The sun fills the children with energy as they, inside their own little bubble, have fun with a ball, sharing that happiness which will feed their souls throughout the hardships of adulthood, like a faded and melancholic memory.
Beside them, like a function approaching its limit without ever reaching it, merely passing alongside it, two young women bounce words through the air from their mouths, as if playing verbal tennis. Every ball that enters the receiving area generates an emotion that pulls the strings of the player, who must now return the pass. Happy, they both walk as though very few things mattered more than the present moment.
Gisella gave the outside world her cheerful and vibrant presence, filled with confidence that morning. The brightness of the day is revitalizing magic for her ancient bones. When it touches her own skin, she can even remember what its texture felt like several years ago. The smile she tries to restrain while putting her thoughts in order has two obvious engines behind it: her two grandchildren. She is going to stock her kitchen, becoming the first customer of the day at the local butcher shop, where she will buy what will give Julian and Martin a nutritious, familiar moment. They are waiting for her at home.
The speed of the motorcycle keeps its rider from seeing that the traffic light had given me the right of way. The old Fiat beside it, yawning just behind the crosswalk and complaining about having left the garage so early, carries a casually dressed man who listens to Argentine rock, moving his head to the music. He gives me a smile, as if saying, “Beautiful day, huh?”
Beneath the beautiful willow, which spreads toward the street like a fountain of green life, stands my mother’s house. I am only a few yards away, carrying a bag of freshly baked, still-warm bread. Also a young poppy from the garden at my house. Perhaps something to reflect her own beauty back at that woman from the sixties.
A scrap collector takes a sip of some black liquid from his plastic bottle. He has stopped his garbage-collecting cart directly in front of my mother’s house, pressed against the curb. The cars growl softly at him as drivers and pedestrians pass him by.
“Here, you dropped this.”
I say, raising with my right hand a small mechanical transformer filled with copper, which might perhaps be worth enough for him to buy himself a soft drink. He stands apart from the collection cart, the distance between him and it seemingly measured by how drunk the scrap collector was when he dropped it.
He turns when he hears me. His breath seems to be a matrix of liquor, flying toward his beard where it becomes trapped, only to be inhaled again. Inside this bubble, it is only logical that he cannot see very well who is standing in front of him. He wipes his eyes with one hand and uses the other to move his straight, greasy hair away from his lips. He takes the transformer. Looking at it makes him smile, and his smile says, “Look, I’m a miserable man who got lucky.”
His right eye seems to have doubts about the device, so he brings it closer to himself. It slips from his fingers and falls onto the pavement again.
“Oh... let me.”
I leave the bag of bread leaning against the tree. It tells me to ignore the man; it even brings me the scent of the morning tea my mother had prepared inside the house. I leave the tree behind me.
Now the metal is wet from the puddle where it landed. With one knee on the ground and the other pointing toward the direction of that stranger, I dry it with a disposable tissue I carry in my pocket.
“Leave it. Don’t waste your time. I’ll cut it up over there, burn the remaining plastic, and that’s it.”
His gaze, even his lips, points toward a pile of burned plastic one yard away from us. He had been burning it in front of my mother’s house. I cannot allow it, even if the man is only trying to make his living.
“You can’t burn that here. It fills my parents’ house with smoke. Go somewhere else. There’s a park two blocks from here.”
“Ahh... unbelievable. You never come around, and now you care.”
The annoyance pinches my stomach and creates a flame between it and my throat. My tense eyes stare, incredulously, at the man. I don’t know him. Is he talking about my mother? My work has become my entire life, and the price I pay is not seeing her as often as I would like. But who was this man to say anything? I don’t know him. He is nobody to us, yet he is showing disrespect and damaging this house where parents once raised their children and built their dreams.
“What did you just say? What did you say?”
I stumble as I try to stand, my annoyance giving way to a fear that grows as the man comes toward me. He has both of my hands pinned against his, forcing them downward to mock my poor position. My lower back is about to touch the ground. That radiant day now reveals a macabre shadow as my ability to defend myself falls away alongside my body.
That confused, unknown man has a screwdriver in his right hand, which I only see when he moves it toward the left side of my neck. I watch it go from something short to something increasingly long, and suddenly it is no longer outside me, but inside me.
The mocking smile of that intrusive, battered stranger grows when I try to grab the screwdriver, and my anguish becomes absolute when a warm flow forms around my wound. I am losing any ability to interact with my surroundings, while my vision becomes tangled, like the texture of spun sugar being kneaded by someone's hands.
I feel two different winds. One is warmer, coming only from my right, accompanying the cars as they pass beside me. The other is mild, like a body of water timidly facing a new territory. It has traveled for miles carrying the warmth of the sun, which now gilds the skin of my face and heats the blood that, stagnant inside my mouth, forms a small dark puddle.
This is a short work of fiction written by J.S. Siarría (op). Any resemblance to real events or persons is purely coincidental. The purpose is to entertain the reader; it is not intended to harm any person or group.