Thirty eight

He had closed his eyes to check that it was not a dream. When he opened them, he saw himself in the sink again, but although the faucet was open, not a drop of water came out.

Of course it doesn't come out because I have been forced to drink it and I almost died. Maybe for that reason she lost control with Alexis and glued her lips to his.

Although it scares her to hear me at the same time it gives her joy to know that she is not the only one.

But I am sure that her mother is worried that I am swollen with water because this means that her daughter is too.... where will the sea of her frustrated love flow into?

The mother walks into the kitchen and the wrinkles have multiplied and look even more pronounced than yesterday, she's still 15 and Alexis happened yesterday.

But why did she think she was 13?

"Shut up!"

The mother turns away as Luz tries to approach, her jaw even more pronounced as bitterness doesn't fit in her chest. Her cheeks seem to pull downward, it's as if intense feelings are the wind that erodes youth.

Will that be the price for living so intensely and without respite?

"What have I done to you, what have you done to me?"

Although her mother does not turn out to be a running hare; at least she had more will than all three of her children combined, so Luz could not catch up with her when she goes up to Flavia's room to lock herself in.

Luz watches as her brother pretends not to pay attention to what is going on around him. He just combs his hair and she remembers Alexis' bottomless roses, she has no doubt that they are an invention of his to produce those meows inside her head.

How can he do that?

How has technology come so far?

He always knew she was surrounded by the cat... but why was he the only one who could see it from the beginning?

She'd like to go looking for him but she's afraid to walk the streets alone, without her mother's protection, or that her mom would take her attitude as an affront because it would only upset her nerves and those of the whole family.

She decides to go to the kitchen and sees that she will finish cooking the fish without a single bone. While her mother was preparing the rest, she sent Luz to remove every bone from the fish. There can't be a single one left because her father has no teeth; so she can't make life more complicated for him.

Luz wants to know more about felines like me; so to kill time in the kitchen, after eating some raw peanuts that her mother keeps in the cupboard (her mother trusted her too much), she decides to experiment.

"Since my mother is so insistent on killing bacteria."

He takes a lemon, cuts it in half and rubs it under both armpits.... I want to die!

You have no idea how much we cats hate citrus and acids. I can tell you I'd rather drown in water than feel the damn acids.

Do you understand the magnitude of the punishment Lucifer has imposed on me?

To make it easier for you to picture it so your empathy can reduce some of the acid, I'm going to describe it as Luz would, as if it were a painting:

Imagine you are in the mind of a little girl and the lilac sky; but after depositing all the water that was inside the blessed stones (the ones that were in the first place inside Luz's head that I was in) inside my poor kidneys, it happens to transform into something like the breasts of a female dog after her pups suck all the milk out of her.

Do you remember that the demon burned down a castle?

Well, I didn't tell you anything about that castle because it was supposed to turn into stone and finally regenerate itself when the stones exploded (what could I have imagined that the drain would be my stomach) its contents.

You know that time and desire cure everything... Luz's and Alexis' desire had plenty of it... and my nails were like the hands of a clock that moves forward and forward because they are going to burn its fur with human desire.

Yes, Lucifer can make of every part of my body whatever he wants... only the body, not my soul; interesting and very interesting, isn't it?

Or is it only interesting to me?

Anyway, the thing is that our evil boss forgives sin but not scandal; so that's why I didn't tell you until now that things haven't gone as the master of evil planned.

Continuing with my description: the sky now looks more like a circuit of mountains from which drops of a cold white liquid like ice melt. Well, it is not ice but drops of cold milk that fall from the top of "the infernally celestial mountains".

However, these same drops as they descend are attracted to the burnt castle and to me. No doubt it is for the castle to absorb the water I have been forced to drink. The drops are something like an inanimate intermediary to transport the water... or perhaps the inanimate one is me.

I say this because thanks to those drops of cold milk I have transformed into a cartoon.

Yes, what happens is that the white color of the drops is a product of the acid of the lemon that she is rubbing under her armpits... the acid turns everything white and the brain manipulates and gets infected at the same time with everything it manipulates.

The point is that the drops were generated by the dilation of human desire (the brain must cool down in the middle of so much heat). The water itself in the mind is light blue, but desire turns it into a more intense tone until it becomes blue.

Where is the white?

White decided it should hold on to my catlike charm because you have heard that my species possesses the essential characteristic needed for a white canvas to fill with color... the blessed curiosity inherited from the unicorns.

So the white guy running out of his drops has a chance to get something better and he won't hesitate to take it: a cat.

I also have a black line outlining my silhouette. You should know that when you are a cartoon the only thing that remains of your shadow is that thin line I mention because if Lucifer cannot see you with his sense of sight; then his sense of touch will be sharpened like the hairs on his body when everything burns.

But isn't Lucifer supposed to be the king of fire and all that myth?

There are all kinds of fire and that of the mind is one that Lucifer must reluctantly share with a being humans call God.

Well, with touch he can pull the black line and handle me as if I were a puppet. Before Lucifer only saw me through my shadow and threw his curses at me through there when he didn't like my storytelling; now he handles every part of my beautiful cat-like body as he pleases, just a tug on the black line and that's it.

And that's me now, a white cartoon outlined with black in the middle of a sky of infernal mountains that feed with their blue drops the gray clouds on the ground. Just this ground is ready for the heat to envelop it and raise it again to cover the infernal mountains with its bright gray... the color of the consciousness of imbalance.

"I have no imbalance, you are the one who is crazy."

The blue of the drops and the yellow of the heat that is transferred to the mountains by the gray clouds, gives the mountains their lemon green hue... a grayish lemon.

By the way, who said all imbalances are bad?

"You're talking too fast you're making me dizzy."

Luz is in despair because I keep talking about her as if she were not present. She is moving her hands erratically as if exclaiming to a being who is in heaven and deaf to her whims.

I have to think about her but she can rub her armpits with lemon?

Does she know what it means for me to be a cartoon inside her head?

Yes, I no longer smell like a wet dog... now I have no smell at all.

Luz needs to untie herself, she already used the food but it is no longer enough because; even though she is in a game, she feels reality more present than ever before. She takes the kitchen knife from the box where she kept the dolls that her mother bought her behind her father's back (dolls are not part of the basic needs to survive) and begins to scratch with the edge the red tile of the countertop.

The forge between each red tile is gray as the color of the imbalance consciousness.

Hearing again this statement Luz scratched harder one of the thin forge lines. Then, out of nowhere, on one of the tiles adjacent to the forge line, circles appear, from a very small one (a dot) to become bigger and bigger; like the waves of water that are formed when a stone falls on the same liquid... maybe that weight, that rock is itself.

As she tries to move away and back away she realizes that she cannot pull out the knife, it has become embedded in the forge like a mythical sword once was in the stone.

She notices that the handle of the knife has two holes that were previously covered by two small dark green circles. He hears sounds of cars and people screaming from the blessed vehicular congestion among other sounds bitter to his ear.

"Here in town there is no traffic."

Luz runs her fingers through the two holes in the knife handle and feels a breeze blow past. She feels like Sleeping Beauty as she is about to place her fingers on the spinning wheel's spindle. It is terrifying and exciting at the same time the nervous adrenaline rushing through her body. She had never felt anything like this before, she remembers when her mother always told her and keeps repeating it to her very often: "You never worry, you don't take anything seriously, your laziness you have passed on to your brothers and sisters. I used to hear some ladies in the market say that when the children grow up you have less work; but not me, the rule does not apply to me, the older they get the more work I have to do".

She just laughs a little at the thought of her mother's hysteria, after all this is just a game, right?

At that very moment she hears her father's car start and bites her lip. She always wanted to see him arrive and hug him so tightly until he was happy because that's what she learned from watching so many cartoons.... "but nothing is true, everything was always a game"... why say it out loud?

"You're crazy, my friends were right, but I'll figure out a way to find everything I need in myself; so I don't have to look for it in any of you, you're all crazy."

Bastiàn runs off and Luz goes after him to do anything to assuage his guilt because she doesn't see that she can do anything else. He has formed his own opinion of women and the facts in the house speak louder than a thousand words she can say to him.

She was so absent-minded, as usual, that she left the kitchen door ajar.

Her brother has always run with her father in the main park; so it is more than obvious that he locks himself in his room before Luz can reach him.

He sits on the side of the stairs, hugs his knees and pulls them almost to his chest. It hurts a little because his muscles are a little stiff from lack of exercise. Tears roll down his cheeks, as does the sound of tires on his auditory sense.

"Maybe gray really is the color of conscious mental imbalance."

She thinks to herself because she no longer plans to open her mouth unless her life depends on it.

"Has your father left yet?"

Luz nods with a blank stare and her mother comes down the stairs and squats in front of her.

"You've been arguing with your brother."

She states the mother without a hint of hesitation because what mother doesn't know her children's character to perfection.

"I thought you would say with Flavia, as I fight with her the most."

"She's going to hear me, I told her until one o'clock and she's going to make it to two apparently".

The mother's look is so full of tenderness that it almost seems surreal and Luz is not sure if the algorithms have replicated her mother's attitude well. Although, now that she thinks about it, whenever the fight is over and they make up, her hysterical countenance changes completely.

Why does she remember the sad times more than the happy ones?

"Do you know where she went?"

"I'm the mother, it's my job to know everything about you. I gave him permission last night to have sleepovers with your cousin."

Luz opens her eyes just like when her mom cooks noodles with carapulca.

"I have a cousin? I thought you were all cousins who live in the city."

"I think I committed an indiscretion."

The mother gets up and Luz follows her because she can't stay with the doubt.

"Crocodile tears, gossip is the remedy for your sadness, that's why scandal sells nowadays."

Her mother starts singing as she turns off the stove where the fish was cooking.

Why is it that Luz's mind clings to the sad memories and forgets the happy ones?

The sad moments mark her more than the happy ones and make her feel so intensely... her father would so much like to remember happy moments of her adolescence and she wastes hers.

"We'd better go out through the garage because there's the radio."

"Aren't you upset because my fish is burnt?"

"Your father has been used to eating crap since he was a child; that's why he's crap and that's why he deserves it."

Seeing his mother so happy seems like a dream come true... but it was real.

"Maybe gray is the color of happiness buried alive."