A Nomad's Memoirs

By Marco A. Murguía Vidales

Many of us hold back the impulse to take some action. What sort of life would you lead if you lived by those impulses?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483518831

Book preview

PROLOGUE

  My Quest began in the simple full-shining full moon on my face as I was about to sleep. I was sleeping on my couch and remember waking up without a movement and had an out-of-body moment where I saw myself in the room with the radiant night light on my face. I remember hearing about how it’s bad luck to begin a journey on a full moon, but it’s nothing more than a superstition. I lay awhile wondering about life, love and all that can come. I know how any lifestyle can come my way and be something I choose, to a very certain degree. So many paths to take and once taken, I have regrets always. I always regret and talk about not regretting. Some day I’ll leave. I said to myself and slept.

Clichés were sort of my thing. I always liked trying to follow a storyline. I finally wake up from the battle, and my love is by my side on the hillside. There seems to be fire in the distance and a gun on my right hand. Tears are falling from the face of my love and the night is still with the enormous moon shining upon us on this hill with a lonely tree.

Please don’t leave me! She says with a sad, almost sobbing infliction in her voice.

I wait a moment to gather my breath and speak, You think I would? and smiled.

Several feet away lay a man. He wanted to kill me and searched for me for years, and was once a person friendly towards me and tried to guide me to the light. Sadly, I found adrenaline in the life of the underground, I knew I had options and danger wasn’t for me but for once I wanted to be something with ambition. Probably thanks to movies and much more, but this was more of a personal path. I chose to find myself as well. In the end, I think if it weren’t for me waking up that day when I was fifteen years old less than two months away from being sixteen, I would probably have many regrets and often have flashbacks of life like I did before that night.

Lay by my side I say with a smile and Solstice, my unofficial wife lay down and put her head by mine. Before she did this, I noticed she had a wound around her waist and tried to move to comfort her, but was too wounded and tired myself. Once we were on the ground, I began pacing back and forth from memory to memory in my head. I begin to think about the family I left behind but am interrupted.

Ready to take the pill? says Solstice.

Sure, you gonna take it too?

Yeah, just did, see? Open your mouth… I take the pill. There. She grins at me and we sleep before being taken by CIA teams and other authorities.

Part One - Within Campbell's Realm

Chapter 1

  A few days after my odd epiphany, I lost interest in most things and lowered my social life little by little. My family didn’t know and never knew what went on in my head since I always acted the same and no one really would care, just as long as I did something to help around. Even the crazy love for my school crush, whom I remained anonymous to, was lost. I simply spaced out and needed to breathe. I needed to get out.

I’ve never done crazy things, and if you consider jumping to pools from 7 feet in the air dangerous, be my guest. I knew I had nothing to cope with if I left, and little money of mine from a summer job I had picked up. One day I came home from school & simply packed. I took water, keys and a large breath. I felt nervous for some reason, but I needed to break free and hurried before I changed my mind or someone came home. I had taken a series of buses to Los Angeles where I would wander for a few days and only buy the cheapest of foods. After finishing my money, at times I had to steal, which was pretty easy, and I did so to liquor stores or stores with cheap imitating merchandise. I didn’t know where I was heading but once out of the city, I went towards San Francisco.

I was on the road for quite some time and tried to hitch a ride, but most people now and then pretend to be busy and not care so they just pass by you. The sun was almost scorching, and I was walking on a sweltering path that seemed little like a desert, but there were grassy hills to the west. As I kept noticing my surroundings, a car was pulling up beside me.

Eh! Boy! Where ya headed?! yells a man in a car slowly stopping.

Seeking life and headed to San Francisco sir. I say in a proud but slow voice as I walk on the concrete burning my feet.

Fag countray? Aha, I’m headed thurr’ mah-self but only for business! My buddy ‘n I advertise businesses. Anyways, we’s wonderin’ if ya need a lift?

Sure, thanks! I say with an uplifting voice. It was really fast and easy for some reason and as I got inside the four-door crappy smelling Honda Accord, I saw a pizza box on the ground and slimy stuff on the left side of the seats. I was probably in a car with people who could take advantage of me and be degenerates, or maniacs who’re seemingly friendly.

So how old are ya? You in school boy?

Yeah, actually in high school, but just left home some time ago. The man seemed to take in my words and after a few moments he turned around and said,

We’re turnin’ you back or turnin’ you in boy, yeh can’t be goin’ nowhere alone. Next gas station, we stoppin’ ‘n callin’ yer parents. I simply hated that idea. Everything would be ruined. All I say is, Oh sure, ruin my fun then. and remain silent. Upon arriving at the nearest gas station, the man’s friend leaves to urinate, and I ask the driver if he could at least get me a Gatorade. He warns me about leaving the car, so as soon as he’s inside the store, I throw my back-pack to the co-pilot’s seat, jump to the driver’s seat and turn the engine on. He saw me through the window and ran, but before he could yell I was already speeding out of the Exxon at about sixty miles-per-hour. When at a safe distance I stopped, and took out a Sharpie from the glove compartment and changed the car’s plates a bit.

  No authority of some sort was around to contort my escape, which was great, so I saw the gas tank and noticed it was half-full/ half-empty, it didn’t matter which, but those are in many ways opposite words as one is optimistic and the other sounds sad. I also realized the only car in sight was a red one coming my way from the other lane so I went as fast as I could. Upon reaching some city I didn’t know I immediately parked outside a small business center, left and searched for a bus stop or train station. I asked around for a bus leaving to San Francisco or something getting me near. The only answers I got were questions asking me for my age, school, parent’s locations and more stupid questions. Most of these people didn’t really care and I knew, but sometimes adults create a sense of responsibility due to laws implemented into cities & or schools and public officials trying to make caring for, Cool. I wandered for a few minutes and found some guy who agreed to go with me as a guardian but would want 50 bucks, and was as he said, Unfortunate thanks to the economy. A cool, rich-looking homeless if you’d ask me. I made the deal either way since I had found $125 in the car I took from the 2 ignorant bigots. I began to feel numb the more & more I traveled. I was slowly losing the person who left his home from my body.

Chapter 2

  We reached San Francisco by car, since we had coincidentally arrived at this homeless man’s home city, and drove another car from there. I knew it was stolen, so why’d he hide it?

  I took the life of a homeless with little luxury around San Francisco. I showered on beaches with Dove shampoo and dressed behind some trash containers. I worked out most of my time and took jogs, or talked with store clerks about me being poor and used manipulative words that got me a, "Wait until I close the store kid, I’ll have some stuff out for you. I don’t wanna get caught or have you get caught!" Sometimes clerks would threaten me with the cops. One time I got a very pretty, single clerk to do this for me, and got invited to her place out of pity. I found out she was a twenty-one year-old student at UC Berkeley that had to leave due to lack of payment for tuition. The store she worked at was her aunt’s and had no other place to work. I got her to like me and let me move in, which was odd, because she convinced me and I’ve always been a sap for girls with looks like hers. Her name was Amber Constance and I told her my life story up to where I met her at the store. She was mostly intrigued with my literary status and intellect. She read poems and songs I’ve brought along with me from my old home and absolutely fell in love with me. This turned out to be any sixteen year-old kid’s fantasy. I lost my virginity to her, lived with her, and helped her with money however I could.

  One day, while jogging up a street a few men spotted me and surrounded me into an alley, and the street was one I didn’t know the name to. There was a man in the building to the right, on an open window one story up just staring and I said, Aren’t you going to do anything you asshole?! It really wasn’t a good choice of words, but they were instinctive ones. I thought about how kids my age and younger are able to do great martial arts and have abilities of the sort. With my thoughts on movie heroes, the adults began to surround me and unlike in movies, they would come all at once rather than one by one. I sprinted forward where two men were much closer to each other than the others who were spread apart. For that small moment of running, I lost my vision and became incredibly myopic. What was feet away from me was blurring itself and yet I could see things surrounding what was in front of me very clearly, I noticed my surroundings rather immediately in the second or two before I launched at two of the seven men that had surrounded me.

  Get that fuckin’ kid! yells one of the men as I spring into the air and kick one man in the groin and bring him down with my descent. The man next to him grabs me from the back and pulls me towards him. As he held me, three other men ran to do the obvious; hurt me. I try to think about what immediate course of action to take, but the horrendous smell of the man holding me is breaking any possible concentration I could have in a very tense situation. Being as big as he is, I try moving us back with my own movement and we reach a wall.  There’s a small space next to us where a trash container is a few feet from the building’s wall. I move us there and put my feet to the container and with all my strength attempt to crush the man between the wall and my force. I begin to hear a cry of agony and by then two guys are approaching me in the small space we are in. I got free of my captor pushed him towards the incoming men, jumping inside the trash container in search of some sort of weapon. I find a bag with a lot of blood and a blade with blood stains on it. As I held it with my right hand, two men grabbed me from outside the container and threw me out. Landing on concrete on my back was incredibly painful, yet I could not feel much pain of what I was supposed to feel due to the adrenaline shutting out several nervous functions. One man is crying and bleeding a lot from his face in front of the trash container, meaning I had somehow cut him on my way down. There was two down and five more to go.

There was the man holding his groin and four more that were not hurt at all. They were all carefully approaching me as I now held a deadly weapon since they noticed what it did to their friend that was on the ground crying in his own blood. I could easily run away was a thought that I had in seconds of getting up from being thrown to the ground but out of some twisted pride, I disregarded running away. I would stay and fight the unfair fight. By now, my assailants were spread apart about four feet from each other in the alley that was probably nine meters wide. I am near another container and the men are beginning to close the C formation they had made by spreading apart. I take a deep breath, and throw the blade to the man on my right and run left to punch a man in awe; the blade had gotten its objective in the throat. I punch again and then feel a hand on my right shoulder, then the pain of a punch to the gut. I hold the second punch, grab his arm and throw him to the nearest container, though tripping him before letting go and he hits his nose right at the edge of the container. By then I was being grabbed again but I hold the man’s hands and begin breaking his fingers, but when I got to his index finger, I catch a haymaker to the left side of my face. In retrieving orientation of my location on the ground, the man I threw at the container is next to me bleeding heavily and almost as much as the one holding his face and crying heavily. The other one was dead by now. As I stand up I gather my surroundings and am faced with three more attackers. The one in the middle that attended to his dead friend did not grab the knife that was stuck in the other man’s neck which would mean he was still dying or would not touch the dead body out of respect, either way I had no immediate life-danger. Now two of them sprint towards me and the one in front throws a punch which I duck from and meet a kick by holding it with my hands. I turn the kicker around and turn to meet the man who passed me and punch him square in the face, but upon noticing where his eyes met I turn once more and meet a barrage of punches. I dodge by moving back, and before we reached the man I punched in the face I duck forward, but the man stopped before punching his companion. As I stand up once more the man who hadn’t attacked yet was on me with tears of anger and anguish on his cheeks. I was so fixated on the intense emotion in his eyes that I took a punch to the left of my face again. Before falling, I am held by a dizzy man who could barely hold me with his left hand. I take advantage of his trembling movements and try to get a hold of his arm but he jolts back between two containers in fear. I run at him either way and as he crouched in cowardice, I kick his face so hard against the brick wall that he goes unconscious. I’m punched from behind and turn to an incoming punch and a kick. I duck and hold the leg from the man to my left as I get up, and kick the man to my right in the stomach. He holds his stomach but comes back at once so I spin the man whose leg I hold