I had always dreamed of my two best friends meeting each other; they had never met before. I really wanted them to become friends and, in that way, a perfect circle would be perfectly fused, forever. On the one hand, there was Nicholas. We were inseparable. My twin soul. My brother.
Countless were the times when we joked about how long had passed since we had met for the first time. Actually, we never tried to make a huge effort so as to remember, or to search for a date that served as a reference to our memory. The two of us believed that the absence of a date was just a symbol that ennobled our friendship… it could be seven, eight, ten years, or several lives back.
What mattered was our friendship.
Above anything else.
On the other hand, there was Elias, another life-brother of mine. He had been countless nights by my side, helping me study so that I could graduate as a chemist.
Both worked highly demanding jobs, with long shifts. Nicholas was a taxi driver. Being his own boss and his own employee, he knew when his day started but not when it finished.
Elias worked as an architect, and he also taught lessons at university. And, as if it was not enough, both had recently become fathers. Bingo!
How I wished for them to finally meet. It was a desire from the heart. I was absolutely sure that they would forge an exquisite relationship as I already enjoyed with each of them. The three of us would be inseparable, indivisible.
My birthdays had always been multitudinous, but for my thirtieth one, I had decided to have a small feast with no other person, but the two them. I talked to them, asked them what date was convenient —it took a pretty while for both to coincide— and we set a date. My two beloved friends would finally escape their paternal bubbles for a moment. “Oh, yes, babies! Can’t you see that daddy is not at home? Well, now you will have your shitted asses only cleaned by the stupid beings you have as mothers!” We three would meet at my apartment and we would talk, laugh, eat, and drink as much as we wanted to.
It is not an everyday occurrence when you have the chance of dining with both your best friends at the same time.
When the day arrived, my birthday had already passed two weeks before, but my birthday became just a mere excuse, in the end. They were finally meeting each other!
They started laughing. It happened unexpectedly. I knew it. It could not fail. They were a perfect and vibrant amalgam. We would be three inseparable friends. An iron union. Something just unbelievably fine was being forged. As the meal progressed and drinks flowed freely, they grew more and more relaxed. They already joked about everything, all the time. The empty bottles of wine were piling up on the table as we gluttonized the chicken with potatoes we had ordered. I delighted on watching them. They were so relaxed. And I was in sheer ecstasy. This picture was what I had always cherished: my faithful friends, my bosom friends. The Red Hot Chili Peppers played out loud and I knew that my lifeless neighbors would protest bitterly in the morning, mercilessly, but I cared nothing.
At a certain point, Nicholas started to feel sick and grabbed his belly. Then, Elias. I giggled about that with them: some much food and booze were only just necessary so as to recover all those dinners together we had missed from enjoying.
When the poison proved effective, my friends collapsed on their plates as they ejected bits of chicken and potatoes onto the air. A bottle of wine spilled over the table. Several buns of bread rushed down to the floor. I just laughed.
As good a chemist as I was, I had perfected the most suitable concoction. There were they! I had them both seated to my table: Never again would I have them separated from me. They were mine. No more excuses, no more cumbersome schedules, no more wives, no more infantile demons who the one thing they did was to suck the vitality out of my friends. There wouldn’t be any more motives for them not to know each other. I had only decided to capture that moment, to immortalize it in the culminating point of brotherhood, that moment when they understood each other the most, when they laughed the most, when, with their glasses high up in the air, they toasted, with no differences nor confusion, as those that appear after some time. It was a precious memory for it to be lost. Nice and happy things in life should be treasured in this way: when they are at their peak. Then, they start to fade and decay. Friendship does not understand time. We should always have time to celebrate it. And that moment was the perfect example. Besides —in all probability—, that encounter would have never taken place again, so I couldn’t take the risk.
The scene had just obtained perfection. The taste of ethylene glycol had just passed imperceptible as it was camouflaged in the wine.
Some moments later, I served myself the dessert.
Elias, with a swollen face like a big juicy cherry, was vigilant with open-wide eyes on me. Nicholas had his head stuck on the bloody vomit he had spurted seconds after becoming rock-hard tight.
When I finished my creamy strawberries, I congratulated myself.
One month afterwards, I found myself in a mental hospital, caged between four sponge walls.
Some, very few, familiar faces came to pay a visit. Some months passed before it seemed to me that I saw Nicholas and Elias snooping around at the park, concealed behind a mossy statue while peering into my window. I knew they were there. Those barefaced two. The ungrateful ones! I gave them the chance, the beautiful chance of knowing each other and now they were simply running away from me. I could hear their giggles from afar, their jokes, and their runnings around every time that my room was left in silence… I heard them whispering on my back, but as soon as I turned around, they were gone. Thankless beings, they were fooling me around. They stole my days away from me, they stole my sense of humor away from me, they stole my dreams away from me. What right on this Earth did they have to take everything away from me? I had done the impossible to bring them together and forge their friendship. My gut feeling had been true, they got along spectacularly well, so much so that they would be now forever united.
I decided not to turn around when their gossiping was left to be heard at some dark corner. I didn’t glaze over the park from my window anymore. I was not going to play their twisted game. I was just going to step some steps higher than the two of them. But I saw them, closer every time, at the halls, before the door was completely closed when a nurse came to inject me some substance or to force me to swallow some pill.
I stared at them as they tried to hide behind the door.
I started devising a plan and made a decision. As the doctor who visited me once a week entered the room, I hit his chin with all the strength of my head —he was taller than me—and knocked him to the ground. The strait-jacket held my arms while compressing my turbulent breath. As this man lay unconscious on the soft floor, I kneeled and took profit from the shiny wooden tip of his expensive shoes to bury my face with strength over them and tear my eyes apart… The jab of pain I felt when I destroyed the first one was terrible. A white ray that traversed my head. I was dizzy, but I couldn’t let myself fall. The anger I felt because of those two hypocrites was superior to the pain, and that feeling encouraged me to rip my second eye. The blood became sticky against the doctor’s shoe and stained my strait-jacket. I fainted.
Two months later, my body was spread on a bed, fastened with bandages all over, but I had cooled off since I couldn’t see anything. I had music on twenty-four hours a day. I had begged for loudspeakers since, even if I had no eyes left to see them, I could still hear them, those giggly whispers and continuous laughing. I grew increasingly afraid of them. It was just unbearable. Sightless and with classic music on the background, I had some good days. However, nobody came to pay a visit anymore and I already missed my friends from the past. One stormy night, as I lay sleepy on my bed, the music went off leaving the echo of Mozart all over the room. I started to scream nervously until a novice guard came over and told me, with a troubled voice, to calm down. It was only that the power had been cut off, it would be soon fixed. At least, the storm was already at its peak and flooded the room with its deafening noises, so if one of my old friends wanted to speak, I was not going to hear him.
The furious storm ravaged the building. Minutes passed and the music did not return. All of a sudden, I felt a slight touch on my right hand. A delicate tingling feeling. My wrists were fastened to my bed just as my torso and my legs, I could only move my head. Troubled and in a state of confusion, I focused on what I had sensed, until that slight touch was transformed into a sort of handshake that made my fingers suffer pain. Somebody was holding me tight and squeezing my body. I knew who this was. It was one of them. Nicholas approached my ear swiftly and started whispering. I recognized his mellifluous voice. I yelled at him to stop until Elias was close to my other hear, whispering incomprehensible stuff.
I twisted my body as I screamed, while they pressed my wrists with more and more strength each time. If I had still had eyes, they would have been open like tennis balls. Nobody came to my aid. My heart whipped my chest like a furious boxer as I twisted in every possible direction. The pressure on my flesh was unbearable and I started losing consciousness. Among laughs and whispers, I heard their voices clearly. They blamed me for what I had done. I yelled at them to stop with the last trace of voice I had left. Little by little, my breathing halted.
Some moments later, the music was playing again. Two nurses darted into my room as I was standing next to my body, leaving it behind forever. I recovered my eyes and was able to move freely. Repulsive was my face with those two black holes on it, cruel were the bandages and fasteners that held the body tight. The nurses couldn’t see the marks on my wrists, but I did. They were crimson-colored and still deeply engraved where the veins bulged out.
I only needed to find my old friends, wherever they were. But I had the feeling that I was not going to see them ever again. They had just fulfilled their goal.
They had forgotten about my friendship.
The ungrateful ones were gone, forever.