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Ok, don't hate me for that. Let me compensate. This one is a real joke, I promise you.
So, Jack had this friend, this guy named Marcus he grew up with and that he loved deeply. Marcus was the only person Jack had in the world apart from his adoptive mother. They went to the same orphanages and supported each other through many troubled times.
Marcus grew up to be a doctor, and went to China. Jack became a low-level office worker, and was living alone with his mother... until the day his mother died and he snapped.
An entire life of privations and loneliness became a too heavy burden all of a sudden. Jack only had the memory of his now long-gone friend (it had been almost 20 years since they last saw each other) to keep him up. He would get drunk at night and mumble to himself: "Marcus is still out there. He remembers me, he said we were family". And many times he would daydream in his shitty job about getting enough money to fly over to China and meet Marcus one more time.
Then Jack got cancer, lung cancer. A bummer, given the fact that he didn't even smoke. And now, faced with his own imminent demise, Jack gave in to despair.
There was only one thing that would matter to him now: To find Marcus, to see his friend one last time. Everything else didn't seem as important.
So he sold his house, quit his job and flew to China.
But the plane crashed in the mountains of Tibet, and Jack was the only survivor. He forced himself to keep moving, to keep walking through the mountains, freezing, tired, almost mad, dragging the leg of the pilot with him to nibble from time to time. He walked and he walked, and when it seemed that he would die of exhaustion or hypothermy, he found a little village in the middle of the mountains.
The village was called Xy Xnguai... the same name on the postcards Marcus had sent him years ago! Could it be possible that he had arrived exactly where he wanted to be?
He walked through the small tortuous streets crowded with peasants, merchants and monks, and asked here and there of Marcus. Luckily some folk spoke English, and he almost fell to his knees when he heard that they knew Dr. Marcus, and when he finally got directions of how to get to his house.
He slowly made his way to the house of his friend, his limbs feeble and shaking, his eyes already wet in anticipation.
He knocked at the door and a small, white face peeked out. It was a beautiful, but angry-looking chinese woman.
"I-im a friend of Dr. Marcus... an old friend... is he in?", he asked.
"No, he's in another village, will be back at night! And no money! Go now!", said the woman, and slammed the door on his face.
Jack couldn't believe. Who was that obnoxious little woman who treated him so rudely? With a boldness only found in people who have nothing to lose, he knocjed again.
"What now? No money!", the woman said, but Jack insisted.
"I'm a friend... if Marcus get to know that I was here and that I could'nt meet him, he will get mad... please I'm starving... let me in, its cold..."
The woman made a face and a mocking sound with her mouth, and let him in. But her manners were inexistent, and she gave Jack a hard time.
"You dirty, no can sit! Stay in the corner!"
Jack did as she said. He stayed stoically in the corner of the room. The woman returned to the kitchen, from where all sorts of delicate smells were coming. Having had only a toe as a meal two days ago, Jack was hungry.
Timidly he said: "C-can I have something to eat? I'm ashamed to ask, but... my plane crashed... I hve no money left..."
"No! This food for Marcus's lunch! Marcus don't know no bum, you'll get a kicking!"
"C-can I use... the bathroom?", he insisted. He needed to throw up another piece of lung tissue.
The woman agreed, but reluctantly, and said that she whould kick him out if he did any mess.
That was the last drop. Jack had come form the other side of the planet to see his only firend, to tell him he would soon be leaving, and that terrible little woman treated him like thrash!
"Now listen here, mam", he said "You are the one who better prepare for some kicking, because when Marcus finds that I was here and that you treated me like this, he'll get really pissed! Who the hell are you, anyway?"
"I'm his wife", the woman replied, with a grin. "And now go!", and she called for a guy that came form the kitchen, and he tossed Jack on an old dirty alley behind the house.
Jack stood up, trembling with the insult (and the pain of the injury). All of a sudden it didn't matter any longer to Jack if he ever met his friend again. He just wanted to go back to civilization an die peacefully. His only friend, married to that monster! What kind of life did he leave there? Probably he wouldn't even recognize Jack. All sort of crazy shit went through his head all of a sudden. He went away crying, knowing that his last days would be lonesome.
Then he started to beg in the streets. Days would pass him by without a single coin being tossed at him, but he persevered, and the memory of his beloved friend Marcus would haunt him. Until the day he made enough money to buy him a ticket back home. So he went into the plane and prepared to take a nap, but he could not hold a violent gasp as he looked to his side, to the person sat right aside him... he could not believe who was sitting *just there*, looking at him with sweet, wet eyes...
THE GREEEEEEEEEEEEEN OOOOOOOOX!!!!!!! |
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