Gilberto Guadiana – 05/20/2025
Stories of quiet resilience. Each one begins with a quote. Each one ends with a truth you didn’t expect.
Author’s Note
The following is a preview of a future collection of short stories that may be published. To support this work, feel free to buy me a coffee. The images on this page are AI generated.
1
“Order and disorder. They each have their beauty.”
Coming out of the airport, it can be tough to take the purple line back home at night. The purple line isn’t directly connected to the airport. Instead, you have to go from orange to red to purple. Then you have to walk home to your dorm after that.
The red line is where you see some unusual characters. The orange line is filled with your usual suspects. But the red line could have drunk people coming back from the Cubs game, your stereotypical homeless man, or a sleepless, overemployed waitress. Sometimes the journey is uneventful. Sometimes the train is delayed.
You never really know how long the trains will take, so you have to pack a jacket. Chicago can get a little windy. You also have to be careful. If you’re not careful, you might miss something.
You might miss a trickle of liquid trailing near your 47.3-pound bag. If you did, you’d easily find a grinning man you had been ignoring for some time now. He seems to be generally harmless, but he likes to have his fun too. It can be cleaned, though. When you step away, he doesn’t follow.
The trip is taxing, even for your suitcase wheels. They break often when you make that kind of a trip. But it’s worth saving the money. It’s also arm training. The biceps complain, but the forearms are strong. They’ve been strong for a while now.
It’s been a couple of steady months of progress at the gym. The kind of progress you don’t notice until you’re walking the last mile after leaving the purple line stop. It hurts, but you’re used to it by that point.
It’s just another rep.
2
“Let’s commit the perfect crime. I’ll steal your heart, and you’ll steal mine.”
Coming back from home, the front door was open again. Your wife forgot to lock it. You hope she’s okay.
There have been crimes in the area lately. Your neighbor got robbed. Someone’s tree got spray painted with things you never want to see. It was the kind of things that make you ask yourself if you should be moving out soon.
But you can’t stop the surge of irritation. It’s been an issue for months now. You wouldn’t say it’s related to the dead bedroom situation, but it did start around that time. You miss your wife. A lot of it has to do with the two year old running around. He insults you. He steals your wife from you.
Still, the door is open, so you proceed with caution. You were never really brave. When your teacher put you in a chokehold, you didn’t report it. You liked the guy, but it stuck with you.
You smell something burning. It’s coming from the kitchen. It’s the kitchen you just spent $20,000 to remodel. It wasn’t cheap, and you didn’t have the money on it. But the HELOC did.
You find your wife scrambling to save the once yellow rice. No amount of spices is going to cover that up, but you’re probably going to eat it anyway tonight. The toddler is clinging to her leg.
You’re glad she’s okay. You’re glad he’s okay.
It’s only the rice that she’s still making for you.
3
“And then in that moment when I love them… I destroy them.”
Boredom. It’s something you’re used to. Your mom doesn’t pick you up from school until 6:45. Most days it’s not so bad. The library is open after school. You do your homework so finishing homework has never been a big deal. You’re at school longer than you are at home.
The library isn’t always welcoming. Carlos has had it out for you for a while. Your parents have been strapped for cash. They make just enough for you to not qualify for free lunch at school, so you’re the only one with a lunch bag. It’s not bad food, but it doesn’t always look great. You try to hide it. You feel shame.
Carlos likes to take your lunch bag. He says it’s a great massager for his crotch.
He’s sneaky enough to not get noticed by the chaperones. But the lunchbox smells afterward. It takes time to get the lunchbox back. Sometimes he gets his fix early. Sometimes he doesn’t.
Today’s lunch had one of your mom’s hairs in it. You didn’t eat the rest of your sandwich. Others would notice if you took it out. It’s a long hair. And now the lunchbox is serving a different purpose.
You try to get it back because your mom came early for once. It’s 4:45, so it was a surprise. Normally, you just hide around the side of the school.
You learned to stay away from the front. The chaperones always make you call your mom every ten minutes. You hate her voicemail.
But today, you need to leave. You’ve learned to talk shit. It’s one of the few things that works to get your lunchbox back. You call Carlos fat. You throw in something about his mom. Something sharp. Something cruel.
It works.
But you’ve been there too. Your doctor said you were obese just last year, before the weight dropped off.
You got the bag back. You said what you had to, but maybe you shouldn’t have.
4
“This is how I did it, Anton. I never saved anything for the swim back.”
It’s been eight months. Eight months since January. Eight months since you set the intention. Last year, you gained 50 pounds. It wasn’t on purpose. You’re not to blame. But the food saved you.
You’ve had depression for a while, but the fog is starting to fade. Pound by pound you’re able to laugh more and more again. It’s been over 13 years. You used to be handsome. You used to be able to look at yourself in the mirror. You used to have hair.
Now you’re making progress. They say it’s a weight loss journey. You thought it was going to be like every other January filled with broken promises. Last year was rough. The goal was to find a job and move out of your mom’s house. It’s hard enough being cheated on by your high school sweetheart. Add to that the sting when you lie to yourself and don’t follow through.
She was a good girl. You still think about her every once in a while. She used to believe in you. You saw that slowly go away and then all at once. Maybe the problems started when you couldn’t get out of bed on the weekends. Maybe it was before then. Anyway, she found someone else. But now you found the iron temple.
At the gym, no one really looks at you. You stick to the machines, serve your 30 minutes, and are on your way. The gym takes the suicidal edge off the end of the day. Before, you would just come back to your studio apartment and lay in bed.
Today was a lot of fun. You got to stock tuna cans on the shelves. You found the job through your mom. She knows a guy that knows a guy that got you the interview. It’s been good for you. You were jobless for two years.
The good thing is that you have your mom. You have the gym. You are still here.