The Land of The Lost - Chapter I

"I must be going out of my mind".
His hands grabbed the steering wheel, while Eric Clapton stroke the chords and sang "Tears in Heaven". His heart pace was getting quicker the closer he got to the place that, 30 years before, he had promised not to go back to. He had no urge to see the village that had watched him give his first gasp, struggling to breath: what he wanted was to turn back and drive away to the city, where people wouldn't know him or judge him.
The silver BMW drove quickly through the dusty trail - there were no motorways where he was going. Outside, the sun was up in the sky, there were no clouds on sight. There were also no buildings, no cars, no nothing. Just an immensity of green as far as the eye could see.

His name was Mário. He came from a village so small and so far away from the rest of the world that it didn't even show up on maps. No one knew of the existence of this village, and those who knew it thought of it as a ghost town. It hadn't always been like this. When he was small, the place was bubbly and lively - the main street was full of colour and noise, people chatting, dogs barking and children laughing. He feared that that wouldn't be the case anymore.
It was as if the village was closed to the outside world: there were no televisions and few newspapers, and the mail man only came once in two months, but the news he brought with him were vague and distant, as if they were coming from a dream. Until he was 11 he never knew what a car was, and he only found out about it when he saw a picture of one in his school book. They had a small library, but most of the books were too old and moldy and you could barely read anything in them anymore.
He had had a blessed childhood and an even more blessed adolescence: he sighed, wishing he was young, naïve and full of himself again. He recalled the times when he took his bycicle everywhere, and when the limits to his world were the stone walls of the abandomned mansion and, on the other side, the oak tree.

He was afraid of going back, after he decided to run away when he was still a teenager. Behind he had left his parents, his friends and the one he loved the most. Moved by a narcisistic dream of being somebody, believing that he would never achieve anything so far away from the outside world, he excaped, refusing to take along anyone other than himself, knowing so many people wanted to come with him as well.
His life was worthy of a movie: ran away from his town, knowing nothing else about the outside world; found himself in the big city with only a bill of 20 $ in his hand and a pocket full of dreams. He slept on the streets, worked non stop, studied when he could and actually managed to become someone, buy a nice, big house, get married and form a family, and all this in 30 years, during which he never came back... Not even once.

"Maybe they won't recognise me" he thought "And I can pretend I'm someone else".
Maybe... Just maybe. Then again, that little village didn't appear in maps or GPS systems. Someone finding it would be a miracle. Only those who knew it from before would be able to find it... And he knew it from before.

Even though he kept wishing he didn't.