Goddess of Thunder (Short Story in Progress), Chapter 1

This is the short story that I've been working on for almost a month, I wanted to posted as a single post but it got to long that I think I'm going to divide it in chapters. The story is not over yet but I hope to finish it soon.This story is about bikers and its a little bit surreal, hope you enjoy the first chapter.

I

The smell of the highway was starting to become the personal aura that followed Ailine everywhere she went. Rolling and rolling, there was no ending to her race. The mountain defeated her, but she was willing to come back, but now it was not the time.

The days were always dominated by white and enormous clouds in the skies, but for her, it was always stormy because she never took those sun glasses off. A permanent storm with only one way out: The road. She only had to focus in going forward; otherwise the storm would sweep her away.

Fuel was running low, the journey had to stop for a few minutes, there was always a gas station/restaurant at her disposition, and she only had to take her glasses off.

“That’s a fine bike” said the waiter as he delivered her cup of coffee.

“It is” she replied, blowing the hot smoke of the cup.

“I used to have one of them until some god-damned bastards stole it from me when I wasn’t looking at my backyard…”

The man expected some kind of signal of sympathy or even a “That sucks” but nothing came from the girl.

“… Those are great for recovering long distance; may I ask where are you going?”

Ailine drank a little bit of coffee and replied.

“Going north for the moment, it doesn’t seem that my destination is changing any time soon.”

The man just began to look at her with eyes of speculation.

“North? ...are you heading to the mountain?”

She nodded while watching the wooden table.

The man laughed a little bit.

“Are you one of those bikers who are trying to reach the top of the mountain?”

“Take a guess” she said.

The waiter had a wide open smile.

“Oh man, I knew there was something special about you.”

The other customers were starting to yell at the waiter, impatiens for their lack of customer attention. The waiter went away for a few minutes, and then he returned back.

“Let me tell you something, beautiful. Your bike is fine, I mean is goddamn fine, no question about it. But you will never reach the top of that mountain with it, I’m sorry but it can’t be done. You know how to ride, but there’s only one way for reaching that summit, baby, and that’s flying.”

Smiling she responded.

“I know that well old fella, I’ve fallen many times and I’ve seen many more fall, but thanks for reminding me.”

“Then why the hell are you going back there, are you waiting a miracle or something?”

Ailine heard that word and something awoke inside her. The mountain was the only thing that she lived for, if something like that ever happened she would have no idea of how to react. That would defeat the entire meaning of riding and she knew that at the moment that she stopped riding, the storm would sweep her away into oblivion. Perhaps a miracle was the last thing that she wanted.

“I just like to try and fail.” she answered.

“God, you DO need a miracle” said the waiter as he went to recover some plates of other customers.

Ailine’s cup was empty and there was nothing for her left to do there, so, it was moment to return to the road.

“But maybe, I’ll be your miracle man today” said the waiter when Ailine was just about to ask for the bill.

“What do you mean?” she asked, just as a reflex.

The waiter’s face started to evoke a great mystery.

“Do you know who Teller da Speller is?”

Ailine had heard the myth before and she didn’t want to lose any more time talking about it.

“Yes, the mechanic from another planet, I’ve heard about it, could you please bring me the bill?”

“You said it as if it were some kind of folk story” The waiter said.

“I don’t know a lot of people from other planets, but the ones I do know, are not mechanics.”

“Well, this one is, I know that I’m demanding skepticism here but he’s the greatest and most legendary mechanic of this generation, he could take whatever piece of shit and transform it into a magical and unstoppable rocket that could travel galaxies!” the waiter didn’t regulate his volume and the entire restaurant was looking at him.

“You talk about him as if he was real.”

The waiter began to laugh.

“Oh, my young lady, he IS real. I know him personally, in fact…” he came closer to the girl as if he was about to whisper a big secret “he’s the step brother of the owner of this chain of restaurants”.

Ailine had lost enough time chatting, the road was waiting for her.

“I can contact him if you want, you would be amazed of what he can do. Lokie Santana… I mean, he was an excellent rider but he would have gotten nowhere if it wasn’t for the bike that Mr. da Speller prepared for him. Oh man, with a bike like that, the summit of that mountain would kiss your tires.”

Ailine didn’t know how much she owned and she wasn’t going to wait for the bill, so she just left 10 bucks on the table and she stood up.

“Not interested right now but thanks for the offer.” she said while leaving.

Thanks for reading :)

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Solitude Adventures, A Science Fiction Novel: Chapter 4

Fourth chapter of this science fiction novel. I've been working on a short story right now, so that's why Solitude Adventures is in a small hiatus right now, nonetheless I bring to you Chapter 4.  I'm thinking on posting this short story than I'm currently working on in chapters because it got way longer than the story I originally envisioned. I don't even know if it's a short story anymore, but I guess that I'll posting it here while I finish it. I hope you enjoy this new chapter, and thanks for reading.

Piece of Heaven

The brutal sound of water was the only thing that surrounded my head at that moment; I didn't need to open my eyes to see what was going on. Time passes slow in the waters but fast at the same time; so slow to realize its empty harmony yet so fast that you're not longer aware that you're not there. My feet were stepping on solid ground, my eyes were still closed, a tree behind me, a rope in front of me and a fist inside my stomach. Being tied up is no funny business folks.
"You're a hard son of a bitch to find, I'll give you that" he said as he punched my face next.
I open my eyes and I look at him. I didn't even know the guy, yet he saved my life and was about to take it away. I guess that you should know the name of the person who did those two things to you.
"I almost drown trying to get your sorry ass... but it was worth it" he punched once again in the stomach and I started to spit blood.
"What is your name?" I asked him with my blooded voice.
"What, my name?" he asked me back.
"Well yeah, you just saved my life and now you're going to kill me, I guess I should know your name"
He got closer to me and then he grabbed my neck; I clearly saw his face smiling. He was a little bit younger than me, with dark hair and from Asian decency, probably Japanese.
"But I'm not going to kill you sweety, not yet" he then grabbed my hand and he   pulled out a knife that was under his pocket.
A part of me thought that I was already dead and that this place was some kind of hell with my torturer in front of me, but then I quickly realize that I was still alive. The knife went through my hand as if it were butter, now I know the pain that Jesus Christ himself felt and let me tell you folks... it's no funny business.
Immediately after that, he began to twist the knife. The more he twisted, the more he smiled. I screamed at levels that I wasn't even aware that I could.
"What is your goddamned fucking problem?!" he smiled even more while I was screaming that.
When the knife gave a rotation of one hundred eighty degrees inside my hand, he pull it out. My hand was a fountain of blood.
"I guess that's the problem" he said while he was cleaning the red knife with his white shirt. "You see, I didn't even paid you to hack up my exam, I was one of the few ones who actually passed by their own".
He grabbed my other hand and he did the same thing.
"I just heard that the guys were up to kill someone tonight and I just decided to join in."
And that moment, I finally realized who that fucker was, I resolved and long forgotten mistery in probably the worst way possible. A few years ago, a series of horrible murders took place inside and outside the school, must of them we're girls who had been tortured and then killed by a series of painful knife wounds, finally they we're crucified in the forest. He quickly became known between us as the Stigmata Killer, this was the first major treath that we faced together, and what did we do? we immerged ourselves in fear and paranoia. The Stigmata Killer was one of us, but who? we couldn't trust in anyone, we couldn't trust in ourselves. We had a serial killer in our school, he had killed seven girls already and we didn't know what the hell to do. We were expecting that the Luvic Corporation would carry an investigation about this, but they never came. We filled the report at docent times but we knew that this was not even necessary, they had systems of surveillance, they knew what was going on here... or at least we thought they knew. The Stigmata Killer episode was a particular devastating one, because after that, we knew that the surveillance systems of Luvic Corporation were no longer activated, those systems represented the law and the order of this civilization and they were no longer there. There was nobody watching us, no punishment for crimes, it became just another planet without law.

Seeing that no one else responded to the treat, a friend of mine and I decided to investigate the case but we didn't resolved anything, the Stigmata Killer left no tracks, nothing, it was almost impossible to trace him. After a few more kills he just stopped, there we're no more killings left, the Stigmata Killer disappeared, but the damage he made to us was almost beyond repair, when everybody figured out that there was no surveillance in our planet, violence, crimes and murders became pretty normal in this new civilization of ours. This changed nothing for me, until this precise moment in which everybody was trying to kill me. I was always a criminal but I worked in the shadows without harming anyone, but now, with this paradigm shift, working in the shadows seemed redundant.
"You were one of those bastards who was trying to track me down eh?" said the Stigmata Killer.
I found this practically unclimatic, I didn't even know who this guy was, he was just a skinny little dude who looked really sick and weak, I couldn’t believe this person would be able to cause so much chaos.
"Why did you stop killing?" I asked him.
He walked near me and he took my right hand, he quickly purred some kind of spray over it and my hand began to heal immediately, once this happened, he stabbed the knife once again.
"I stopped killing because I stopped receiving orders" he responded while I was screaming. He was rotating the knife even more slowly than the last time.
"What the hell are you talking about, orders from whom?"
"You don't need to know, you're going to die anyway and I don't think that you would understand it."
"I'm gonna die? So you have orders to kill me?"
He didn't respond to my question and he proceeded to the torture.

My screams became a permanent resonance in the woods, unfortunately, the attention that they demanded wasn't met, but I don't think it would have made any difference otherwise. Soon, he was going to move to the kill, a victim more, this was not vengeance, no revenge of any kind, just a pointless homicide, I guess that I preferred to be killed by someone who really had strong intentions and good reasons to kill me, like any of the other fellas.
Now, the knife was inside my right shoulder, this was the greatest moment of pain in my entire life, a part of me felt that I was about to black out, I guess that wasn't a bad idea after all. The pain was beyond my limits of resistance and this weren't going to get nicer, so I was preparing to close my eyes and say good bye to everything I ever knew, when suddenly, an event that saved my life and change my entire perception of the world occurred.
It all began with music, I started to hear music and I wasn't the only one, he was listening to. To be honest, it wasn't music; they were just sounds, really powerful resonances that seemed to have some kind of harmony. The sounds became louder, like if they were approaching the place we we're on. He pulled the knife out of my shoulder, the pain moved around my entire body and my scream was the loudest of the night, but it was also silent, for the sounds were to loud and powerful that my scream became silenced by them. He began to look around us, trying to find the direction in which the sound we're coming from, but there was no direction, the sounds we're all around us, they came from all directions.
Suddenly, he stopped to look around and he froze completely, as if he had just made some kind of realization, he dropped the knife, and he grabbed his head with his two hands. Somehow, he knew what those sounds meant, and he began to worry as they approached, he looked at me and then he looked at his hands, all tainted with my blood, the sounds we're near and he tried to clean his hands, of course it was impossible.
When he realized he couldn't clean the red of his hands, he began to cry. He began to weep like a little baby. He then quickly run towards me and healed my shoulder with that spray he previously used. I saw his face and his tears closer, his eyes we're full of terror and regret, as if he was asking for forgiveness or something of that kind. Immediately, he picked up the knife that he had drop and he headed towards me once again.
I was sure that this was going to be the final moment; it seemed that his time was running low, for some reason, and he was just going to finish me off quickly. I was just praying that he didn't cut off my throat; that was the worst death imaginable, a death without screams, however, filled with blood, pain and slow agony.
He went behind the tree and I knew that he was going to do it that way. I closed my eyes and hoped that my dead would be faster than I thought. I felt a shallow coldness in my neck, the sounds approached more and more, my neck felt colder and colder, exposed, waiting for the final cut. A final cut did happen, but my neck was still intact; the rope that was around me was the one that received it. The Stigmata Killer (or whoever he was) freed me from his own trap; he rescued me from his own attempt of homicide.
I felt to the grass, tired and weak, the sounds had reached us, even though my body had never experienced these kinds of extreme circumstances, I got up quickly. The Stigmata Killer pushed to the other side. He was still crying, desperately, but he was also screaming something at me, of course I wasn't able to hear anything because of the beautiful sounds that apparently saved my life. I didn't understand a thing he said to me, but I didn't need to, his two arms we're clearly telling to get the hell out of there, to run as fast as I could, and I did as I was commanded.
While I was running away, which actually was at a much slower speed than the one that you're imagining, I could help but to ask myself: "what the hell did it just happen?", "why he didn't kill me?", "what the hell we're those sounds?". I had to know, I had to go back and see what those sounds were, yes I know, probably one of the most stupid decisions that someone in my situation could have made, but after all, I don't need to explain myself to you, you don't need to know how fucked up I am.
As I returned to the scene of the almost crime, the sounds we're still there, I was hiding in the trees, approaching really slowly, trying to find my friend. The sounds finally stopped and immediately after that, I saw him. He was kneeling down and facing the ground, his hands were in his pockets and he was still crying. I noticed that he was saying something, I thought that he was prying or something like that, so I approached a little bit to find out. Now, a little bit closer, I could clearly listen to what he was saying, unfortunately, I couldn't understand a word; he was speaking in Japanese. However, I quickly noticed something, he said a short stream of words, then he stopped, then he said another stream of words, stopped once again, he then raised his head, showed his red hands and screamed something as if it there was someone in front of him. He was having a conversation. I put my hand inside my right pocket, and found that my pocket recorder was still intact. I quickly started to record everything that he was saying, so that later I could find a program able to translate it.
I still wanted to know with who he was speaking with, his voice was the only voice I could hear, so, once again, I moved a little bit further to see if someone else was there. To my surprise, there was no one. I quickly look at him once again, and I couldn't see any kind of attachments or gadgets in his ears, eyes or head. It was easy to dismiss him as a complete lunatic, after all he was a serial killer, but, what's up with all of those sounds that we previously heard. I clearly felt that something was approaching and he to. It was unlike anything that I have heard or experienced before. I knew that it I wasn't just watching a lunatic speaking with himself, there was something more to this, there was something else going on.
He stood up, he was still talking and crying, I was recording everything. After talking and crying a little bit more, he hugged the air. He just jumped and hugged the air as if he was hugging someone, he then cried some more. "What the hell is going on?" that was the only thought in my mind. After hugging the air for a couple of minutes, he stopped and he cleaned his tears. He was nodding his head, as if he was listening to someone, he then stopped nodding, he stopped moving completely for a second. He suddenly turn around and look exactly at the place where I was hiding. He saw me.
At that precise moment, I thought that I had probably recorded enough. In less than a second, I put my recorder inside my pocket, turn around and I just ran; this time, at a much faster speed than the one that you're imagining.

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French Grammar Video Lessons with exercises

In this past two years I've been studying French as my main activity, I'm going to present the DELF B1 on April so that's the reason why I've been studying so much. Anyways, for me, the best way to reinforce my knowledge is to teach it, and obviously, the most tricky part of any language is its grammar, so that's the reason why I'm making these series of french grammar videos. So that I can reinforce my knowledge of the rules and help people who are just learning it. Besides the videos, I'm also creating little courses regarding the subjects in memrise.com, so that you can internalize the aspects of the grammar that we are discussing:

These are the videos so far:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqgrLZmXUb0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQOyldBYNEY

Exercises of conjugation (1st group of verbs): http://www.memrise.com/course/190829/1-conjugation-of-the-verbs-of-the-1st-group/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goq3p2rcGLk

Exercises of conjugation (2nd groups of verbs): http://www.memrise.com/course/197395/2-conjugation-of-the-verbs-of-the-2nd-group/

That's all so far, hope you enjoy it. Thanks for reading :)

 

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What was once written (Short Poem)

This one is for all the new years that have come:

What was once written

As a template that has drastically fallen

we impregnate our wishes and dreams to come.

Is not the first time, but we react as such.

We look for the reset button one more time,

we push it every year, only to find out...

...that its effect is never lasting, anyways.

The template slowly erases and fades away

to become a chaotic sheet of paper

unable to recognize or remember...

...what was once written, by who?, for what? and why?

The message is always to ride the dragon.

But the imposed goal is to drive the dragon.

We try to drive him with total and full control...

...but we end up being carried away by him.

Hoping to grow ourselves, before seeing the final sunset... once again.

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