First Written Assignment

The path to enlightenment or a twisted faith.

by Rui Freitas

It was a bright sunny day, not a single cloud in the sky, not even the slightest breeze in the air, it was one of those summer days were the only place your body allows you to be is in the beach, or somewhere near the water.

Well that’s what Jackie and her girlfriends were thinking of doing that afternoon, yes, they weren’t that kind of girls who get up at dawn to seize the day, in fact they couldn’t care less what time they woke up, specially when the past night had been quiet tough, they certainly wouldn’t be out of bed before 2 p.m.

So as I was saying, the sun was shining, it was desert hot, they were awake, it was time to go to the beach and heal the hangover under the blazing sun.

On their way to beach they stopped to buy a couple of bottles of water.

Behind the shop’s balcony there was a greasy old man, brown teeth, rotten breath, lascivious looks in his eyes.

They got out as fast as they could, living the man to his dirty thoughts.

Finally they got to the beach. It was so crowded that not a single grain of sand had been left unoccupied, still, it was an evenly sight compared to their close encounter with that greasy bastard.

In the precise moment Jackie was stepping into the last square cm available on the beach, her phone rang.

- Hi mom…Kay mom…bye mom… -

What her mom said and what made her go back home, remains unknown, what is known though, is what happened along the way…

It all happened so fast that she thought it was a hallucination, one of those you get from having the sun hitting your head for too long, like a mirage.

As she was walking down the street, a car appeared out of the blue, something was wrong, the car was out of control and before she could have noticed, the car crashed, twisting and turning, ending up in an unrecognizable mass of metal, oil and blood.

Has she approached the car she was literally swept of her feet, it was an image that would be carved in every bit of her for the rest of her life.

Looking down to the mutilated body of what she reckoned to be a young woman, probably not much older than her, she didn’t scream nor cried, she kept her eyes wide open, almost as if absorbing every sordid detail of that grotesque scene, and right before she fainted, overwhelmed with a feeling unknown to her until now, she mumbled three words to herself, “Now I understand”…