Chapter 21: A little demon

My ears hear moans, my tongue feels the sparkle of another like a kind of water with a spirit of fire, my skin trembles as if a flag were waving and my intimate space functions as a third eye, the one that feels the connection between the dawn of the impossible dream and the part of Light that is me.

Though I narrate it so calmly, it hurts is an ancient pain, a pain I can't remember without my own catlike heart paralyzing.

I feel that maternal warmth is what has burned me the most in my entire life. Perhaps because it is what the Light that suffered the accident is proclaiming in the middle of a sudden delirium that through screams has awakened the whole hospital.

Wake up the whole hospital?

I don't know, it's like I have a feeling it's not the first time I've said that.

"This time she's very close to discovering the secret of teenage karma..."

So this draft has been written before. Well, why am I surprised, a writer can do thousands of drafts. A writer knows when to stop, right?

"When he wrote the spy cat story I knew you were real."

The spy cat a story?

It's another thing entirely to say that the storytellers passed images into the writer's mind, it's quite another to say that she made that story up. That is not true, the spy cat existed and long before humans.

The legend of our species deserves respect.

Worse, she is practically telling me that I am the spy cat and that is impossible. Another thing is that I am a disciple or, perhaps, even a direct descendant of him. You see, mothers hide many things from their offspring so as not to make them suffer.

Although if the spy cat were to say to me: "I am your father". Huy no, I'm not one of those who would waste time bowling to see who is going to make fun of whom. No, I would straight up ask him to reveal more secrets to me.

My father's soul in this life is that of a sex addict. A slum cat with nothing else on his little brain but sex.

Narrating soothes some of the pain I'm feeling. I can't describe it clearly because I'm the narrator, even though it seems I'm just another character in the story.

Has Lucifer even wanted to fuck up this draft?

"You'll never star in a novel."

Really?

Are you serious?

As if I would be interested in narrating a draft or a novel. I just want this unfair punishment to end and let me continue saving the lives of little mice. Of course, after I get mine back.

For Lucifer, I think that this discomfort is the result of the maternal heat being mixed with the dawn of the impossible dream, which apparently has its first watchful god: Me.

Who said that being a god creator of a world or a part of it is a task for bums with imagination?

The writer thought so.

And, should I suppose that this same writer has chosen for some strange reason my intimate zone as the creator eye of the invisible dream?

She must be influenced by Lucifer, although I thought Lucifer didn't control the writers but the other way around.

I don't know what the heck the leaders of heaven or hell are after by using the narrators, exposing them to tremendous embarrassing memories, to tell these writers a true fact that they will never verify.

Sometimes I think I should seek out an old-time storyteller to explain to me the secrets of this business.

Maybe there is a way out of this claustrophobic job.

How this punishment called work hurts: describing my own pain is forbidden.

Before I have only superficially described my pain to you because it was only a superficial and physical discomfort. Now it is a general and mental discomfort. It favors the fact that I have been left without a body.

Although, if all the melodies are heard as if the musical notes were inside a spiral, as if they were building harmonies that represent human moans and moans of other species of beings from different dimensions.

Moans, meows, very fine barks and other sounds, that although I cannot recognize, I can hear the pain trying to be pleasure.

I cannot hear anything that is unrelated to discomfort or pain. Although none of these sounds compare to the ancient pain I told you about earlier.

It is something like the pain of knowing that it is the beginning and the end of something.

I had already heard something about spiral sounds. Of course I never thought I would experience it because it is so human.

Lucky me... my sense of smell is now the echo of something my brain forgot, but my sense of smell remembers very well.

This is what is commonly referred to as "The Storyteller's Symptom". What happens is that narrators, because they utter so many words non-stop, can never smell their own scent, mostly because they must focus their nose on absorbing as much of the characters' air as possible. This is so as not to choke as long as he can't stop narrating (he must take in all the air available), and also to listen to the thoughts of the characters in the story he is narrating.

All narrators listen but none of them feel in their own flesh what their characters feel. They only hear their thoughts and describe the actions of their bodies. They are only observers of the lives of others.

Why do I sense that this interior monologue (if my sense of smell has any interior) on my part is a reproach or a complaint against someone else that my sense of smell remembers?

I'm not the first narrator to feel what the main character, in this case Luz, feels; but I'm not sure if I'm the first to fight against the protagonist.

FANTASY AGAINST REALITY.

And I guess Lucifer agrees with me. I always knew that my huge claws were not a cruelty of fate. That made me special and it's time for me to fulfill my painful demonic destiny.

This destiny illuminates me like the white light of a hospital bulb.

"What am I doing here?"

I feel the sweat of Light's skin like prickles all over my senses. It feels like I'm being nailed to a cross. Like I've committed some sin.

"She's awake."

Luz was at the town post due to the vehicular accident. The hangover had already passed, but a strange feeling of accusation or shame comes over her like an avalanche.

She felt the hairs bristle on her skin and a mogoll of strangely exciting sounds fed her mind with fear.

"He's burning with fever."

The doctor came immediately and sent for something called "injectables" or injection. Anyway, the point is that I now understand the reason why I feel so sick.

No!

The truth is that I already sensed that and I think my need for explanations may be blinding me.

No matter what it is, I just want the fever to go away....

Apparently there is a heated discussion, to say the least, between Flavia's sparks and Esteban's sparks.

Luz's sparks begin to swirl behind theirs. This swirl increases in the darkness of the camp cabin until it takes the shape of a man.

From there, the swirl just goes on and on emitting concentric circles.

These circles produce the sound of a flute: patient, strong and resistant to the fraudulent air currents that are manifesting themselves just now.

These currents are impregnated with an ancient scent, of blood and ancient corpses; but with a warmth that still illuminates their own deaths.

If there is still heat in the dead, it is because they did not complete their mission and now travel through time loops.

Who knows why the universe is more accommodating to humans than to animals or the supposed paranormal beings they call ghosts?

For humans there are always new opportunities. Neither heaven nor hell takes them for slaves. Although they have internal struggles, no one can stop them but themselves.

I wish Lucifer could not annihilate me if I do not obey him.

Sometimes I feel, despite being a cat with much pride in his species, as if in my spirit there is a certain dose of humanity that you call rebellion and a thought of my own.

From my kindness to the souls of the little ratites to my need to help this poor teenage human named Luz.

Naturally, the souls of the cats of these times think more about eating and sleeping. And yes, those two matters occupy much of my thoughts; but I do it not for myself but for the souls of my little ratites.

Cats, or at least the ones I've known, only see humans as providers of food and shelter. However, I have always admired them for their ability to pass judgment.

I always wanted to understand your mind.

I nor any of my friends never possessed that ability to conceive judgments as strange as....

Yes, I can tell by the smell, these dead are not ghosts or souls. These dead have another origin. These dead smell the same as the first strange judgment of human origin that I remember in one of my many lives (I would have to be a great sage to remember my first life): Human and animal sacrifices to thank nature for providing them with the necessary resources to live.

It's a smell of blood and rotting bodies.

"That's right... my mom suffers because of my being human, she thinks, if I were a being from a fantasy world with zero influence from humanity; then we would be just as perfect as the gods, we would have the judgment of the gods and not make mistakes, so my mom would be so distraught about leaving me alone to find another job.

However she is, she is my mother."

After a week of the incident with Alexis' stepfather (now I know it's the stepfather), Luz's mother was fired from her job with any excuse not worth remembering.

Now she had to find another job. Living on the 600 soles sent by her father from the nearest town to the city was not feasible.

Luz would be about 8 years old, her little sister, Flavia, 5 and the youngest of the three, Esteban, 4 years old.

It was a danger to leave an 8-year-old girl in charge of two infants. So she decided to accept the offer of Luz's former kindergarten teacher:

"I can take care of the three of them, my 14-year-old niece takes care of the two youngest and Luz could be the dancer we are missing for the children's parties we offer.

Although Christmas is over, it is still December and people are used to spending money like water.

Besides, I told you once lady, your daughter suffers from a tremendous hyperactivity. The busier she is the better for her to develop her soft skills.

I remember in pre-school, at the end of the year I was able to dominate all the girls. It was good, but I just missed mastering the boys and your daughter..."

Her father wasn't there because he had to see everything about his inheritance in that suburban town. Although her father had told Luz that her mother did not value him and that she belittled his effort by hinting at the possibility of her working; Luz wondered if she was not reason enough for both of them to want to talk to each other, not argue, or listen to what she had to say.

However, from that instant she knew that talking was impossible and that the need to do so within her was growing so fast and intense that it hurt her to her soul.

Only dancing, singing and running, above all imagining, stirred her sorrows and she was transported to the world of her dreams.

However, Luz did not like anyone to watch her singing or dancing. Her father had already scolded her for that.

"So much joy is going to cause you to be too shocked by sadness.

Don't you understand or do I speak Quechua?"

Since then, Luz only dances and sings alone at home. Where her mom was always washing, ironing and cooking. Where she was not happy and her wrinkles were more accentuated. Where it seemed that she and her siblings were a burden that her mother hardly noticed.

Before Luz complained that, despite having her mother at home, she felt lonely; now she complained about having to be watched by a stranger (to Luz all adults are strangers, to some degree, even her own parents) who always threatened her when no one was watching.

"Do you know that our ancestors took blood from the bodies of animals, children and women to offer it to the gods of nature?

Well, there are also gods for children and if you don't behave well, EL COCO, the god of childhood, will come for you and draw your blood for being spoiled.

If you are not a child EL COCO will start with nightmares and at the end .... you will make your mom cry".

That teacher taught her all 5 years of kindergarten. She always threatened her with EL COCO, the kind and implacable god of children.

Now what was she going to scare her with?

"And how do you plan to become a character in a fantastic world?

Or are you going to look for a magic lamp?"

Luz hated it when Nick teased her, as did the rest of the children. They used to believe in impossibles like she did, but apparently that was all in the past.

She, Nick, Margot and Tim were lying on the grass in the yard looking for pictures in the clouds.

"So much we've been told to be good children, and don't you deny it Nick, don't you think parents want angel children more than human children?

We should make contact with heaven, don't you think?"

Nick was shaking his head, Tim had his eyes half closed trying to find some figure in the clouds and Margot had her palms covering her eyes.

"My mommy could talk to daddy, but first put on braces because with those fangs mommy would say that introducing you to daddy would be taken as an insult to him.

Fangs belong to vampires and they are demons."

Luz had learned restraint from that pre-school teacher, but Margot had had it up to here with such hurtful comments.

She wasn't like that.

"I don't need no daddy. I'm not interested in human beings, I'm interested in beings from a fantastic world.

Dad is an adult and adults are only interested in their problems. They don't care about the rest.

Much less the children.

Neither you nor my parents understand me.

Do I speak Quechua?"

Margot stood up and ran to the back door of her house.

Luz thought she saw her lips tremble and that only happens when she wants to cry. At that moment she knew she had to apologize for her behavior. She didn't want her or any child to be sad, especially not because of her.

Luz left Nick and Tom staring at the clouds, while she entered Margot's house through the back door.

Although her house was more of a mansion, she followed the sound of her sobs.

In the foyer a spiral staircase, a fireplace, a chandelier on the white ceiling and on the walls paintings of aristocratic women and landscapes that highlighted the uncertainty of dawn and the certainty of night (maybe I'm trying to be a little poetic, although it doesn't come out very well, it's necessary).

Margot had taken the elevator, but Luz was always afraid of those boxes that take people up and down. No, she hurried up the big white stairs.

"For the umpteenth time. No, I'm not going down.

This party is not important, there is no reason for me to come down, but you can do what you want.

Isn't it enough that thanks to my money you can have your friend as an employee?

She may not be allowed in school, but here for money her babysitter will make her look as ridiculous as you want.

At your party he won't be able to answer you, and if he does, just tell me and he'll see"

Luz couldn't believe what she was hearing behind the door.

She knew Margot was a bit of a pain, but they were still friends.

"Mom... I mean, with all due respect, Mrs. Evans, but I, your daughter, want you to come down, at least, to sing happy birthday to me with everyone and break the cake"

Luz could imagine all sorts of wrinkles on Margot's mother's mostly stern face, or so she told her.

The truth is that Luz, like none of Margot's classmates, had ever seen her mother.

"That's what the employees will do. Just say I'm sick and that's it. After all, the only thing that matters to all your guests is the sweets and the cake, and their parents are interested in bragging about having set foot in this mansion"

Luz could imagine Margot's heart beating slower and slower, preparing for the storm that was brewing inside her.

Only among children could they understand each other.

"Mom, I'm asking you please, please, go downstairs and sing happy birthday to me with everyone (Luz thinks she heard her knees scrape against the floor). Even if they're not here and you do it with those people, you just talk with them, but not with me. It seems as if you celebrate them instead of me"

Luz felt her heart flutter like when her father left and didn't say goodbye to her.

"Is there something you should be proud of?

Have you already proven your worth?

And so you did, I don't care.

What's going to matter to me is when you have those golden fangs you see on lions.

You do not understand?

You don't have what I want and I can only have it when I have complete control. It is such an incredible thing that I want that no one would accept it from me. Nobody, moreover, would not be sure that someone else would do it for me.

Do not be ungrateful and appreciate everything I give you.

Or do you think that poor unhappy little friend of yours wouldn't like to live here and have all the sweets she wanted?

Be thankful for your luck of being born in a golden cradle"

Luz looks and looks at the yellow fangs. They're not just yellow. They were gold. They had to be gold. Gold and money were what adults were most proud of. Just like it was the thing that separated them the most from the children.

"Mom, please, please, please, please..."

A loud cry was heard from Margot. That was already painful, but the sound of a slap was even more so.

"Never beg. Beautiful, willful, ambitious and always smart. Above all, cunning like Savannah"

A meow that Luz thought was so sexy and overly sad. The melody of such lonely nights, of fear and misunderstanding.

"Why?

Why are you always like this with me?

Why with me if I love you?

I love you!

damn!

I love you!"

Another slap and Luz couldn't take it anymore, it was as if it had been given to her, and she broke into uncontrollable tears.

However, she fell silent when Margot's mother said her name. She ran off and would have run if it weren't for the former Kindergarten teacher and now her babysitter.

Luz's nanny took her back to the room that Margot's mother assigned to them to prepare with everything necessary for the children's show.

"You know, I found your Spy Cat story very interesting, but I think it's very short and I need you to find characters for these three characters: The magical unicorn, the dark being and Prince Charming.

It's okay?"

Luz didn't even understand why she was asking that question if she was going to do what she wanted anyway. The babysitter was in control of her and her siblings until evening.

At that moment he remembered them, his brothers.

"My brothers?"

The nanny told her that her niece was in the kitchen with the children. So, Luz told her that it is better for her to expand the characters with the help of her brothers.

"... the imagination of children who do not know about the problems is much broader than mine"

Luz came out of the room full of clown clothes, ballerina clothes and a small theater stage for puppets.

When she only took two steps, someone covered her mouth and took her to a room full of hand-drawn pencil drawings.

The lines were so defined, Luz didn't know how to define it, but the drawing of a girl's face with her skin painted in all the colors of the rainbow caught her attention.

He got closer to the drawing and saw that his mouth was a pink and green butterfly, his tears were thin and thick thunder, also some tears had the shape of blue seeds.

Its neurons were snow stars and in the middle of the eyes lay a heart split in two, and each part had its own wing.

Both halves of the heart are so close to each other, they are facing each other, but they never touch and will never caress each other because they are within the static, two-dimensional world of paper in the art of drawing.

"Do you like it?"

She was an older woman, but with a look so strong and peaceful at the same time that Luz wished for an instant to have a look like that.

"Yes... who is she?"

Such a woman had worked as a housekeeper in Margot's family for many generations. She had never been able to have children so she spoiled the child Margot as if she were her daughter.

However, the times she had gone to pick up little Margot out of sheer conviction and with permission from the child's parents; she noticed Luz when she saw her pulling little Margot to join the happy group of children playing hide and seek.

When Margot and her companions did not yet understand the gold of the fangs.

Now things had changed, Margot was a difficult child to deal with because of her selfishness and arrogance.

Even if the housekeeper tried not to spoil her anymore, it was impossible because she worked for the family and her mother always wanted her and her daughter's every whim to be fulfilled to the letter.

"You drew that picture and gave it to my little girl for her birthday.

The little girl of all colors, the queen who unites hearts..."

Luz began to recall the song in her mind, as she drew in the punishment room for speaking profanities against the man's horrific reasoning against her own countrymen.

"Human sacrifices? honoring the gods?

Or is there such a thing as a children's god? Was that embittered teacher right?

Is there such a thing as EL COCO?"

Luz thought that if the gods of the people of those ancient civilizations were the earth, sky and sea, just like them; the children's god must be able to have some visible form on earth.

But what form was that?

She felt out of nowhere in the housekeeper's room the same helplessness that came to her at that moment in that room full of empty folders in which she had been only a few hours ago.

There was so much space inside her that she had to fill it somehow. Too many emotions were going to explode, she needed to dance.

However, at that very moment the teacher came to watch her. In half an hour she was asleep, but Luz had already found another way to transmit her feelings in a way that was not so striking for the eyes and noisy for adult ears: Painting.

Until that moment she did not know what she was going to give her friend. She had everything, or so Luz thought until that moment when she heard her mother's plea.

Although her hand hurt from pressing the colored pencil against the paper, Luz decided to think about what each color that could exist in the world meant.

Pure, unmixed colors. Colors that accept what they feel and express it.

Luz wanted to be many colors.

"EL COCO must be a dark being right?"

Not only Luz was there, her other two brothers were playing memory with some cards. Apparently the niece of her former kindergarten teacher had forgotten that she had two children to take care of.

The housekeeper feels tenderness for any child.

"EL COCO always wants you to sleep, personally, I always thought it was another name for the god of dreams: Morpheus."

Luz then connected the pieces according to her judgment. He thought about his mother always turning off all the lights to sleep. Margot told him that his mother did not turn off the light, but she did put on a kind of black eye cover.

Darkness induces sleep. EL COCO is Morpheus.

Where was the darkness around him?

Was the darkness only at night?

She and the housekeeper were standing around a small white plastic table drinking an herbal tea.

"Have you ever imagined yourself as many colors as the face of the girl you drew?"

Luz began to see and imagine herself painted in all the colors of the rainbow and, of course, with that split winged heart and those thunderclaps. Identical to the drawing.

At that instant she noticed her shadow and something came to her mind.

"Do you think our shadow is a daytime projection of the god Morpheus?

Aren't shadows as black as the darkness that induces sleep?"

The housekeeper didn't know what to say, she was surprised by the singular resolution of a little girl like Luz. Although her little brothers had already made comments and opinions to her that were as sweet as they were interesting for such small children.

"Everything is possible in the eyes of children. Just wish for it with faith because faith will assure you that what you wished for is what you truly need."

Those words stuck in her mind as she talked with her brothers about games and fantasies about a mermaid who had become too tanned in the sun and to return to her natural hue she had to kiss the prince with lips painted a rose as special as it was cursed.

That rose belonged to a woman who did not know that it was the last rose she would ever receive in her life. So she learned with great effort the forbidden arts and cursed the rose.

He made the petals of the rose fly through the air and take the place of the clouds in the sky.

A red sky brings a fiery dawn.

Despite the pain, the woman wanted to keep a real memory of that fragile and temporary romance.

She made a deal with the owner of memories, time, and offered him, as she could not separate her fingers from her body without shedding blood, she offered him her nails, brimming with the power of those who are in charge of caring for the earth, so that it would continue to produce fruits (she was a gifted farmer).

The wind adored all that man could give her of himself. This since only man and all that he was made of possessed the ability to mutate; and thus create new memories.

Now the wind, with enough lost and unappreciated treasures from humans, the wind could finally create memories that had him and not humans as the protagonist.

Thanks to this great favor, the wind was going to grant a wish to the woman who practiced necromancy. She asked him for the real memory of that fleeting romance.

A memory that she could capture with all her senses.

The wind decided to kill two birds with one stone: The memory of that woman would be his.

The god of the indispensable air (the wind) used the woman's fingernails to create the Prince Charming that the woman desired...

And so much for the inspiration of Luz's mind for that tale.

So much for my sanity.

I know that Luz hid in a small room inside this very room because Margot's mother and she herself have knocked on the door of the housekeeper's room.

In this small room she found a medium-sized piano. She thought of the pianos of the singers in the music videos her mom would fall asleep watching (for Luz that was better than the mental health documentaries).

The piano also had its black lines on the keyboard and, by the light filtering through the window, its shadow could also be seen.

In that instant she replayed in her mind many piano melodies she had heard in the various 80's music videos that her mother never tired of repeating over and over again.

It was an echo, the echo between Luz's mother and her. That memory filled her with happiness and joy.

She never thought she would see a piano, so close to her, in front of her eyes, it seemed like a dream.

Luz got closer to the piano and saw a surname inscribed in gold: Brothers Carlos and Mary Ángeles Sáenz.

Those were not her parents?

Was it a homonym?

Her father was Carlos Ángeles Cárdenas and her mother was Mary Sáenz Suarez.

Ángeles... Saenz.

"More than my wife you are the little sister I have to support."

A mixture of cruelly exciting sounds (only for adults) and thousands of cat meows echoed inside her head.

Then, although he didn't know how to play, he did and the piano emitted a sound of disgust, revulsion, horror, fear, anxiety and devastating loneliness.

It went on and on repeating the same wrong chords and therefore out of tune to human ears.

Suddenly, his fingers felt heavy and it was an ordeal to play; but his conjectures were even more terrifying than any analysis of a macabre mind.

Luz no longer saw or heard, she only felt and smelled.

She smelled human sacrifice, her humanity was being sacrificed and she was going to let it happen. Her fingers pressed hard on the black lines over each white key. They were like her claws, heavy claws for an 8 year old girl.

"Why would cats like kitty litter?

Is the answer really that obvious?

Little rat souls aren't going to talk to me?

Then I'm not going to tell you how to beat the cat that's spying on us.

Cats jump out of windows, climb walls and stand on rooftops watching the stars.

I have always tried to imitate them because they are so free in their innocence and ignorance.

Why did curiosity kill the cat?

Because the cat has no past and curiosity is only felt for something that has already been.

That's why they climb and climb, they go in search of their past. But yours cat, yours is here".

The head is pointed, the lights go out and the macabre music persists on the piano whipped by the insatiable fingers of a girl whose eyes are a pair of fireflies.

A little demon named Luz Ángeles Sáenz.