Chapter 25: Almost an invisible obsession

Savage Garden's song encouraged her to trust her way of seeing the world. But her perspective was guided by curiosity.

Isn't curiosity also supposed to be her worst enemy?

How can she sacrifice the one thing that can help her escape this world?

That would be the same as giving up all the thoughts that accompanied her in her loneliness. The thoughts that are written in the books were always with her.

Here were all the theories of those authors who, without knowing it, were for her like fathers of the soul.

They spoke to her without opening their mouths, only with written words.

For a writer without readers, there is no story. Most of the time, Luz existed only for them.

And they were not her parents.

However, Luz wanted to believe that that embrace was the hole where they would finally bury whatever was not love.

For this ideal, she should not let herself be carried away by curiosity. Her brothers were part of her family.

If someone was wrong, they would all be wrong.

Luz wanted to follow that rational train of thought, but she could not be too far away from the lying body of the rabbit.

What was worse was that with only a few inches beyond her position; she could hear the rabbit's heartbeat. Its heartbeat was rising and falling like waves. For every two accelerated beats, four decelerated beats followed.

It was no use for Luz to use these thoughts to try to evade the inexplicable effect the rabbit was having on her. Her hands began to tremble with anxiety and desire.

No one could see what the rabbit's heartbeat made her see.

What the heartbeat reflected through the dirt in the black spots.

These spots looked like shadows of beings like a fairy and a pair of ghosts.

There were also other shadows with shapes Luz could not recognize. That is why her curiosity was exacerbated.

"We have to play another song."

Said Flavia and Esteban in unison.

Flavia pulled Luz, but she didn't let go and knelt down next to the rabbit. She stirs it in the hope that it is not dead.

In the end, she decided to make up a rock plea because, after all, music is life.

Luz always thought that the most peaceful melody was the one that screamed in pain until she got tired.

Because, when Luz got tired of screaming in rage against reality, she had no more strength left than to go to bed and have a dream of love.

It might not be the best or the most original rock melody, but she couldn't think of anything else.

There would be no other animal in her consciousness.

A guitar echoed inside her mind until her mother arrived with her friend.

He didn't look like the vets they invited on the morning TV shows. He was dirty, but his black spots were amorphous.

Luz had seen many animals full of dirt and mud in the forest; but his eyes exuded the very meaning of light (or the right meaning for her): "Preserving innocence by keeping dangerous hearts away from adults."

And just at that instant, an adult was going to take the rabbit away. An innocent animal because it doesn't know what it's doing. Because it doesn't know what it's doing is why it's not to blame for terrorizing Luz and her family.

But they would be to blame for exposing the rabbit to a dangerous heart.

The man dressed in rags picked up the rabbit who shrieked in pain. It could not defend itself, for the man tied each pair of its legs with a pair of small ropes.

The rabbit looked just like the chickens hanging in the market. The only thing missing was that the rabbit was covered in blood... "adults are liars".

Luz could not ignore my voice.

"You lie, why do you keep lying to me?". She cries and looks at her mother disappointed. Her heart slows down because deep down she is already used to the typical disappointments that adults generate in children. "This man is not a veterinarian. He won't take him away, I'll die first".

Luz was about to go against the man, but he showed her a knife.

Her mother grabbed her elbows tightly and shouted at the man to get out quickly.

The children had long since turned off the music, but Luz only just noticed it with her mother's furibund look.

It all came as a double shock to the girl. Her mother was shaking her and she did not react except with a quizzical expression.

"You should be upset with you and that man. You both lied to me. You always lie to me.

Why do you ask me then to tell you the truth or to have confidence in you?

Nothing you say is true."

Esteban intervened because with his almost 6 years he was sure that the only liar was Luz.

"Shut up, you crazy woman!

Crazy!"

There was no turning back now, Luz was exploding.

"You are naive.

Do you think she or dad know what love is?

How can they feel something they don't know how to feel?.."

Luz didn't continue speaking because her mother pulled her by the sideburns and yanked out a pair of golden curls.

As she screamed, Luz saw her own reflection in the mirror.

The mirror could not well describe the horror that came from her soul.

Eyes tired from many sleepless hours listening to music or reading books about the mysterious mind. Always longing to know who is behind the only words that never leave her alone. They are lodged inside her mind until she needs them.

No matter if her gaze was pure kindness or evil.

She watched her sideburn bleed a little and her pair of curls slowly descend into the air.

Bleeding and almost being plucked (by her mother) just like the chicken hanging in one of the many stalls that made up the place her mother called the market.

The rabbit's fate was evident. Another reason for her smile to weigh.

Luz's smile was like an ounce cutting into her soul. No blood fluids flowed from it.

Her soul bled out in a few unpronounceable words that night. Before she gave a battle cry to give herself courage and go out the window to catch the future rabbit killer.

This time the mother didn't stop her. She started screaming too and so did her other two children.

Luz found it easy to follow her trail because she was spreading dirt wherever she went. Poor little plants and innocent grasses. She would come to their rescue later.

However, she realized that this man could not have a car.

Or was there a special reason why he would park his car far away?

She hated that adults always lie or hide things. If only mirrors didn't just reflect skin expressions. If only they could go further.

If only mirrors could reflect the words the soul hides.

No one could lie.

Words would be wrapped in scabs so that the soul would not bleed to death. The mirror would reflect these scarred words.

But would these renewed words really mean the same as before?

Luz wanted to believe that indeed no fear would thwart her firm resolve not to carry any more invisible burdens.

Luz truly wanted this recent rebellion to remain unwavering in her being.

Even if she was now like another scar of her mother and siblings; Luz wanted to be a different girl, far from the concept of a good girl.

If she was always scolded it was because no matter how hard she tried. She would never succeed.

She would sacrifice her goodness in order to annihilate her greatest fear: Adults.

As she ran through the streets, following the man's footsteps, she wondered, among other questions: if the car was so far away, why did she hear it so close to her house?

Luz was surprised to reach the threshold of the forest. She had been going to the forest every chance she got for the last six months and never saw any adult.

However, the man went no further. He focused on the circular cover that was on the ground next to the perimeter of the forest.

The man left the animal on the ground to remove the metal lid that covered a large hole in the ground.

As the man turned his back to the rabbit, Luz, hidden behind the huge bushes, crept closer to untie the knots in the rabbit's feet.

She did not let images of a world born of shadows (dirt) distract her from her objective. Although the effect of the black spots on the rabbit's white fur were very persuasive signals to her mind.

However, great was her surprise when the rabbit showed no signs of life. It was motionless even though she had already untied it. Its eyes were still closed, but its breathing followed the steady rhythm of 2 and 4.

Luz thought that shouting at him was her only option and she did so. With that, she laid herself bare before the dirty man. His troubled look was that of a hunter who has just found his prey.

He went after her through the confines of the forest. For Luz, this was undoubtedly an advantage. She knew that the forest would always protect her. The adults were afraid of what could inhabit the forest. If she were an adult, perhaps, she would also fear.

Why didn't this adult run away from the forest like the others?

And as she already knew, the man fell on shifting sand covered with leaves that signaled the arrival of autumn.

The tree, father of those leaves, was the same one that Luz always chose to dream.

Could it be a coincidence?

Or would it be a coincidence that I ask this question so often?

The man looked at her with the heaviest smile she had ever seen in her life. He stared at her with an eagerness that frightened her.

"Children are like animals: both serve to amuse trauma.

Entertain until you ask yourself: how does it feel to be part of the joke?

Then, when you're already part of the joke; you know there will never be anything that will free you more than curiosity about death.

Haven't you ever wondered what's in that place they call The Afterlife?"

The man offered him his hand, as he slowly sank without a fight against fate. He was inviting her to yield to a new food for her curiosity.

But if Luz died, her curiosity would die with her.

The forest looked more gloomy than usual. The darkness itself was no problem for her. She was used to seeing with the light provided by the moon. The problem was that the moon was not on that side of the forest that day.

She only went if the moon was there to illuminate, even a little bit, the forest. It was the first time she was in the forest under complete darkness.

"The only real kind of fantasy is what causes you to be afraid because you have faith in that.

I have faith in the effect of darkness on children. The shadows are the only gods you can believe in.

If you discover them before you're an adult, maybe, you can let curiosity amuse your trauma...maybe."

After those words, he began to laugh like one of those demented people Luz saw in mental health documentaries.

He didn't say anything else, he just stared at her for the last 5 seconds he had left to breathe the air of this earth.

Luz could not see him, but she imagined him as one of many crazy people.

In the face of the silence, she walked without needing to be so cutesy. The last six months served her to memorize every space of the forest. Or at least those that for her were the most beautiful.

These same ones, in the dark, seemed the darkest. In those moments, only her imagination illuminated the panorama and her mind illuminated her sanity.

Luz thinks about what the madman said to her as he took off his shoes. The best way for her to remember was to feel the grass between her toes.

Relaxing her feet a bit refreshed her memory and that time was no exception.

Butterflies flew around her, the wind blew with a softness that suggested tranquility and the grass offered a safe base.

The crickets began what Luz considered a prayer to the moon. Then, she decided to think seriously about her rocking prayer for the god of children: The shadow.

If only they could talk to the children to warn them of the dangers around them.

What would she have to do for the darkness to be endowed with the gift of speech?

Darkness, up to that point, only brought innocent beings to stand up for it.

Perhaps the new prayer should possess a melody that would sound to the ear like harmonious little cries. These would frame the main sound that was a rock.

In her words, it would have to describe the darkness and its necromancy.

The latter because the darkness had to have certain rules within its world that connected it with the world of earthly beings.

As they call it in fantasy books: A system of plausible magic.

Necromancy was the only system of "magic" she knew because of the frequent presence of darkness.

Luz had to complain about that mute system.

Arriving at the edge of the forest, she pulls the rabbit by the legs and tries to drag it into the forest. The problem is that the rabbit is too heavy for her; so she goes out of the forest and tries to find a way to move it.

Only the forest could cure him.

When she got a better look, thanks to the light poles, she could see a number 2 tattooed like a scar on the rabbit's shoulder. There was also a 4 tattooed on the sole of his foot.

She read in one of her history books that in ancient times emperors ordered animals to be branded. These marks indicated that it was the property of the emperor.

Marks made by a kind of hot metal that burned on the skin of animals, but also of many slaves.

"How horrible the adults have always been."

Luz thought as she pressed her ear to the rabbit's chest. As she couldn't see it breathing. Luckily it was still alive, but the sound of its heartbeat disturbed hers.

If the rabbit's palpitations were going at a frenetic rhythm; Luz's heartbeats were quiet, as if they were trying to pass under the bridge and not over it.

The rabbit's heartbeats had an opposite direction to Luz's. The rabbit seemed to be against Luz. It was as if it was shouting, "Go away. Go away! Do you think I don't know that your belly is a cemetery of chickens and cattle?"

The lights on the poles began to flicker, while the girl's spirit fluctuated between courage and shame.

Between rebellion and submission.

Submission for accepting her own cowardice. She was turning out to be the opposite of what she really wanted from herself.

No!

She said through gritted teeth. Trying to maintain a smile.

If her father could, so could she. Pretending to survive was the only option for adults.

"You'll be an adult soon enough. They've left their seeds in you, inside your belly.

A chicken? A fish? A calf? A guinea pig?

And in your soul?

You carry in your soul a couple of dead ones. Everything in you is a cemetery.

Have you already chosen your tombstone?"

It was too much. Luz ran in the direction of her house. She thought about how much she hated her parents for forcing her to eat when she no longer wanted to. Or for forcing her to eat what she didn't want.

"That it has nutrients... do I get to see those nutrients?"

She shouted as she watched the accusing lights squint her eyelids.

She felt watched, as she ran. Surely some gossipy neighbor suffering from insomnia, or so she thought.

Nothing mattered to her anymore anyway. She didn't want to know anything anymore.

Couldn't someone put her mind at ease and create a new story?

When she got home she saw her father's car parked.

She listened to the screams from outside, while she tried not to drop the books her father was throwing out of the window.

"I'm just asking you to support me!

Is it so hard to understand?

What you do is nothing. I have to put up with the damn sun or the cold out there. You're too comfortable in there.

Do you see those poor market women?

See how they always have to run so that the serenazgo people don't steal what little they have been able to buy to sell?

Do you want to be like that?

Imagine you with three children alone. You would just feel the same pity you feel every time you see those women."

The mother just cried as did her two children. But she had to respond or the situation would get worse.

"How do you expect me to leave my children with your family full of drunks and drug addicts?

You're insane!"

The mother couldn't take it anymore and needed to release her unadmitted grudge against her children's father.

"I'm not going with you to give you house and food so you can save a few more damn pennies.

If my father doesn't want to give you lodging it's not my fault..."

The father would never accept a refusal.

"Then why are you calling me complaining that some months I don't give you anything?

Don't complain and accept!

I don't want you to blame me for our children having to beg for food at my family's inn."

The father said the following in an almost inaudible whisper.

"Even if you're behind them, sometimes you'll get careless and they'll bite your children... if they haven't already been bitten."

The mother wanted to hit him and the father stood behind his two children, who kept crying and crying.

Luz could not see what was happening, but she could imagine it.

The same expressions of anger and exhaustion on their faces; before saying the words that would stay forever in any child's mind.

She heard even the irregular heartbeats, the more anti-rhythmic they became, the more pronounced those lines of expression on their faces.

There was no need to watch, that discussion would be no different than the others.

Her mother looked sideways at herself in the mirror, perhaps unconsciously, glimpsing the obvious. As if she was trying to give herself hope that someday she would get tired of seeing that same reflection of herself.

Maybe someday the reflection would be so unbearable for Mary that she would give up and run away forever.

Perhaps it was because of this feeling that Luz carried a certain resentment towards her mother. Her father took advantage of that and fed that thought.

Mary could not live without her father's money and Luz could not live without their protection.

Thinking about it, her heart was beating a thousand times under those books. There was no doubt in her mind, that was her greatest obsession: to be her parents' light.

Nothing for one, always for both.

That was why those almost inaudible words of her father were to Luz like a plastic knife.

She did not bleed blood, she bled thoughts that her soul was made of.

Her thoughts were disassembled to be reassembled by her already known and intense obsession.

No matter the situation or circumstance, nothing could stop her flow of thoughts. That would mean cardiac arrest for her soul.

Luz was no longer fighting the tide of books, she wanted to be buried in the letters of those books. In the beauty of the authors' intentions when writing those texts: A shot of freedom.

The dry grass was like soft sandpaper on her cheek. It reminded her of how painful it was to learn to live the way adults wanted children to live.

Just like them: without love.

She felt a sudden hatred for those books, too. These too were written by adults. All written for everyone to live by their rules.

The same rules that sacrificed and continue to sacrifice innocents: Children and animals.

Luz got up from the grass and started throwing the books through the window back to her father.

Feeling too much all at once can give you emotional amnesia. That was Luz's case. She wasn't interested in seeing her father crouching. She was betting that because of his fury he didn't see that it was her who was throwing the books at him.

No one would want to inform him either.

The children stood to the side and threw books in their father's face as well. Mary wasn't going to stop them. They were just mimicking. Something had to be done about her troubled firstborn, Luz.

But, for now, Mary wanted to enjoy the show a little.

Although she was only a few books short, Luz stopped when she saw the Alice in Wonderland book. She found it very frustrating. She didn't understand what the characters were talking about. It all seemed like nonsense and that's what it was supposed to be. But Luz did want to understand what she was reading.

In that instant she knew why she didn't understand: That world was governed by rules very different from the rules of adults. Even though it was written by one.

It was like Alice's own world against the real world of mathematics invented by adults.

Alice got tired of memorizing adult letters and numbers.

She created her own logic.

The problem was that Luz and Alice were not the same. Alice created a whole new world. Inhabited by beings that will never know adults like children in reality.

Alice could dream happily, while Luz was always in pain because she could never fully leave for another world. To tell the truth, her thoughts were occupied by all the problems she saw around her.

Luz could not let go of her obsession with this world and its mysteries. The joy and sorrow of this planet.

She could not let her curiosity cling to this universe.

Luz did not want another world. She did not want to write another story. Completely leaving the known gave her dread. Besides, no one would accompany her on that journey because everyone is afraid of the new.

Luz wanted to rewrite the history of humanity.

To explain the dilemmas and wonders of this world through the vision of a child.

Luz barely noticed her father slap her in the mouth and slap her on the cheek.

When she met his furibund gaze, she only blinked. As if she was just waking up.

She was waking up to a new purpose.

She didn't know if this would work out better for her than trying to be "The light of her parents," but she no longer cared.

Now Luz's heart and soul were focused on finding magical explanations.

Because even her father's blows would have a very special origin. Hurting was not an option because parents are supposed to love their children.

Don't panic, "Luz and the dreams that put waking souls at rest" have arrived.

Innocence or pain, what is your addiction?