My wife's gone mad.

My Wife’s gone mad.

By Alexandra Riera© 2005 Alexandra Riera

“All I asked of her this morning was for a cup of coffee and off she went without a word. She’d been threatening with leaving for the past ten years and has never done so. I don’t think she does that because she hates me or she doesn’t love me, I think it’s just a way to make me feel guilty for something I don’t know about. I basically think she’s bored with me. I like chess, she doesn’t. I like sitting outside and watch the snow flakes fall and melt and she doesn’t. I like drinking and she doesn’t. Up until very recently all she did was sit by the window knitting jumpers for the neighbour’s children whenever she had a little time to spare. That’s all she did.

What annoys me most is that whenever I have proposed to do something together, the answer has always been a rotund no. I really don’t know why she married me. She had had a whole array of suitors when she was young and how she landed with me is a complete mystery to me. I wasn’t exactly the best looking guy in the world but she seemed to like me well enough in those days. She used to do everything for me, cook, saw, iron, clean and even brought the wood in for the winter after chopping it all by herself with her father’s axe. Everything used to be fine. I had plenty of time in my hands which I used to read, play chess with my friends and go to the local for a drink or two or three….. Perhaps a few more if the atmosphere was right and that was almost every night.

Yes, everything was fine until this Chinese doctor came to live next door. She started seeing more and more of him on a daily basis. Even go over to his place and cook breakfast for him. She always came back from his house with a ton of books which she read avidly. She even changed her knitting needles for some very long needles that she stuck all over her face. She even tried to stick them on me saying they’d do me good and when I refused, she stopped the cooking, the chopping of wood and basically everything else she had done until then.

I thought she’d recover her senses but she didn’t, she started going to the Woman’s Community Centre and that was even worse than having to bear watching her go to the Chinese doctor’s house. Every time she came back from the Community Centre she’d start telling me what to do and that was the end of me. I was not allowed to bully her around anymore, I had to chop the wood, I had to do the cooking and I was not allowed to go to the local bar anymore. I have been completely sober for the last year of my life and that’s killing me. I have even been forbidden to smoke in my own house. I’m thinking too much and not drinking. That can’t possibly be good for my health. I used to feel better when I drank. Things were better then, yes, I never had to do anything then..

She came back half an hour ago and instead of making lunch she’s taken her clothes off. Not for my benefit, no, of course not. I must be the laughing stock of the whole town. There she is now, half naked in the snow practicing some silly thing. She says she’s hugging the moon. AH AH AH! Yeah! Sure! And I’m a bulldog!

She says it cleanses her. But I don’t see why she can’t use soap and water like she used to do.

Tai-chi she calls it… I hope it’s not contagious!”




The end© 2005 Alexandra Riera
(634 words)

Dear Rose...

Dear Rose…
By Alexandra Riera© 2007 Alexandra Riera

Dear Rose,

I promised I would write, so here I am meeting my promise even if it’s the last thing I really want to do right now. I know it’s been a long time; over six months since I left and in a way I feel quite bad about not having written to you earlier. My excuse is that what first started as a holiday has ended up turning into an abstract painting .

It all started when I landed at the airport. I opened my laptop and when I checked the mail I saw a mail from a Bernardo Golgorio whom I didn’t know. In the mail he said he was Mr Smith´s nephew and that as he had heard I was coming into town he would like to invite me for dinner on my arrival to welcome me into the city. He also gave his phone number. Of course I called him and yes, I did accept his offer for dinner.

You wouldn’t believe how beautiful he is, he’s absolutely gorgeous. Well, anyway, we had dinner and we ended up kissing and cuddling on the way back to his house. I won’t go into details because you’ll probably imagine what happened next. I don’t know how it happened but instead of going back to the hotel that night I stayed at his house and I carried on staying there as we were going from tour to tour, he showed me the city’s secret places and took me to other places too. We had great fun. We travelled all over the country and the last stop was here, from where I’m writing this from.

You wouldn’t believe the things I have found out about The Smiths, and to tell the truth that’s part of the reason I’m writing to you, I feel guilty. Guilty of knowing things that are supposed to be confidential but that I feel I have to share with somebody, as it’s making my head spin.

Please make sure you are seated and relaxed when you carry on reading this. It’s a bit complicated to tell in a letter really but I’ll try. Mr Smith is not really John Smith; he is Bernardo’s older sister and Bernardo’s mother at the same time. He seems to have a bit a surrealistic family. Not that changing his sex is a crime, no, but how that change of sex came about might be considered a crime by some. Bernardo is traumatised by it and so am I as I don’t know whether Bernardo is Bernardo or someone else.

I’d better start with names so that you get the whole picture right. There’s Anne: a young girl who gets pregnant by her uncle Tomas when she is very young. In those days things were different so what the family did was move house and pretend that the baby Anne had born was her little brother. Bernardo’s grandmother pretended Bernardo’s was hers so that people wouldn’t suspect. Now, everything would be more or less alright if things stopped there wouldn’t it? But no; the uncle came to live with them and pretended to be Anne’s father. I just can’t understand that part, to tell the truth but there you are. Tomas kept pestering Anne until she ran away one evening only to be found by Tomas in a brothel one night. That was the spark that started it all off. He took advantage of that situation; he started frequenting the place for free and had her doing all sorts of strange things for him and his friends. Anne ran away again and for a long time no-one knew where she was until Bernardo saw in the newspaper that his sister was going to marry a rich man in the north of the country.

You can guess what happened next, don’t you? Right, Tomas disappeared for a long time and no one in the family bothered to enquire about his whereabouts and eventually they all decided he must have died. They all hoped so as he had been a pest to all of them and they were happy about not seeing him again. Years later, when Bernardo’s grandmother died is when the truth came out. It turned out that Bernardo’s grandmother was also Bernardo’s sister. Bernardo was so shocked that he went to his sister’s house and asked her who his real mother was. Up until that day Anna hadn’t admitted to anyone that Bernardo was in fact her son and wasn’t prepared to have her new life jeopardised by her sordid past. She tried to kill him in her own house and almost succeeded if it hadn’t been for her husband. He had just walked into the room before she had time to pull the trigger on Bernardo.

Ana’s husband was a well respected man of course and as a scandal like that would have ruined him completely he sent Ana to a clinic where she had to undergo a change of sex and when that was done he sent her to the States as Mr Smith. Bernardo was sent to a monastery where he had to take a wow of silence.

Last year, he received a letter from John Smith asking for forgiveness. He was about to marry Zoe and wanted him to come to his wedding. Bernardo was so distraught that he ran away from the monastry.

I ´d met him two days after he left the monastry. He says we should marry as I’m pregnant. Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that, didn’t I? Yes, I’m three months pregnant and I don’t know what to do. Well, I know what to do about the baby but I don’t know what to do about him. Should I stay with him? I don’t feel like having that mad Tomas as my baby’s grandfather or John Smith as my baby’s half grandmother or grandfather… What a mess!

We’re staying at this small house in a small village and people think we’ve been married for donkey’s years but we’re not. You know we’re not. I would have invited you to the wedding. Should I marry him or not? Should I just leave him? Should I have the baby and give it into adoption? Sorry, I shouldn’t ask you these questions as you can’t give me the answers but putting them in writing to you seems to help somehow eventhough it’s making me see things in a dark way.

I long for peace Rosemary, six months of constant travelling and falling in love with a man with a very strange past is not exactly good for my health. What if I have a baby girl and Bernardo becomes my grandchild’s father one day? After all, genes are genes. Perhaps it’s being pregnant what’s making me feel this way. Perhaps I should go back home and forget everything but… how can I forget what I know? How can I go back and pretend John Smith is just John Smith and not Bernardo’s mother? And you?

Oh well, Rosemary, I’d better go now and tidy the house a bit now as if he finds me writing a letter to you he’ll go mad and will probably do something silly as he usually does…. Yes Rosemary, he does, and the sickest thing of it is that I love him.

I love you Rosemary

Till soon,

Ruby



The end
(1230 Words)© 2007 Alexandra Riera

Don’t know
By Alexandra Riera
© 2007 Alexandra Riera

"And they lived happily ever after", that’s what stories say; or so it is believed by the masses. Stories never mention being left to rot on the peak of a mountain, well, some might do, but there’s always the typical prince charming coming along to rescue the lady in distress. He either comes mounted on a fiery dragon, on a flying carpet or some other gadget or he just reaches the top of the mountain without a drop of sweat on his brow, and then kisses the lady in distress or the princess; there’s usually a princess in this type of story. What makes me sick is that dirty clothes, bad breath, B.O and last but not least, horrible looking men are never mentioned unless they’re ogres that are meant to be ogres so that they can do their scary bit in the story.

I hear you. Yes, I can hear you wondering what’s wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong really, at least not anything worth mentioning anyway. I’m fine really, I’m ok. It’s just that I keep hearing this little voice behind my back telling me to tell how I feel and since I have nothing else to do, I’ve decided to put it in writing so that if anyone ever finds me here they will know what I’ve had to go through. You never know, I might end up fossilised. No. No way am I going to be rescued just by the first prince charming that comes along, I’m going to wait here till the right one comes and does exactly what he is supposed to do. Just last week one of those so called princes came along, the poor thing was wearing a white coat and said he was Big Foot, he did look quite big but his feet weren’t that big at all, in fact I think they were smaller than mine. He said that if I went with him he would give me some sweets. I laugh now but when I think about it it wasn’t funny at all. I’ve always been told not to take sweets from strangers and he was a stranger eventhough he had introduced himself.

Two days after him I had another rescuer… "Prince Charming to the rescue!" he shouted when he saw me. He was even worse than Big Foot. I don’t know what his name was but his breath smelled of coffee of all things, so I packed him up. How could he expect me to actually want to be rescued by that coffee addict? Maybe he thought I needed some caffeine, I don’t know. I don’t know what he thought; I just packed him away too when he pushed himself against me.

The last one to come was a lady, all dressed in white too. She told me she was a fairy. Out of all of them she was the funniest. She didn’t have wings for a start, her hair was all done in a bun and to top it all up she was wearing glasses. Who has ever seen a fairy wearing glasses? No one has as far as I know. In fact, I’ve never known of anyone seeing one and besides, all the stories portray fairies as beautiful ladies that have long floating hair, lovely wings and a fair face; this so called fairy was very dark. Maybe she had been sunbathing under the lamp.

"Oh, no, here comes another one. What are you? An angel? Am I finally dead?"

"No, you’re not dead, Lucy. You’re going to be fine" said the lady dressed in white as she got closer. "I’ve come to help you".

"Another rescuer!" Lucy said as she turned around and played with a little box in her hands.

"It’s a nice box you’ve got there, Lucy".

"Yes, it is. It’s made of glass and it has snow flakes carved on the top, look at the delicate hand work..." Answered Lucy as she faced the lady and handed it to her.

Just as the lady went to take the box, Lucy jerked back. "You’re not going to fool me there. I’ll just put you in the box like I did with the rest!" and without any further warning, she proceeded to pull the lady’s hair with such violence that the lady barely managed to call for help.

A door opened and a nurse came with a sedative ready for Lucy.


The end
(737 Words)
© 2007 Alexandra Riera