Thirty nine

Luz realizes that her mother can only hear the cat; but she cannot hear the sounds she hears under the tiles.

"Regarding yesterday aren't you mad at me?"

The mother places the lid on the plastic bowl where she is going to take Dad's food. Simultaneously she shakes her head but purses her lips... what a contradiction.

"I've already told you about how relationships are with boys like Alexis, I have nothing to worry about."

"I was talking about the cat don't you hear it anymore?"

Mom presses the lid against the bowl to get the fish in any way she can; she's not going to allow that, in addition to the three teenagers she has to correct, a dead fish wants to cause her more headaches.

"It keeps talking to you...once I went to the doctor because I felt something was going around my skin, the doctor recommended some pills that I later found out were for my head...just like in real life outside, inside you it's the same; just ignore it because the aggressor attacks whoever is left."

The mother exerts pressure on the center of the lid and finally manages to place the lid without it coming off.

They both go to a back door where a staircase leads them to the basement, which also serves as a garage. Yes, in this house everything is used for everything possible, the imagination of this family is overflowing (I love sarcasm).

The garage as always is dark, the only time Luz came here was when she was 11 years old and she believed that if she stayed in the dark long enough she would be able to see without needing Luz. She thought that if she succeeded she would be able to do the impossible; but fear made her run away from the shadows that looked like monsters.

"I can't see, where is the switch?"

Suddenly the floor shakes until the whole basement spins as if a die was rolling with Light inside. No matter how much she screams her mother's name no one responds and confusion takes over.

Luz feels as if she were a guinea pig or a hamster trapped in one of those plastic cages that have a small mill that spins; only in this case it is not the mill but the whole cage that spins.

Without his mother he feels awkward and without his father vulnerable. A total inept but what her mother told her a few minutes ago reminds her that this is a mental game just like life... "I just have to remember the good things to resist the fear".

What could all this mean to her subconscious?

Every mind game is supposed to be based on the unconscious and Luz doesn't know much about herself. It is easier to analyze others than to analyze herself, I wish it were not so.

She tries to think but with all the spinning motion in the basement she finds it almost impossible to reason with the logic of her subconscious. Still she tries to remember the good things through the music. She hums the song called Love Hurts by the 80's band Nazareth.

For Luz it is easier to remember the good things in life when she thinks of the music because she may have pain in the lyrics; but there will always be light in the rhythm and melody. The bad thing is that her stomach is starting to hurt and that doesn't allow her to feel more than what her body makes her feel.

The truth is that while that was the last day he entered the basement it was not the last time because that same day he saw a video of Shakira because his sister begged his mother to buy it in home format.

Of course Flavia, unlike her, does not hide to do whatever she wants, to have fun; no, Flavia does and undoes in front of the whole family, except in front of her father and the rest of people in all humanity.

Luz for as long as she can remember has always been ashamed of everything she dreams of because... it would be a real comfort to know the reason.

She got used to do the things she likes to do in secret from all her family and the rest of humanity; the first thing she did in secret was to practice belly dancing.

Maybe his stomach is remembering that just before the dance Luz found in the basement and on the little wooden table that nobody knows why his father keeps; the glass of banana juice that his mother prepared for his father half-drunk. The problem is that that day the mother had made fried banana, in the middle of the morning and in the middle of the afternoon she had also eaten banana as a reward for her good grades at school.

It's just that in his house there is no prize other than food because of all the basic necessities is the one his father never refuses to give money for because he was denied it almost all his childhood (or so he always says).

But hey, we're not here to lament for characters whose stomachs are out of whack, by all the devils we must go on:

He couldn't dance in the living room or in the kitchen; even though no one was there because everyone was asleep. Well, her mother hardly ever slept as well as she did. She just slept in and couldn't get up until late in the morning or there would be trouble. However, if she heard the slightest noise and if it was one of her children and not the possible pericotes; she would not care about the father, no, the two of them would join together to give the eight-hour sermon.

So all that was left was the basement, to confront those monsters in the shadows. Luz takes a deep breath over and over again as she enters the crushing darkness and hears an incessant cackling that sounded like a plea. But Luz couldn't see anything and she was scared too. If she ran away the force of her footsteps would be heard by her mother and she would receive the typical sermon from the sisters of apparent charity.

"They were not sisters they were nothing alike except in the robe and the office."

Let's ignore that comment from our protagonist (the stomach is tormenting her as it does me with acid, and I laugh I laugh... don't complain cutie, this is almost hell):

She had to tune her ear, so to speak; she was trying to remember what her mom used to tell her about what music is: "It is pain dreaming that peace is more intense than fear. Sounds are the footsteps of the wind on the earth to grant you your wish, it's like your fairy godmother; whenever you need to find the sound you just have to make sure that your dream makes you wish for more of yourself, that's the purpose of every dream coming true."

Although Luz's head is in a mess and her stomach is in knots; she can't help but think how wise her mother can be when she wants... she wants more of herself, not the one sleeping next to her father.

Little Luz decides to trust that whatever it is; even if it makes her tremble, the fact of helping him will make her want more of what she likes, which leaves her so tired that at the end of the day she can only think of dreaming on her bed.

And it works because she finds a chick behind a pillar. Believe it or not, she is afraid of any bird, whatever its age or appearance. She realized it was a chick when she felt it and its toothless beak catches her finger. Luz immediately pulls it away and almost runs away, but the squawk of supplication reminded her of her promise and the fact that it is a chick. Not only that, it is an animal and its consciousness is different from ours, it was from a parallel dimension or so she told herself to resist.

Luz has been and is fearful of everything she is not used to or has had a very bad experience with. In the case of the birds it was not her who had a bittersweet appearance but her sister. Her maternal grandfather chased her, as a game, with a rooster in his hands to scare her; the problem was that Flavia tripped while running and part of her face fell on a brick that was in the hallway.

Flavia was left with a mark on the upper threshold of her nose, between her eyes, a triangle that has faded over the years.

Since this event, everyone in the family hates birds, although Esteban swears he is not afraid of them, not even Frankenstein.

Returning to the subject, Luz thought about how funny she was with the children at school or with herself when she was alone, that was how she wanted to be. Slowly she stroked the chick's soft feathers as she softly sang Love Hurts by Nazareth.To tell the truth this song was the first one in another language that she liked because her mother sang it many times when she did karaoke with her three children.

"Are you trying to get vomit and crying combined?"

The one who is now locked in this spinning, dark basement is saddened by the happiness of her memories...so what makes this little girl happy?

Anyway, that's just her thing for now. I hope she doesn't throw up, that she endures like me the acid; I can't even complain as I should because I'm narrating this memory to you and I owe you a lot of respect.

As I was saying, Luz slowly caresses the chick and feels its trembling like her own. Then she sees the shadow that frightens the chick, the monster of darkness: the cat.

Its meow seemed to follow the rhythm of Nazareth's song as she hummed. Nevertheless, his eyes gleamed defiantly at the audacity he showed in stealing what he considered his food.

The chick squawked incessantly and desperately; so Luz comes out of the basement to make him see that he was safe with her.

She later learned that her sister had given in to her sister's demand to buy a pet. The problem is that her sister is encouraged and discouraged in the blink of an eye. The mother did not buy one chick; she bought three, which was supposed to be one for each of them. The idea was that they would have the responsibility that she as a mother could not give to her children because she would always see them as her little ones; even if they grew up big and beautiful, just as she wished with all her heart.

What happened was that between the mother's stress and her children's personal problems; no one had the head to remember the three chicks they had in the basement to hide them from daddy.

The cat had already eaten the oldest and the youngest, the survivor was the middle one because he ran away and was not paralyzed by fear. The middle chick didn't wait for the stars to come and light his way; he had to find the middle ground between fear and courage.

When you don't have enough fear to safeguard your life or when you don't have enough courage to live your life...

"The midpoint between fear and courage is the awareness of the reality we construct for our lives.

It is like the diagonal of a square or a cube (the shape of this basement), it divides them into two equal parts: one is fear and the other is courage, they are two different doors; but the middle point, the one that changes and the one that decides is me... I am the middle point."

Luz vomits and although she bumps into every wall of the rolling cellar, she tries to reach one end of the cellar with one hand and the other with one of her feet, as if she were the diagonal of a cube.

It takes her a few seconds, but she succeeds and the cellar stops spinning. Not only that, but her stomach is no longer grumbling as the little voice in her head sometimes did. This makes her think that her stomach is also at the center of all the organs in her body... the answers lie at the center.

Luz feels some relief, but how long will the taste last?

I don't want to disappoint our protagonist, but she's been down with the pain before.

Ignoring the smell of her black vomit is easy for her because both her hands and feet feel something in the vertices that make up the cubic shape of the basement.

It feels coldly poignant like when death comes upon you in a moment of immaculate brotherly warmth... like when you die from the kiss of the vampire who has you madly in love.

What will be waiting for her outside the basement?