1mg of Champix per night makes your dreams go wild _ Story one
Portugal, warm day. The sun is spiking radiant light so high that you could feel the ultraviolet penetrating your skin every millisecond you stand out of the shadow. I’m out with my mother and a couple of female friends to what they call a relaxation retreat. We first enter in a futuristic 90′s mall, surrounded by blue neons and no windows. We all clime a ramp, like those we would find in cinemas, but instead of finding a big screen and an enormous amount of velvet red chairs, we reach a line pile with desperate mothers and crying children. I realise this cannot be Portugal anymore, and that that ramp took us to another place, somewhere else on earth. In this place, there’s light which passes through plenty of white venetian blinds. I look outside and see miles of brick coloured soil. It seems pretty dry. I sweat. Our turn arrives and the woman in the beggining of the line acts as a receptionist of a 3 star hotel. She is wearing a dark blazer with a white ironed shirt. She has a metal tag on the left pocket of her black blazer, but I can’t read it. She seems tired and hopeless. She asks how many we are and my mother answers. At this point, my mother is the only person I recognise near me and she makes me feel safe. The receptionist handles us a pair of towels and says that we need to bring them back, otherwise we will pay a fine. We jump through a passage filled up with water and chloride, like those you can find in public swimming pools. We need to disinfect our feet to enter the place. The place turns out to be a gym locker room, again full of light. We see women finishing up their showers, they do not seem so relaxed as I would expect them to be. I blame myself now. The voucher was my idea. My mom and I carry a small bag, where we store the towels. So far, we have no idea what to expect or which activities we are supposed to or can participate. We open the door of the changing room. We see more miles and miles of dried brick coloured soil, here and there some trees. We start walking and, after a couple of minutes, the other two friends of my mother appear, chatting to themselves and to us as if they have always been next to us. I feel a strike of pain on my chest. I have a boil that five seconds ago was not there. It’s enormous and I can’t hold the pain. I look back, no signs of any building, no gym locker. We don’t have water. The wound pulsates along with my heart beat, which is now very fast. My mother knows what I’m thinking and suddenly everything swirls while we run, scream, cry, hurt each other and shout ugly things that make no sense. The pain increases, I feel that it bleeds out its contents and I expect the pain to go away, but it doesn't. I have no clue where I left those stupid not-so-white towels. My mother gets upset with me and pinches a piece of my leg so hard that I can feel the pain hitting deeply my heart. I wake up.