Darkness engulfed my soul in a cortege of exhaustion, sadness, and total confusion. I didn't know where I was, and frankly, I didn't care much. My head was filled with thoughts of Júlia and incessant pain, as if I had larvae eating away at my brain. Besides all this, there was the question that refused to be silent: Where the hell am I, and how do I get out of here? A question that appeared to have no answer, since I spent a long time walking in this unbearable darkness, knowing nothing. "Is this how babies feel when they come out of their mother's vagina?" I think. A forced smile on my face. "And Júlia..." Few words, sometimes, spoke more than many.
I don't think it's necessary to worry about what Júlia is thinking right now. Her man—not officially—dead from a car. Or, who knows, maybe paralyzed forever. I didn't know, but for some reason, I felt that I wouldn't leave this dream so quickly. That is, if this is even a dream.
Little time passed before I found a ray of light, which, when seen up close, was nothing more than a white chair as white as lime. I close my eyes and open them again, after rubbing them, to see if the humanoid monkey in golden robes was real. And I come to the sad conclusion that yes. A humanoid monkey... in front of me... looking at me...
Saying the shock was great would be an understatement; an antithesis that didn't constitute the size of my surprise and desire to faint. Maybe, that way, I can go back to where I came from. "Surely this is a dream!?" I think for the second time. "But, what if it isn't? What can I do?" I very much doubt I can abduct the monkey in front of me and escape. But if I escaped, where would I go?
"Good to see you, mortal. A great friend of mine asked me to protect you." The monkey speaks, with a stone-faced expression and a cold voice. I see him looking at me as if I were a huge burden, like an unwanted pregnancy in the life of a teenager who just wanted to "have fun."
Seeing his expression, I stumble and fall onto the smooth, black floor, lacking the vibrancy of green. "The monkey speaks," I think, trembling, obviously. It's not every day that you die and the first thing you see is a talking monkey. My experiences with Transmigration stories prove important when the thought that the one in front of me could very well be a god or a superior being comes to mind. "Aren't you going to ask me anything, mortal? It wasn't easy to bring you here," he asks with a raised eyebrow, interrupting my revolt of overlapping thoughts, from Júlia to the credibility of a talking monkey.
"Where am I?" I ask, after a long time gathering courage not to tremble with fear and surprise. I wanted to know more about Júlia than where I was going, but the desire for discovery was greater than my love. "Forgive me, Júlia." It was sad, me. Acting afraid of a monkey, as if I were thirteen.
"Good question, mortal." His stone-like face softens, and he smiles. "But I can't answer that." He looks me directly in the face, and his smile becomes mischievous. "I thought you were going to ask about your beloved."
"Yes, that too." And I stumble over my words, visibly ashamed. "How is she? Did she see me get run over? Am I—no!—is my body in a hospital? If so, is she there? And..." Before I could despair and fall mentally in a pathetic way to what might very well be a god, the monkey stops my barrage of questions with a slight raising of his fingers. I tried to do everything not to think too much about Júlia, but the tears were already falling like waterfalls.
"Don't worry." He gently places a hand on my shoulder. "She is currently in the hospital waiting for you to wake up. If I didn't have the ability to read what people feel, I would say she doesn't care about you. Her face is colder than mine. Ask me something else, mortal. It's impossible for you to return until you complete your mission."
"What is this mission?" I ask coldly. "And how long does it take?" And, remembering what happens in the movie Interstellar, I add: "How much time passes in my world when one day passes in the one I'm going to?"
Hearing what I added, the darkness becomes tremendously tense with the monkey's stone expression.
"Don't worry about that either. When you finish your mission, you will suddenly return to your world and marry your Júlia." He smiles again, breaking the tension previously imposed by me. "Now... the rest I can't tell you. You have to decide for yourself what your mission is. What your destiny is, working mortal."
"You still haven't answered what I asked you: What is the time difference? How many days here equals one on Earth?"
"I can't answer that." He continues to smile, but the hand on my shoulder becomes heavier, and he suddenly removes it and sits in his chair.
I wanted to scream until my lungs came out of my mouth. But this being was...
"Fine." I sigh in resignation. "What... are you?"
"Is that the question?" he asks, visible surprise on his face. He laughs a lot and continues, still with tears of joy on his face. "Let's just say I'm the one who says hello to the beautiful life. Don't hold grudges for the adversities that come your way. Face them like a hero and never hold too much resentment. You will suffer, but what will define whether you win or not is your ability to deal with pain. Remember your blood and live the life of Ethan!" He raises his fist, with his fingers open to the darkness, and snaps his fingers. I faint like a sleepy baby. *"Wait for me, Júlia..."* I beg her, knowing that I most likely shouldn't trust the monkey. But the thought of never being able to see her again scared me more than a thousand dead rats to eat.
+-+
I wake up in the middle of the red earth floor, with the smell of blood and rosemary. The light of two suns, one huge and the other not so much, hurting my eyes. I look around, feeling a weight on me that I don't know if it's physical. The two suns were surrounded by a sky that ranged between blood red and royal purple. But before I could process the place I was in, I feel something heavy, soft, and perverse on top of me.
A beautiful girl, about two years younger than me, was sitting on top of me, her golden curls falling over me as she brought her face close to mine, with an expression of tangible frustration and anger.
Upon seeing me open my eyes wider in an expression of confusion, I feel two soft lips kissing my abdomen; despite being dressed in a dress, she wasn't wearing... underwear. Her face contorts in sad pleasure, and resignedly, she complains, while I stand paralyzed by what just happened. "Forgive me, Júlia, I won't cheat on you; I swear!" I think and try to grab the girl on top of me to push her away and start asking questions, but both my hands were trapped. One of them to the bed, with a golden pair of panties, and the other hand, she herself held it with her left hand, with a surprising strength for what appeared to be a spoiled girl.
"Fuck, Ary'! I hate you!" she huffs with a rage that makes her look cute. Sometimes, I wish you were like that, Júlia. "Why did I even buy you if, apparently, I can't use you the way I want?" She squeezes her legs tighter and "that thing" against my abdomen, moaning softly. The fact that she used the word "buy" for me, a human being, tells me that I shouldn't disrespect her, and with that, not interrupt her. "You're so beautiful, but you're Macano's chosen one."
"And you are?" I ask her, breaking what I had said when I realized that a human being can be bought. "Damn impulsiveness! If it weren't for you, I would have stopped a few seconds to look left and right before crossing the street," I think with much regret. I need to start thinking before acting.
"You don't know your mistress's name?" She looks at me now with surprise and disgust, which wasn't visible before. "It doesn't surprise me." She places a knee very close to my testicles but keeps her hand on my right hand, leaving my abdomen soaked. Besides my pants, I wasn't wearing anything else. "Ana Arteriólis van Decatry, useless slave. Besides being the monkey's chosen one, you're also stu..."
I cut her off abruptly. Irritation rises to my chest. I tried to be rational and not impulsive, but flaws don't disappear just because I became aware of them.
"Get off my future children, Ana van Detriólis, or whatever your name is, mistress." I emphasize "mistress."
"Huh??" She adds more force to her knee, making me feel a searing pain that put all the hairs on my body on end and my muscles in compression. She smiles as if she were having sex and in the ecstasy of pleasure. "No. Why would I do that? Your pained face is so... so beautiful. Hah!" She moans and licks my forehead. Unable to bear the pain any longer, I pull my left hand free from the panties that held it and give her a dry slap on her rosy face. Contrary to what I expected to see on her face—pain and rage—I see a pleasure as dirty as a public toilet after being clogged. Her face contorts as if I had penetrated her, and she moans. I get up, grab the shirt that was on the floor, and wipe my stomach, disgusted.
"Yo-you... hit me..." she looks at me, expectantly. "Hmm!" She moans again, while I look at her not knowing how to feel. For the first time in my life, I had hit a woman, and oh my god, how good it felt! "Do it again! Hah, come on, come on! Do it aga~in!"
She looks at me with expectant puppy eyes, very different from how she treated me seconds ago. Many minutes pass with me regretting having hit her and with her starting to cry and call for her father. I try to calm her down, but she won't stop asking me to hit her, and I won't do it. I only gave her that slap because I knew she didn't care if she crushed my testicles or not. And she continues, until a large man, if that can be called a human being, punches me, and I faint, thinking: *"Promising, this new life of mine. This is already the second time I've fainted."*
+-+
Still in his dark domain, Macano feels sadness for the boy who will have his life destroyed when he finds out that one day in Endomyar equals one year on Earth...
+--+--+--+ Disrespect 2+--+--+--+
Agh! The throbbing in my skull seemed to worsen with every movement on the bed. Whenever I brushed my left cheek against the pillow or wherever it was, I felt like crying. Such was the pain and humiliation.
"Damn impulsiveness!" I think, my chest swelling and deflating with rage. "Why did I have to hit someone with the power to buy a slave?" I continue, this time with more pronounced anger in my veins. Hitting a noble lady certainly wasn't a good idea, and now that half my face is swollen, I see that.
Another problem that plagued my brain was how I should treat a woman who had soaked my abdomen with sexual excitement. No matter how far I didn't go with her, nothing lessened my guilt. Deep down, in a place I didn't know I had, I vaguely felt pleasure for having hit Ana and, even worse, for her having been attracted to me enough to enter the deepest parts of my male nature. "That was just a physiological moment," I tell myself internally, knowing perfectly well that it was more than that. Much more... And I felt disgust and a bunch of feelings I didn't know I had. If only Júlia were in Ana's place...
The pain didn't subside from my purple face. The man with platinum blue hair, Ana's father, was tremendously strong. I make an internal pact never to get into a real fight with that monster of a man. If I was 1.80m tall, he was at least 2.40. And his shoulders were wide and strong like a fallen tree trunk, unlike my former constitution as a skinny black man.
After moments of internal struggle, I finally sit up on the bed and observe with the face of a defeated and tired soldier. The room's walls were of stone with gold decorations and black and red metals; the windows were partially covered by white curtains with the design of a tiger with platinum blue stripes like Ana's father; the floor, or part of it, was covered by a white and platinum blue rug, without the tiger design. The furniture was all solid mahogany, including the bed, which had a wooden canopy above it, with embedded designs and jewels, reminding me of the beds of noble ladies in Middle Ages films. "Anyone with a brain can see that we're in what appears to be the Middle Ages," I think. "Now, what fantastical elements will there be?" That is, if they even exist at all. But I didn't want to think about that horrible possibility.
"If I'm going to spend some time away from Júlia trying to avoid falling into Ana's sexual traps, at least let them make me a hero. Or have the ability to use magic and meet Elves, Goblins, Mages, and Dragons." I tried in every way to keep my childish side, which Júlia hates, from surfacing. But the excitement of being in a different world, aside from missing Júlia, reminded me of the days when my mother used to read me stories of dragons and heroes. My favorite story was Ethan Ethanarius - Hero of Time, a story my own mother had written for me when my father was out slipping into other women's sheets and destroying lives... Good times, those were.
With a fake smile meant to hide sorrows, I try to get up, but I fall back onto the bed as soon as I try to put my feet on the floor. "Everything has a price," an intelligent man, my physics-chemistry teacher, once told me when speaking of Newton's third or second law. And from what I feel, that really is true, and I suppose the price for having been dragged to two places in the same day and having fainted twice was my fatigue.
Since I couldn't get up from the luxurious bed, I decide, like an obedient puppy, to wait for someone to come to me, if they even did. Cheerfully, a beautiful young woman—presumably noble by her expensive clothes—with platinum blue hair, just like Ana's father, enters with her chin raised and, then, scrutinizes me with disgust and visible anger.
"Good morning, slave. You managed not to be raped by Ana, according to what my father told me, huh?" I try, once again, to get up, but this time to bow to her. The disgust, pride, and anger on her face dissipate slightly, and she smiles in mockery. "Besides being a slave, are you weak? What are all those muscles for? Can't you get up to give me a simple bow?"
I try again, and unfortunately, it doesn't work. In the end, I decide to speak to her:
"I apologize, my lady..." I had everything ready on the tip of my tongue, but the girl's face seemed to grow darker with what I had just said. "What did I say wrong?" I ask internally, unable to find an answer.
"What did you call me?" She was trembling, as if I had slapped her. "YOU! A slave calling me old!"
"That's not what I meant, my la..." Fortunately, I don't finish the word that instinctively wanted to come out. "My girl, I meant to say." I proclaim, afraid that she might think I'm calling her a child. She seems to stop trembling and stands for a few moments with her eyes closed, breathing calmly until she regains the composure that a noble lady must have towards anyone.
"Call me Ariny or Ary', when Papa and Grandfather aren't present." She leaves the room and returns with a plate of food, placing it on the nightstand beside me. "Tomorrow a maid will come here to bring you clothes and take you to the Torrus-endra. Eat and rest well, useless slave"—she seemed to spit the last word, and perhaps she would have spat on my plate if I weren't present. "Why does she hate me?"
"If you allow me to ask, se..." I refrain from continuing the word. "Ariny, I meant to say"—the tension on her face fades—"what is a Torrus-endra?"
She looks at me as if I were stupid and leaves without saying another word, as if being in the same room as me was like being in a room full of flying cockroaches. "Does she have a personality disorder?" I think, surprised, and very little hurt by her attitudes; it was nothing I hadn't already suffered. People looking at me for being black and walking with a woman as beautiful as Júlia. Once, there was a man dressed in a suit and tie, visibly drunk, who stopped Júlia to ask if I had threatened her to go to my house and sleep with me. From what little I remember of that night, my impulses won, and I gave him a nice punch in the face. Unfortunately, I argued with Júlia that night, and she said that sometimes she felt like leaving me. Now, fortunately, my skin was white as snow and my body tall and muscular like a real man.
"I will return to you, Júlia." And I look at the two suns setting on the distant horizon. The sky was now more purple than red. I lie back down and sleep as small tears fall from my face, revealing the fragility of the unfamiliarity and hostility of this world....