely powerless. She knew that the answer was blood. Her blood or the man’s blood. She wished she were dead.
These scenes from the past would pop up and recede. But even the idea of the man watching her would spoil her day. She had panic attacks of melancholy, and no one would understand why she was isolating herself.
She would sit in front of the window and see herself eight or ten years old. Total isolation. She lived in a family of five where she was lonely.
There were times that she couldn’t tolerate the bullshit around her any more. And she was becoming a beast. A beast for her mom and sisters and stepfather. She was yelling, yelling out loud. Why would she do that? Nobody understood. She was the evil in the house. But was that true? Was she really the evil? Well, heck, yes. That’s how she was accepted in the family.
And punishment was not far away. Now who was the evil? Who put her in a family where she did not belong?
Nare help, help Nare. And the mystery would come back and calm her down. Nare would tell her stories that nobody else would tell. These stories would teach her bravery and courage for life. These stories gave her life again. Gave her hope for a new beginning.
Stories in idleness
The mosquito
Once upon a time there lived a mosquito. She was a little like a drop of water. She was born as a mosquito. She was a mosquito. The only way she could live was to suck the blood of others. She did not mind doing that and never had a sense of guilt. That was how life was, she thought. Perhaps you need to suck the blood of others in order to survive.
The little mosquito was surprised that people hated her. She was just doing her job. One night when she fully satisfied her hunger for blood, she fell down on a pillow and died.
Don’t suck the blood.
Julie was aware of that. She knew she was sucking the blood of others in order to be alive. She knew she was doing that but she couldn’t help. That was the revenge for a totally unfair environment.
Unlike the mosquito, she had a sense of guilt. After traumatizing her mother, her stepfather and sisters, she would fall down on the bed and cry. She wished she could fall down one day like a little mosquito and die. But that would be too easy for someone that had a long way to go. She did not die and she continued sucking the blood of the others. Was that fair? In a sense it was, but it was also very cruel. It was cruel and fair. Julie was sorry she acted like a beast. A beast that has to satisfy her hunger by sucking blood.
The Lord on a plate
She knew Him. After going down the whole road of life, she finally saw Him as clear as spaghetti on the plate. No more mysteries. No more divine power. The Lord was on a plate. The spices you add depended on her. She knew He had no mercy. She knew he would never help. The question was why? The only answer that could justify his inaction was independence. The Lord did not interfere because she had to find the answers. At times things were really cruel, and she would stand on her knees and cry. “This is unfair!” But the Lord did not interfere. Julie had to find answers on her own.
He had two faces. A merciless manic crank and a divine saint. And she had to live with the idea. She had to live with the Lord that was a maniac by half. She had to swallow the spaghetti on her plate that tasted awful at times. He was everywhere. She saw Him in the merciless rapper and the flagitious criminal. She saw Him in the world hatred and unfair treatment. These were all expressions of God, and she had to live with that.
After this annoying discovery, she stopped asking questions. She accepted Him as he was, and a kind of indifference developed in her. She did not care and she stopped her search for justification and honesty. The Lord was the expression of evil in the world. The Lord was the World.
(…to be continued…)
2021: Conceived – Volume 2 of a Contemporary Transadaptation
January: The Pack – Alejandra Baccino (Uruguay)
February: The Pink Shirt – Talia Stotts (America)
March: Dragging the Past out into the Light – Kate Korneeva (Russia)
April: Looking Forward to Spring – Marilin Guerrero Casas (Cuba)
May: Every Little Thing – Gennady Bondarenko (Ukraine)
June: The Girl Who Chased the Rainbow – Toni Wallis (Sarah-Leah Pimentel) (South Africa)
July: Another World – Jonay Quintero Hernandez (Spain)
August: Life after Nare – Nane Sevunts (Armine Asryan) (Armenia)
September: Meeting My Homeland – Rayan Harake (Lebanon)
October: Catching Water (Part Two) – Javier Gomez (Argentina)
November: Remember – Seyit Ali Dastan (Turkey)
December: Los Caminantes – Veronica Cordido (Venezuela)
Background – Context
In the Middle – Prelude to a Contemporary Transadaptation, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2020)
Peripatetic Alterity: A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being – Romantics and Pragmatists by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
La Syncrétion of Polarization and Extremes Transposée, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2018)
L’anthologie of Global Instability Transpuesta, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2017)
From Wahnsinnig to the Loony Bin: German and Russian Stories Transposed to Modern-day America, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2013)
Emblems and stories on the international community
Perception by country – Transposing emblems, articles, short stories and reports from around the world
Credits
Cover photo: Yerevan, Armenia – Alarm? – Levon Vardanyan (Unsplash)
Source: The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed