redon24

[redon24]

Mirage miracle

A girl named Tristana has cancer that causes pain, making her palms bleed by the grasp of her nails every night since no painkiller or any medication is appropriate to use because it will fasten her demise. She uses the pillow to mask her face to hide from the other patients in the hospital as she lies in the purely white bed. She has no one to visit but a person in white carrying a syringe. She was abandoned by her one and only family, which is her mother, while the person who took care of her had already passed away. One day she asks the doctor to tell her frankly if she has another year. The doctor answered with drooping eyelids and downcast eyes. “Most probably a month or less,” he answered. Tristana was dumbfounded as she is only 25, but deep inside, she is thankful since she cannot bear the pain every night and it is good to just die to end it. She lay in her bed, waiting for the sun to hide and darkness to consume her again. As she is trying to sleep desperately, a person walks into the room and accidentally falls on Tristana's bed. She opened her eyes and saw a man holding a vintage watch, dressed in blue with a lot of white beards. “I don’t remember having a family like yours, mister,” she said, looking straight in the eyes. The man stood emotionless as he looked at her and asked for two wishes that she wanted fulfilled. She didn’t reply, but, in her mind, he asks for two wishes: to have a good night's sleep without feeling any pain and to help other people in their sickness. “It will come true,” the man replied. The man smirked while he left.

With a doubtful face, Tristina closes her eyes, and suddenly he sleeps so deeply through the night. In the morning, the gentle ray of the sun kissing her skin made her wake up, and she was shocked since it was the first time that she had slept so long. She gets up quickly and asks an old lady in a wheelchair with a watch about the time while holding her arm, trembling in excitement. The old lady in a wheelchair answered that it was already past 8. Tristina is shocked while holding her head with a pointy eye directed in one direction. She rushes to the doctor to be examined, hoping that her condition has improved. She rides the elevator and runs along the hallway, and she bumps into a person with polio. Both fell to the floor, but to her surprise, she didn’t feel any pain as much as the person with polio. Tristina quickly helps the guy stand, and she bows her head repeatedly while saying sorry. “Be careful next time, girl,” he replied, continuing to walk barely along the hallway. She continues to run to the office of the doctor, but sadly, there is no one in the office. She asks a nurse while catching her breath for the location of the doctor, and the nurse answers that he has been in surgery for 5 hours.

She sits on a metal chair while calming her heartbeat, allowing for normal breathing. She focuses on watching the clock tick like a bomb waiting to explode. After 5 long hours, the doctor arrives, and she hurriedly asks the doctor to have an examination again for her condition. “Let’s talk inside my office,” the doctor said with a quavering voice. The doctor explains that it is impossible for her condition to improve with any medication or operation, and hoping for a spontaneous miracle to happen is not going to work. Tristina insisted on having her reexamined and explained that she slept so soundly last night without feeling any pain and that she speaks so fast with a smile on her face. “I hate to disappoint you, but maybe you are now immune to the pain considering the duration of your condition, but it is good to have hope,” he replied to calm her down. She didn’t listen and ask for the same thing. After a continuous debate, the doctor finally agreed, but it will be done tomorrow since no examination room is available and he is tired from the operation. Tristina agrees, exits the room, and strolls on the hospital the whole day.

The day is finally over, and the night has come. She went to her bed, laid comfortably, put her hands on top of her stomach, and stretched her feet, waiting to fall asleep. She wants to test if the pain has gone. She fights the closing of the eyes to observe the change, but for a small moment, her eyes close. With a blink of a second, it is already morning; it is like traveling into the future for a moment. She is stunned since she didn’t even realize the passing of time and her sleeping at night. Then she remembers that it is time to have the examination. She quickly gets out of bed and goes outside the room. While running on the corridor, her feet were stuck to the floor, her eyes were locked to a single location, and her heartbeat fast looking at an old woman standing in front of her. It was the woman in a wheelchair that she asked for the time yesterday. She is walking comfortably with a happy face, with her daughter clinging to her arms, excited as they exit the hospital. She carefully observes the face and body figure, and she is sure about it. With a confused mind, she just thinks that she is mistaken about what she saw. She walks towards the elevator, waiting to arrive at the floor of the doctor. The elevator momentarily stops to cater to another person, and it was even more shocking that the person who enters the elevator is the man with polio, walking in a straight manner without any support. The man stands beside her, and she observes him meticulously, and this time she is convinced that something is wrong. An old woman in a wheelchair just got healed overnight, and a man with polio, which is said to be incurable, got cured in an instant. She stayed in the elevator, thinking about the things that were happening to her. “Perhaps my wish the other night came true? ", she asks herself. Since she can now sleep without feeling any pain, her first wish has been fulfilled. Her second wish is to help other people with their conditions, and the common denominator between the two sick people is that she touches them both. She is convinced that to heal a person, she needs to touch them physically. Her rosy cheeks glowed, and a captivating smile was on her face as she exited the elevator. She went to the doctor and didn’t hesitate to say that she would cancel the examination. The doctor didn’t even manage to ask for the reason, and Tristana left the room immediately.

She loiters on the hospital floor thinking of what she will do next, and he gets a brilliant idea. She touches all the sick people that were in her room one by one without leaving anyone. The next morning, the expected thing happened: all of them were getting ready to be discharged. She hears nurses talking to each other. “It’s a miracle all of them got healed at the same time; it’s like magic,” they said. Tristana covers her mouth with her hand as she smiles. In that event, she went to every room with sick people in the hospital and touched all of them. With the size of the hospital, it takes her to visit every room the whole day, so she is tired and exhausted. She didn’t reach her room and just lay on the chair along the corridor. By the time she wakes up, it is already morning. She gets up and wants to take a bath with a smile on her face since the hospital will be cleared today. While walking near her room, she sees nurses and doctors exiting the room. She stops one of the nurses and asks. “Do you have another patient?”. “Don’t worry, they will leave soon,” she said correspondingly, without waiting for the response of the nurse. 

She went to the room to touch them, but to her surprise, the same people that were discharged the other day were lying on their beds with fluid running towards their wrists. She quickly asks them what happened and why they came back. “O girl, we never leave in the first place,"  they answered in chorus. She went out of the room with a confused mind, asking if it was just a dream. So, she will check on the doctor by having the examination. While running, she stops because she recognizes a familiar face. Her world stops, and she doesn’t believe what she is seeing. A lady is hugging someone covered in white while tears welled from deep inside and coursed down her cheeks. Moans escaped her lips through the suppressed sound of hiccups. With the sadness, she sees a solemn tear fall on Tristina’s cheek as well. She approaches the lady, and she is sure that it was the mother who left her when she was young, and the person she is holding was even more shocking and unbelievable. “This is me; this is me; this is me,” she said with a weak voice.

She finally wakes up, and a sudden moment flashes through her mind. It turns out that the night when a mysterious man entered her room was the time in which she had a cardiac arrest, and the person who entered the room was the doctor trying to revive her, but he failed. For a moment, she experiences her wishes in a short, brief time before disappearing from the harsh world.

#short story #thriller #mystery

[redon24]

The farmer’s resolve

Two villages are separated by a wide river with a very strong current that is moving so fast. A giant log was put into the middle to connect the land, which serves as the bridge. An old man with severe limbs is sitting in the middle of the log like a gatekeeper. Three people arrive at the same time on the other side of the land, facing the old man. He was a rich man, a soldier, and a farmer. The soldier asks what the order is to cross since they arrive at the same time and the bridge is a one-way trip.

The rich man volunteers to be the first, but the soldier refuses as he will be late to his appointment. The rich man offers a gold coin, and the soldier agrees instantly.

The rich man walks along the log and asks the old man to move or go back to the other side since he is in the way, but the old man doesn’t say a word. “I will give you a gold coin,” the rich man shouted proudly. The old man showed no interest in the offer. The rich man takes a piece of bread and water from his bag and asks again angrily, but again, the same response is received.

The soldier asks the rich guy to come back, and he will handle it. The soldier rushes to the old man, unsheathes his shining sword, and taps it on the old man’s shoulder slowly. “Do you wish to have no arms as well?”, the soldier asks coldly. The old man didn’t budge. The soldier raises the sword like a thirsty beast, planning to slice the arms of the old man, but to his surprise, the old man didn’t even blink. Fearing that he could cut the old man, the soldier raises his foot instead, attempting to kick him away, but he trips and goes down to the river and drowns. 

The rich man looks into the sky, confused, as he does not figure out what the old man wants. Offering food and violence has no effect at all. The farmer taps the back of the rich man to move aside, as he will try to convince him. The rich man looked at the farmer with his eyebrows trying to meet at the center, and his forehead showed deep lines. “Nothing will change, even if it’s you; let’s just wait for him to move,” he said frankly. The farmer insisted on going, and there was nothing he could do. The rich man laughs loudly and teases the farmer, saying that he will fail as well. He even jokes about giving him one hundred gold coins if he succeeds.

The farmer looked at him coldly, wiggled his head, and went straight ahead. He approaches the old man slowly and calmly. He looked at the old man straight in the eyes and asked, “Where do you wish to go? I’ll carry you on my back if you wish." The old man didn’t respond or even move his eyeballs. Then the farmer is convince so he touch the old man gently and carry him on his back and went to the other side as the old man lost his senses waiting to be rescued.

#short fiction #short story