Part five: THE SPECTRUM

Luz finds it depressing to scrutinize the girl who is in the third row of the third column of supernatural beings and looks like Rumpelstiltskin because of the hump on her shoulders; her dark circles under her eyes, her skin has acne marks and a rickety glow (or so Luz feels), and her hands are intertwined behind her back to carry the bundle.

How to get rid of the damage that is already part of our being?

Luz can no more stop seeing that girl than she can stop seeing herself in the shadowy ice when she misses her footing and the gravel holds her footing for the train to pick her up.

Her appearance is the same as she sees in the humpbacked girl; then, before her own thoughts overtake her, the darkness of one of the werewolves' stomachs covers her to pull her into the train.

It is all so incomprehensible to her, souls are supposed to be immaculate forever, is it not the body that suffers marks visible to mortal eyes like hers?

These marks remind her of the craters on the moon; although, on the other hand, she found it strange to be able to see only that battered soul and not the whole interior of the train.

Could it be an effect of the depressing light cast on everyone by the demonic angel?

Light supposes that the girl in front of her is her own soul because that is exactly how she imagined her own soul to be on the night of her not so pleasant 15 years.

When she locked herself in to sleep all day because her father had too much work to go home and go to the movies. The worst thing for her was not that he wasn't coming, she had long since given up on that question (or so she likes to believe), but that he had promised by all the saints that he was coming to celebrate her birthday.

When she woke up at almost midnight the only one who seemed to be happy was the moon that was coming through her window. It was a beautiful, lonely crescent moon, even though there were sure to be many stars hidden behind the blackened clouds.

For Luz, that panorama was the best portrait of her family: they get close for a short time and then they distance themselves, or rather, they don't recognize each other because, like the clouds, feelings often fill your sky with a fleeting intensity that only lets you look up and not to the sides... maybe we should grow more in a horizontal line.

Luz felt that she was the missing half of that Half Moon because she too had craters in her soul. The sweetness of cakes, for her, was equivalent to the sweetness of fantasy; so just like the skin her soul would be full of pimples and she would burst them just to give her parents a hard time: her mother always took care that everything Luz ate was natural and her father was proud of his daughter's beauty.

All the tenderness as well as the compliments were always fleeting and she could never be satisfied.

Luz thought that the craters were like a point apart because, after all, everything that comes out in the skin is a product of boredom that, although you are aware of its existence, you cannot put an end to it.

The marks could be compared to the ideas he crossed out of his notebook because he didn't like them, but he never knew why.

Feelings vibrate in his skin as words do on paper. With them she can see and with the sound of her trembling hands, sweaty and desperate to write; Luz can listen to her feelings in real life.

And how did that memory reveal itself to her senses?

Well, I will tell you that this is not just any cold; this coldness has given Luz's neurons a life of their own.

Who knows if the cold will give life to something else inside her?

All animals know that the brain itself is the greatest invention anyone has ever created; the most powerful and weakest at the same time, the cold is unbearable and the heat is everything to the brains.

That is exactly why the brains inside Luz's head, in the face of the inclement cold, group together, to stay together and warm.

They may not be able to keep as much heat as they would like, but neither can they stay together as a unit. The "whole" (the unity) needs all the warmth; that is, not even a hint of cold to break the connection.

This particular cold comes from the ice walls of the train and has the gift of life; after all, in order for the very life of every human being to flourish as you know it, they had to take some of the warmth out of your whole being.

Anyway, I don't want to go into my speculations; the point is that the brains have divided into groups of thousands of neurons to separate and search for the most hidden corners of the mind; in such a way that the cold is lost in the dark mist of the mind and never overwhelms them.

This cold crowds each group of neurons with fraudulent memories because it is their way of taking away the warmth that the neurons are trying to preserve.

THE PAST IS COLD AND THE PRESENT IS WARMTH

And he finds it so easy with Luz's brain because she has a little obsession with the past.

And how does this cold affect me?

Nothing, only that I'm freezing my cat butt; but of course my butt is not important because it shows the small defects of certain beings, no, that's a thing of centaurs with special tails. Cats are distinguished by the agility in our trunks, by the slenderness that allows us to go from place to place without major problem.

It is my trunk that is being attacked by the cold, my belly that is freezing and this is the sky of my little ratites. Without them my life would have no meaning or reason to live; they may not be my children of blood, but they are my children of heart.

The souls of my little ratitas children teach me many secrets of the "here and hereafter". In fact, it is thanks to them that my agility and flexibility have increased. That is why little ratites are so accustomed to running, fleeing and always being in constant pursuit, on the edge of danger.

Could it be that it has also affected Luz?

That question should not exist, and neither should my reach be underestimated when it comes to protecting my children. Personally, I believe that children are the wisest of human beings.

It is my duty as a parent to look out for the welfare of my children and not even El Diablo can fight against parental love.

Before my children die I decided to let them each go to a cluster of thousands of neurons. They need a guide and the souls of my little ratites need intelligent company. At least I can rest assured that they will be in good company; while daddy settles this matter that was not in my pact with Lucifer at all, but I always get paid.

By comparison and coupling, it is clear that my little children represent Light's ability to pay no attention to almost anything they want me to pay attention to. The agility of a cat is like the thousands of ideas that diversify in her mind and the speed of my little ratitas symbolize the time she has to write down those ideas in her notebook.

I am not talking about her strange dreams; I am talking about the ideas when she is daydreaming.

Luz may be in a freezer where she can't see anything but her apparent soul; but imagine that your sky is three Himalayan mountains and your ground is... that's the worst, if there is no heat, especially when we talk about the mind, there is no ground and in its replacement, if we add her new vampiric virtues, it results in a quicksand made of clouds that tear each other apart and one here has to be jumping so they don't bite my tail.

I CAN'T PAY FOR SINNERS... BUT FOR MY CHILDREN?

Although, you know, this place is becoming more and more familiar to me; but I don't want to jump to conclusions. The point is, I had to, before I became an ice statue, let them bite my tail.

What is happening to me right now?

How can I tell you this story in my circumstances?

I hate to be a martyr, but I am, I am a very martyred father.

The tail for cats expresses different things, but its fundamental task is to give me balance and stability. Imagine, trying to escape from Lucifer without either of these two minimum requirements is almost a complete suicide and maybe the lord of evil knows it... but if he did it for such a reason... it is certain that I can get out of his hell.

Or does he have another plan, of which I am unaware, for me and my little children?

Either way, as I surrender my balance to the cannibal clouds I feel the pressure and impression of the clouds at my sacrifice. What I have done is tantamount to saying that I surrendered my reasoning to the jaws of the verticality of the ego of a capricious child; but, as I am willing to defend myself, I tucked my tail in the shape of a question mark, downwards but always with the tip raised.

By this I mean: "Maybe my deductions will give material to your mortal flight, the one that takes you along the vertical path of indifference and evasion; but my critical and funny questions, the ones that inevitably must be the basis of your fantasies, will be the most realistic ones".

Before my questions already tormented Luz's stirrups and pride, I knew what I was exposing myself to by relating the truth inside her head; but, for now, no matter how many machinations I try, her mind is almost under my control; just as I am subjugated to Lucifer's designs.

Before the cats were an inspiration she was unwilling to admit, but the dynamic has changed, now the inspiration has to accept her mind.

So, even if she is spewing snakes out of her mouth, her mind will use every corner of her being to make sure I never stop talking.

My conclusions and questions mingle with the cold and projecting memory, but this is not enough for her to divine her own soul, even if she sees it with the wrong figure.

Luz tries to get closer to her own soul, as it recedes until it melts into the ice; being pulled by the lines of blood that spring from the cracks of this same ice.

Suddenly everything is illuminated in a lighter shade of gray than the angel girl's depressing light.

Luz can see through the ice some geometric shapes of different colors and other amorphous figures of a fluorescent black color. She is so attracted that she cannot comprehend, the intricacies and anything that takes her mind flying.

Each figure is separated by a crack where the blood runs as fast as the memories of her childhood dreams. She remembers them by the fluorescence in the black and amorphous figures. As a child she loved the way the fireworks illuminated any dark sky.Or the way The Moon ends the loneliness of a firmament with no stars in sight.

She no longer hears her heartbeat and feels a strange relief mixed with the fear of being a vampire.

Is this the story of a mortal human or a mortal vampire?

After all, vampires are killed with bonfires, aren't they?

Luz was not worried that she could no longer see her soul, nor that she was lost in the ice on the train; for souls do not fear being touched.

Suddenly the angel girl reappears with the same appearance as on the road and behind her a roar is heard and a blue smoke invades the whole carriage.

Luz, without being able to explain it, manages to make out beyond the door of the wagon a dragon that expels, instead of flames, this blue smoke that has been bothering this story for a while.

However, the angel girl does not seem to see it and, when Luz was about to speak, the girl runs and passes her as if she did not exist. Then, Luz realizes that this is the pink presentiment that accelerated her heart:

THE SPECTER IS HER.