#thebestiary

Before I noticed, my life was flashing before my eyes.

If you were to ask me what the first thing I remembered was, I would have to tell you that I don’t have many memories from my early childhood.

Contrary to my mother, whose earliest memory was something that had happened to her when she was a baby, my first memory would be something that happened when I was four years old, on the morning after Christmas.

We were opening our Christmas presents near the tree.

My mother, my grandfather and my grandmother were there, my father had gone to the kitchen, but he was there too.

Even though my family wasn’t able to afford many presents, it was a holiday that filled me with happiness and anticipation.

As you can see, I was a normal boy.

I heard a noise and looked in that direction.

It was then that all the other presents disappeared from my memory.

My father had entered the room carrying a bicycle that had a red ribbon pasted in the handle.

I looked in awe, too happy to even move.

Both my father and my mother smiled and said “Marry Christmas son”.

I was happy, no, I was more than happy, I was ecstatic.

It was a second hand bicycle, but that didn’t matter to me.

Now that I think about it, my parents probably had to save money throughout the year to buy that bicycle to me. Probably my grandparents had to help too.

We weren’t what you could call a wealthy family, you see.

But as I said, I didn’t care about all that.

I was a kid.

And in that moment, I was a happy kid.

My memory got fuzzy and the next thing to cross my mind was something that had happened around two years after that, my first day at school.

I remember I cried a lot that day.

I was on a place I didn’t know, surrounded by kids that were as or more afraid than I was.

But as the days and years went by, I ended up loving that place.

There I met my first group of true friends, amazing people I keep in contact with until this very day.

There I met my first enemy.

There I learned a lot about the world and started questioning myself about it.

Childish questions like “where will I appear if I dig a whole until I reach the other side?” and “what is the moon made of?”, but questions nonetheless.

There I found my love for reading all kinds of books. I loved fantasy books the most.

There I found my first love, and faced my first rejection.

Lots of first happened within those playgrounds and classrooms.

It is a place I still go back to in dreams, a place where I feel safe and secure.

Then I remembered when I had to leave.

My father had found a better job in another city and we were to follow him there.

Eight years after that first day at school, I cried again in front of my classmates while saying goodbye.

After that came a different first day at school.

This time was my first day in high school.

Those years were difficult for me.

Even though I was “the new classmate”, I wasn’t able to make many friends during that first year.

Mostly because I was an angsty brat who thought the world I had loved so much was conspiring against me.

Driving me away from the city I had grown up in.

Separating me from my friends.

And dropping me inside a place I didn’t know.

But I got over that on a year or so, and stopped blaming my parents for every little pain I suffered.

I was growing up, and I was able to understand that they were doing their best to give me everything they could.

So, instead of yelling at them that it was their fault that I had no friends, I started thanking them for the new clothes and the food they bought for me to wear and eat.

I also gave my best shot at making friends at this new place… One year after arriving…

Let us just say that I managed to scrape by during high school. None of the friends I made were long lasting friends, they were more like acquaintances.

The next thing I remembered was that phone call.

“Please come quickly to the hospital, your father had an accident at work”

He had suffered severe head trauma after a piece of the machinery they used at the factory he worked at had broken, falling on his head.

The safety helmet hadn’t done his job properly and his cranium had suffered the impact, breaking like an egg thrown to the floor.

The next thing I remembered was the funeral.

Then I remembered my mother collapsing a Friday night, after arriving home from her night job, because of accumulated stress.

That night, on the way to the hospital, I decided I was not going to college.

That would have only served the purpose of putting my mother under more pressure, and that was the last thing I wanted.

She cried telling me that I should stop thinking about her and start thinking about my future.

But I didn’t listen, she was too fragile, I wanted to help her too, after all she had helped me during my life.

I remembered going to my first day working at a quick food restaurant.

That was a good job, the boss was nice and my co-workers were friendly.

But the pay was too low, so I resigned and searched for a new job.

My family needed the money.

After that I drifted through different jobs for three years, but when I tuned 21, I settled on a cashier job at a supermarket.

I was coming back home after a long day at work, when the bus I was on was hit by some other vehicle and rolled to its side.

Next, I remember waking up on a haze, on top of broken glass and twisted metal.

I remember the groans of other people moving around me as they tried to make sense of everything that was happening.

I remember looking to the front of the bus and seeing the lights of a truck coming our way.

It was going too fast, it wasn’t going to be able to stop.

The last thing I remember you ask?

The last thing I remember is someone saying “I don’t want to die”, followed by the pain of my bones breaking and my internal organs being crushed into a pulp inside me.

And then I remember nothing.