Chapter 23.5: The consciousness of resentment

Yes, that child was the child's genius.

He knew it when he saw the memory that flashed through her mind.

That memory of her was in his past, but he is supposed to be the child without a past.

The confusion in him allowed her to take over, rather, my little rats to take over.

The souls of my little rats, thanks to the union of their ears and their tails, created a kind of barrier so that the 5 senses of the child genius did not affect the consciousness of Luz.

And it is that, when Luz panics as in the memory of the hunt, she awakens all her senses and devises the strategy to survive.

It is because of fear that she thinks and creates that circuit of thoughts, just like a writer does. No character can escape the writer, just as no feeling can escape fear.

Luz's memories filtered through the tails and ears of my little rats. There the feelings of the child genius trapped.

The supposed magic of the child's genius yields to the force of the present.

Luz succeeded in bringing the child genius back to the present and, perhaps, becomes the child genius' most painful memory.

"Tell me where he is. They are not going to do anything bad to him. He thinks that our son is going to revolutionize technology. At last, this town will have a name in this world."

The man had a stubble of a beard, a black hat, and a brown leather vest. He was leaning against a white column, while impatiently watching the woman at the other end.

She wore her hair loose, soft, and docile, a black jacket, and jeans that fit her very well. Her back turned to the orange wall, where she was placing a picture of a boy in a prince's costume.

"I don't care about this town, just me and my son. You are not his father, so you can't decide whether to use him as a guinea pig or not. You don't have any rights, so tell those idiots in white coats that my son is mine."

Fury seemed to be looming in his gaze, but the man was struggling to contain himself. He placed his hand on one of the pictures on the wall next to him.

"Get your filthy hands off my painting…please."

The man ignored her completely.

"Please, I ask you to think about your son. He's a freak. It's not just that he talks to the spooks in the afterlife anymore. That at least was in certain books.

But, but people blacker than night?

Wouldn't you be scared if you weren't his mother?

Black people shouldn't be called black because they're not. They possess the color of the earth: brown.

On the other hand, if your son doesn't smile, anyone would only see a shadow.

Is that what you want?

Do you want him to remain totally black… that color everyone is afraid of?

Or do you want him to be more than just a prince?

You want him to be your prince, don't you? "

The mother kept silent and the man pulls her from behind, while he shouts, "You're a witch!". The woman moans in pain because her ankle is bent. The man panics and carries her to a red armchair.

"You're such a fucker!

Yes, yes, I am a witch!

So easy, I guessed your lover's house.

Are there any others?

What a question of mine, isn't it?

Of course, there are, there are!"

The mother became hysterical, and her erratic movements made her look possessed with anger and pain (not only the one in her ankle).

The man grabbed her by the arms and pinned her down.

"Stop saying that, you're crazy!

You've always been a jealous sicko. You have to stop.

I stop at the lab, I don't watch your shows, but I wonder what your son will see on a daily basis."

The woman shrieked from the pain as the man put the protruding bone back in place.

"Maybe your son's skin color has a solution. Plus, we might have full contact with the world beyond.

We might even find the formula for eternal youth. Every woman wants to be beautiful forever.

This is a unique opportunity, the father of your child would regret leaving you.

Well you know, he would be the first to come."

These last words he whispered very softly in the woman's ear. He wanted to produce a certain hypnotic effect. He wanted to convince her of something for the first time in her life.

Likewise, he could never convince her to love him.

Luz felt a certain tremor in her body. It was the child genius fearing for his mother's response.

What was it for her?

A child? A toy?

Her son or her prince?

"You can forgive anything to anyone, but betrayal…the day that fucker left, I promised myself that my son would be a prince at heart.

I promised that he would have more courage in his little finger than you have in those plastic muscles.

I can forgive, but betrayal…betrayal of that promise, would mean betraying myself…that's not even in your dreams, you idiot."

The woman spat in his face and the man threw a fist at her. The woman's nose began to bleed. The man pulled away, somewhat frightened. His gaze seemed transfixed by a terrifying thought.

Luz watched the whole scene through the open window. The curtains were open.

Snow and air are cold in and of themselves, but if you feel them through the senses of someone trapped in their own past, the feeling becomes even more desolate and unsettling. The frustration of not being able to use a knife or a gun to annihilate that dark past.

It was impossible for the boy genius to have no past, or was it?

Luz did not understand how, but she was somehow teleported to the boy's house.

Did he really have such strong mental powers?

Or did he do it by means of the machine he invented?

She could touch the window sill and crouch below, next to the colorful roses.

What a contrast the beautiful little garden was to the scene inside the house.

Magic was not enough to make four walls a home.

"Don't do stupid things, don't irritate me too much…"

The man began to jog and try to relax so as not to lose his sanity.

"If you don't what, what are you going to do to me?". The man was going to go outside. The woman wasn't going to let him leave without making him suffer more. As much as he was hurting her. "Even if you run away, as always, your feelings always stay in the house.

Your body walks, but your mind has the curse of belonging to this family. Go away, but forever…for this is my house and my curse.

You have no family here or anywhere else.

Your curse is to have no common curse, so you will have to face it alone..."

The man approached her to pat her near the corner of her lips.

Luz felt as if he had given it to her. As if the corner of her lips were the ones about to bleed. Holding her breath, with the sensation of her heartbeat engulfed, her chest distressed, her back hunched and her lips shivering with helplessness.

Her mind is in the brief pause of a comma trying to separate the sentence that would sum up her life, and make the difference between this and the child's life.

The water was supposed to be gone, and her strength was supposed to mark an end to it. The reality is that it was only "a period".

The water began to come out of his eyes through what we call tears.

As always, he ended up crying and in silence, always waiting for the "period" because violence was the great cliché of reality.

She felt sad to find coincidences between her and the child, but it was not only with the child. Two people were filming from their windows the scene inside the house. Maybe it would not make a good video, but the words would be engraved in the memory of that cell phone, as in Luz's memory.

Words are not forgotten like moments of terror.

One of them was her neighbor, the one who would have been a good history teacher.

Luz as well as he and the lady on the other balcony were spectators. Only narrators of a life with some coincidence with their own. Perhaps therein lay the attraction he possessed.

Attraction is an obsession.

And perhaps, the professor was obsessed with the Roman coliseum and the gladiator fights. Surely he wasn't the only one.

Now that he thought about it, all his reasoning always revolved around what he observed. A story starring others, and she was getting close to being like them.

Was the lead in a story worth sacrificing her childlike spirit for?

She was brought out of her thoughts by hearing grunge music blaring inside the house. The man walked over to the window and closed it and the curtains.

He put a period, but Luz was going to put a comma to separate the last sentence that had crossed his mind.

He clung to his childlike spirit to believe in the fantasy books he read until a week ago.

Her interest in books that talked about psychology or about the human mind did not wane, but fantasy books were a tremendous folly to her.

In those books, nothing was impossible, and that was what her childish spirit clung to. Therein lay the comma between her vital prayer and the child, or so she believed.

Luz detested adults, even more, if they were strangers, but the brute strength of that man had to be measured against another adult.

Nevertheless, when she went around the house looking for an adult in the street, she saw with surprise her mother knocking on the door.

Luz immediately ran backward. In her haste she fell on the snow and, besides the grunge, a Disco song started to play at full volume.

She recognized that both the Disco song and the grunge song were the same as the priest's and Marisa's, respectively.

Her mother liked to pass by that street just to admire the houses in that neighborhood, the affluent ones.

Rows of three- or four-story houses painted with portraits alluding to famous works of art linked to religion. Where now Luz was looking for that God that before he believed to be unjust only with the poor. When, really, it seems that he is crueler to those who throw coins in the air.

Margot and the child genius were faithful proof of this.

The lamp posts radiated yellow light like the sun. She expected them to radiate some genius excuse about her mind when she sees her mother in front of her.

She heard the footsteps approaching, but perhaps Luz's fear of the other adults drew the mother to her.

Mary looked into her eyes with a sadness that even she didn't seem to understand. She turned around and came back to knock on the door and yell, "Tiff?"

Didn't Mary see her?

Luz ran straight towards her, but trying to take her hand, something strange happened: her fingers intertwined, and she felt her sweaty hands tremble. Then, the lines on Luz's right hand collided with the lines on her mother's left hand.

She felt and heard a friction sound.

The chill of her drops seemed to plant in her an ancient premonition about the palms of her hands.

The chant in verses of a desperate cry emitted from the heart of the girl who was still dozing in the camp.

It sounds like a group of little mice screaming for a reason they don't understand.

Sure, it's because they're kids, and they're still kids. They don't know what they want. That's why adults like me exist, to guide them to their destination.

Whether they like it or not, children are under the yoke of thinking adults.

Although there are also times when adults do not understand.

Why don't my little rats laugh if they fight to save their father?

They should be proud that they are not just storytellers.

Between them and Luz, there are light-years apart.

What can I do to be a better father and get to communicate again with my children at heart? How I hate you, Lucifer.

Besides, if they are in Luz's heart, it is because she and my little children have such a reason to scream with fear.

After all, this story is still Lucifer's, but the screams involve the wind as well.

Luz screams because she can't stand the screams of my little rats.

She feels a strong intestinal pain and I hear again the noises of her intestinal flora. Like a rhythmically unpleasant wave that reaches up to the neck of the dark being.

Does the dark being and she feel the same?

I know that these sounds belong to Luz's stomach, but I feel them where I am practically stuck: on the neck of the dark being.

It cannot be the shadow of Light because it does not feel anything, it is an inert being. The shadows of mortals only serve for the supreme beings to observe the movements of their mortal subjects.

It seems to me of mortal animals, like me even though it weighs on me, that I have forgotten that my sense of hearing was already back in my body. Only that my cat-like body nailed to the neck of this dark being.

How could I forget?

I think Luz's last memories have been so troubling, her heart produced so many beats in a few minutes; above all, her emotions have been so volatile that it clouded all my senses except the auditory one.

These last memories caused me to inhibit my own existence. But I was still there, at the scene, next to…. I only live with his thoughts, but I could not see his body.

What if her body wasn't teleported either?

What if it was a sense of her that was teleported?

But could there be one sense that contains all the senses?

That would explain why her mom didn't see her.

All these questions are what she is asking herself now that she is at the mercy of the darkness. She is outside the cabin and I am inside.

"You have to tell me, how do I get out of this room?

My mom is in danger, your father is crazy…"

Her almost 9-year-old girl's voice trailed off with those last 4 words.

"So is she, everyone is crazy, you and I are insane. The only thing that makes us different from them is that… at least I don't pretend I'm crazy.

I also want to get out of here, my mother made me run away like a coward when she taught me not to run away from anything or anyone, visible or invisible.

If she made me run away, I can give myself permission to break a promise; but no one must know that I left, nor can I expose a pink girl like you."

A part of Luz feels as if she is a princess, and he is a prince who will save the day.

Although, another part of her feels like when she sees her mother terrified of her father's demands for savings: Some indignation and resentment.

Which of these two parts predominates in Luz?

"My mother has nothing to do with your parents' argument, please…"

The one responding in the voice of a 9-year-old was the dark being.

"Nothing will happen to her, I'm just asking you to cover me in here until I get back.

What do you say?"

Luz could no longer ponder the answer.

"Will you open the door for me now?"

Impatience and fear wrapped around her like a spider web with a fuzzy exit. She hugs herself to give herself courage and believe that her mother will come back to embrace her.

"I can't. Or do you think I like being locked up for my pleasure?"

Panic tripled in Luz, and she began to bite her nails. She exerts the pressure she thinks is enough to keep her from having a breakdown.

"So what do I do?

What can I do?

I… I… I!"

Her body began to shiver. She imagined a lot of scenes from serial killer documentaries and the like.

"Shut up!

Listen. All these books talk about Necromancy, forbidden magic.

I had to lock myself in here to be used as a guinea pig.

Marisa lied to my mother. She told her she would give me shelter, but she didn't tell her at what cost. She took advantage of the fact that my mother was desperate because that man wanted to take me to that government lab.

I am nobody's puppet

A tremendous frustration was latent in her distressed voice.

"Tell me!…please!"

Actually, he wasn't wasting a second.

"Exactly, you see how you shouted, but don't do it anymore.

You have to exasperate these books to make the lock appear.

It won't be a problem for you."

That one he did take as an insult, but there was no time to waste… or he'd lose his mom.

In here, the fire breathed by the dragons that go from one side to the other. They look excited because Luz is about to enter.

The wave of intestinal pain increases as much as the shrieks of the souls of my little children. Isn't the boy genius supposed to save the day?

"Black magic only loses the balance between its elements if it loses the most important one: The apple of Iris.

I doubt you don't know the myth."

Luz couldn't believe how long this conversation was.

"What the hell is wrong with you?

Stop with the introductions, or what are you looking for.

Or do you hate your mother?"

This question made the boy genius very angry.

"Is there anyone who doesn't hate their mother?

Because if that's your case, it will be very easy what you have to do.

Don't worry about the weather, I'll take care of that.

If you believe me, fine, and if you don't, either…"

Supposedly, the boy genius will receive the help of his friends, the little people from beyond. He claims that the air we breathe is the remnants of the dead. There they wait to come to life when breathed in through the nostrils of any person.

In short, the myth of Eris is about the apple that will choose the most beautiful goddess of all.

Beauty is the key to making the apple that is the lock of the castle appears.

The drawback is that Luz right now has scarred skin.

Can there be beauty in scarred skin?

In the myth of Eris, it was written on the red skin of the apple: "For the most beautiful".

Many goddesses wanted to possess the apple and crown themselves the most beautiful. There was chaos at the wedding of a certain goddess, but the important thing here is that the winner was Aphrodite.

She cheated.

She promised Paris that she would give him the most beautiful mortal: Helen.

All in exchange for him giving her the apple.

Cheating pays, but it was not and will not be Aphrodite.

She is a goddess, the most beautiful of all according to a mortal.

Wouldn't that be a serious humiliation for the other goddesses?

"What does that have to do with my mom?"

Luz doesn't understand what the boy genius is getting at with so much preamble. The darkness of the room (she thinks she's in it) and seeing no one; sometimes, makes her feel like a madwoman herself talking to herself.

She never thought about the real possibility that she was insane. She considered talking to herself normal for a girl without friends.

Luz knew that she talked to herself, but if she was aware of it there was no real danger, according to her.

"Who is for her always the most beautiful or the most beautiful?"

Luz thought of her and her siblings: Flavia and Esteban.

Did they have anything to do with this mess?

Worry invaded her, if she alone could not take care of herself… no, she had to keep her siblings far away from all this.

"Leave my siblings out of this. Stop with the riddles, talk straight…. Or aren't you a gentleman?"

The boy genius this time knew where he wanted to go.

He got to the point.

"And can I bring your mother into this?

Whenever you screw up, what does she always tell you, just do it, and you'll see."

Luz couldn't believe he knew anything about her. They didn't know each other at all before, did they?

"How do you know…"

She couldn't ask because an avalanche of books came at her.

These same books also hid the cabin and formed the boy genius' castle.

What would be going on inside with the boy genius?

Luz wondered before she lost consciousness… the consciousness of her own hatred.