The New Covenant of the Buddha Christ Redemptor *UNFINISHED*

The church was called The New Covenant of the Buddha Christ Redemptor. Big name, big crowd. 

I let my friend guide me through the double doors, all the while fighting to let go of the feeling of being an impostor. It had grown on me as soon as we stepped on Hercules Prime. At first I thought the discomfort was caused by the change in gravity. I wasn't used to high-g planets. In fact, I wasn't used to being anywhere else other than Earth. Sure I'd been to Mars and the moons, like any respectable twenty year old, but I had never been outside the System. 

Basically, the hype around this new church came from this crazy idea that the Buddha and Christ were one and the same. That they were both incarnations of some higher being—some called it God, but most, like me, weren't comfortable with the term, not after what had happened during the Religio-Atheist Wars. After the Atheists had won the third war, the word 'God' had been banned, back on Earth. And people scowled and were shocked if you dared mention the names of Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Shiva or Yahveh. Being called a Christian was just as bad as being called a nazi. 

But on a remote world like Hercules Prime, anything went. 

The Pool *UNFINISHED*

My body reacted strongly to the smell of chlorine and the echoey sounds of children splashing in the water. I had avoided the pool for some years, after the incident. And I had expected a reaction, but not this one. My shoulders slumped down from their perpetual tension and it seemed as if my whole mind opened wide, just like after an hour of meditation. 

I headed for the locker room, and the relaxation deepened, reached my neck, my jaw. Why had I stayed away for so long? I knew why, but still. 

Most lockers were taken, and even those without locks had clothes in them. How people can be trusting… 

I stripped and quickly stored away my jeans, t-shirt, shoes and socks. It made me smile to think how I used to be embarrassed to be naked in public. Now I couldn't care less and even took a bit more time than I needed to put on my swimsuit. 

The showers were exactly as I remembered them, the yellow ceramic tiles glistening from the constant spray. A man and his soapy five year old laughed together. An older man finished and let me come through. 

"All yours."

As always in these situations, it surprised me that other people could actually see me. 

"Thanks," I called, a few seconds too late. 

The water was lukewarm. Not too cold to be unpleasant and also not warm enough to be enjoyable. I rinsed myself quickly and hurried to the door leading to the pool. 

The bay windows let in the oblique rays of the October sun. The light hit the water and made the blue sparkle. Two boys raced each other to the slide. A whistle blew. A bored voice told the boys to walk. A girl squealed as she jumped three times on the spring board and launched over the water, laughing. Behind me, a middle-aged man came out of the sauna, his wide chest red and steaming. In the pool, a group of ageing women chatted, their heads bobbing over the water as they went through the motions of some underwater exercise.

All was good. 

I dove in the fast lane, embracing the slight discomfort that came with the initial shock. Immediately, I arranged my goggles over my eyes and started swimming quickly. To get the blood going. I was out of shape, but it didn't matter. It felt good. Inches from the wall, I flipped and kicked hard, changing direction. Wave after wave coursed through my body until I had to breathe again and resume my methodic crawl. 

At Lake's Bottom *UNFINISHED*

I remember the day when I went swimming in the cold lake. My balls retracted inside my body and my legs came up too, because I hated the feeling of the seaweed on my legs. What was I doing there that day? I was looking for a body. 

The body of my daughter. 

No one knew for sure if she had drown, but I could left no stone unturned. Two weeks already since she disappeared. Two weeks. How fucked up was that? I still couldn't believe she was dead, and yet, everything pointed to that. I didn't think she'd been abducted like they mentioned on TV. 

So I dove, and shone the light in the cold darkness. No fish lived in this underwater world. Just eerie weeds that looks like dead women's hair. A submerged cemetery. 

I came up for another breath, and went down under, kicking hard, ignoring my lungs's pleas. They needed air. I needed my daughter. 

Thing was, we weren't close anymore. We saw each other maybe two times a year, since her mother had died. Which was sad really. I remembered those days when she was three and I would fuss and fight everyday against depression. Her temper really did me in. That, combined with the lack of sleep. 

She would wake up at night and shout that she was done sleeping, that she was not tired anymore--at 2am. I wanted to scream and punch a hole in the wall. But I went to see her and cajoled her until she would finally accept to lie down and close her eyes. Sometimes, it took less than a minute. Other times, well, we were up for a good two hours. The best moment would come after the first hour, when I finally accepted that the next day would be totally useless and there was nothing I could do about it. A great peace submerged me then.

Today was different. I couldn't accept her fate. How could I? It would mean going back home, sit on the couch, and stare at the wall for the rest of my life. Or swallow the hard metal of a gun. I'd tell the clerk at the store I wanted to get into shooting practice. I'd only need one bullet. 

My hands and feet were numb from the cold, and even though I couldn't see them, I thought my lips must be blue. 

I kept at it, swimming farther from the shore. It wasn't a big lake. More like an oversized pond really. We would come here often when she was in her teens. She loved when we took out the canoe and paddled hard for the tiny island in the middle of the lake. We spent all day over there, fishing, eating our egg sandwiches and adding another room to the massive treehouse we had built over the years. 

Checking on it was one of the first thing I'd done after I got the news. Some kids had wreaked it: half of the structure lay on the ground because one tree had been axed. I had picked up the brown bottles and silver cans, put them in a garbage bag and left our past alone. 

I had almost reached the island when I found something hidden behind the curtain of slow-dancing weeds. My torch's beam reflected on a white object. It didn't look like flesh. Too bright for that. I estimated it was a good twenty feet below the surface, so I swam back up and breathed for two minutes, and when my heart slowed, I inhaled deeply and dove. I used both my arms, having tied my torch to my forehead, and kicked hard, heading straight down. I fought off the fear of seeing some monster appear from behind the slimy weeds and kept going. My lungs were on fire when I reached the bottom of the lake. My whole body commanded me to open my mouth and breathe in. 

My numb fingers raked the shiny object from the vase*.