The of late uneasy dreaming had Lobo taking overnight walks frequently. No one is out on the streets at that time. He knew that. In a way, that sole fact made his tread possible. He wanted to face nobody while he swallowed the path of his penitence. This was the third time this week he had gone out to that abandoned address where everything took place two years ago. None of the previous instances had been successful. Recalling Sarah's last look was the heaviest load. Over and over and over he could see her face, Sarah’s terrified and bloodied expression, silently accepting the fate meant for her. She was full of future, he whispered to himself. Those were the only words capable of escaping from his lips, just from his lips. Inside of him, the severe annoyance of the once blocked out incident was sewn with wire to his disturbed mind. He was already sweating, although he had just taken a few short steps. He knew what he was supposed to do. He trudged willing not to face the duty required by the distant episode in which he didn’t move a limb, when he allowed Sarah’s departure. That night, the night, was just like this.
“She was full of future.”
Sarah was seventeen the day that she died. She was only a few days away of becoming a beautiful 18-year old senior, ready for whatever may come. She wanted to go to medicine school. She loved kids. She was going to be a paediatrician. She hiked in the mountains every Saturday morning. She never went to mass. She was in love with life. She drove a ’92 sky-blue beetle that she bought with money saved working nights on end cleaning tables, taking orders, serving food, taking tips from ungrateful one-full-dollar customers. She regretted nothing she had done, not even the abortion she had the previous year. She had a few friends. She loved all of them and they loved her too. She had never gone to a funeral. She smoked a couple of joints on weekends. She read one or two books every once in a while. She loved travelling. She never went beyond the dusty city limits. She craved for seeing the not so distant world beyond the barrier of mountains that embraced her town. She spent lonely nights on the outskirts waving at the ones that came into the city. She always missed those strangers that fled from that urban loneliness without showing an apparent reason. “Everybody must have a reason,” Sarah used to think. She didn’t know hers. She realized that her motive approached with every clock’s revolution. Sarah was full of future. Sarah died victim of the treacherous circumstances that surround every one of us.
“She was full of future.”
Lobo didn’t see where he was going. He knew his destination, but he never looked at it. The sombre building waited for him with the piled patience of a winter that knows that spring and summer will vanish soon, autumn is just an aperitif.
“She was full of future! She was full of future, for god’s sake!” Lobo kept repeating to himself, while he walked wagging continuously in anxiety.
His was a rabid trance that didn’t allow him to reckon any other option but to keep going. He was ready to do it for the first time in all those nights of feverish walking. Nothing could deter him now; not even his will; he had none. All the accumulated pressure took hold of him. Forces that he didn't understand mastered him. He had made the route of consolidation his way. A few yards ahead lied the building that even today cries the soar condemnation imposed within its walls. Lobo aimed at it. He was going to do it. He was going to do it. He would step into the wildly grown garden; he would walk the fifteen steps to the front door; he would reach for the knob; he would break into the place where Sarah was killed…“The place where Sarah was killed.” He stopped at this spine chilling consideration. Strange, above everything, was that his heart didn’t kick impetuously inside his chest as in the preceding times he had gone there. Even the mild air that blew on its serpentine road to the east seemed to impel Lobo to keep marching to the empty house, to those chambers full of forgotten whispering and buried solitude. What was his problem now? What had kept weary Lobo from relieving his aching past? There was nothing to be blamed. He tried to find one pretext; a single reason to stop his cross way in the direction of Krista’s former dwellings. But he couldn’t find one. Sarah didn’t let him dig into the ground of stupid excuses. She demanded Lobo’s presence. Via the stretched rumour of the trees and their leaves, the wind, one more time, commanded the furtherance in the swagger. Lobo didn’t think twice. He took the rest of the paces toward his self-imposed duty.
He reached the fence.
“She was full of future.”
He walked into the forsaken weeds.
“She was full of future!”
Lobo got to the front door and grabbed the handle: the bolt was broken. This wasn’t supposed to happen! He had saved energies to break a window, to climb a wall, to use the back entrance to the basement, to force his way in; after all, it was an abandoned house before his eyes. But something, or someone, was already welcoming him. He was expected that night. Maybe the future had come to meet him. Maybe the past was paying one last visit.
“She was full of future, our future,” Lobo, in awe, murmured.
Two steps after a cautious entrance, Lobo, immersed in the dilapidated darkness of the lobby, tried to turn on the light. It happened as he had thought.
“No light. Blindfolded till I get there,” he said in a loud voice, as if speaking with that something that broke the bolt for him.
His steps were delicate. The shrilling wood beneath him testified the entangling of courage and fear that grew within his now feverish body. Drops of sweat lively jumped down from his forehead. One, two, three; three more steps added to the others that he had already taken. He found the stairway that would conduct him and his agony to meet one more time the stained room.
Home alone and the kids were all right. The music was loud. People were gathered inside Krista’s room. It was a party to celebrate something, nobody knew what. Nevertheless, beer, pot, and some festive sex were encapsulated inside those walls. The music coming out of the boom box, mingling with the smoke, performed another murder ballad. “Sha la la la la. Sha la la la la.”
“Lobo,” a voice called him. “Lobo, Lobo, howl for me! Ha ha ha ha. Hold me tight, baby! I’m your Sarah, hun!” And the music went on.
Lobo was resting on the couch beneath the window. A couple of joints ago his mind was not exposed. Now, with the spliff burning in his fingers, Lobo breathed easily. The foggy relaxation didn’t take him to never land, but to his room, with his gal, not far away from there. Lobo’s parents weren’t home that night. It wasn’t perfect, ideal. They were just having sex, as many other times. He climbed Sarah, in and out. She mounted Lobo, up and down. A lascivious lost-in-lechery smile was drawn on his face.
“Hey, babes, wanna go elsewhere?”
Lobo wasn’t there.
“You’re fucking stoned, boy!” Sarah whispered to his earn. “I’m gonna get me a cold one, want one?”
Lobo wasn’t there.
The music was loud.
“Sha la la la la. We’re all going to die!”
“I’m so wasted, man,” slurred Billy-Billy Jansen, Burger Palace employee of the month. “I-I-I wanna puke… nooow” He stumbled his way out of the room, to the restroom, or perhaps to a comfortable place where he could vomit and sleep as well.
Earlier that day, good old Billy-Billy had been showing his marvelled friends a .44 revolver that he had taken from his mom’s cabinet. At this point he, due to the ethylic shortcut inside his brain, didn’t know where the weapon was; he didn’t remember the pistol at all. All he wanted was the soothing relief of throwing up and sleeping till hangover possessed him. He went out, guilty as the rest present there.
“Sha la la la, I’m afraid we’re all going to die!”
Little George, a nobody with not know reason to be there, wandered about the room finding nothing to do. He wasn’t a freak, a fresh, a fly guy, a b-boy or anything else. He had the dream of ruling the world one day. He greed power. He wanted to cast stones. He wanted not to be loved, but to be a saviour. He was a follower of any fashionable reason, but just a follower, a draconian follower. He needed people around him. Ha had nothing worthy to offer. He tried to chitchat with the celebrating guys but they never cared. He offered a little dust to a few girls. He wanted to make out. They never cared. He drank a couple of six packs. And at 2:38, that night, George was almost taking off when his New York Yankees cap fell from his head. When it touched the grey rug, little George kicked it beneath the bed by accident. Sarah’s laughter could be heard behind him.
“Shit! Shut up, bitch!” retaliated little George.
“Whatever, Mr. X” whispered Sarah on her way back to her Lobo.
“These sluts have no more respect for a man,” the offended lad replied to the air, while he was trying to reach for his cap below the bed. “One day I’ll show y’all bitches how to treat a man.” His hand combed the obscure area: a shoe, a used condom, a forgotten gun, and his cap, his Yankees hat. He was tempted. There was power beneath the bed. He wanted it. He wanted to show them bitches some respect.
He put the cap on top of the .44. He slid both instruments out to the light. He took a look, found his target, and thought it once, thought it twice. George stood up in silence. No one cared. He hadn’t been invited. No one cared as long as their interests weren’t afflicted. George tried to make up some words to say. He loved the stupid movie dialogs that convey a reason for the obvious. He believed himself a fast and furious southwest desperado: too fast and too furious. He grabbed his crotch with his left hand, raised the gun with his right one, took a few steps forward, and yelled, while shooting the weapon, “you, bitch, I’ll show you some respect, respect for Mr. George! Taste my lead, beeyatch!”
The door opened behind him.
“BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM,” erupted the gun.
“Sha la la la la. You’re going to die!”
Shrieks and awakening. A hollering commotion began within the room. Lobo came back; just a few seconds before he had seen Sarah, his Sarah, walking toward him with a couple of cold Coronas in her hands, flirtatiously smiling. He did not move. Lobo and his stagnant body remained sitting on the couch waiting for Sarah.
“No, please, no!” yelled Lobo.
“Somebody stop him!” Krista cried.
A football player tackled Georgie boy.
“BOOM!” Another explosion echoed in the room.
This time, little George painfully stopped existing.
“Sha la la la la.”
The door closed.
An empty light; shinning, dazzling radiance. Then darkness: absolute.
Lobo reached the upper level. Through one of the room doors a dim light poured out; some music and laughter could be heard. The beam came from Krista’s place.
“What shall I do now?” wondered Lobo, while facing the entrance to Krista’s old room. “What’s that light?”
“Lobo, howl for me! I’m gonna die!” a feminine, familiar voice from behind the door bellowed.
“It can’t be. That’s Sarah, my… My Sarah! I need to go there. What’s happening? I need to go there, but my feet won’t move. What’s happening? Saraaaah!”
The door to the room opened and a drunken man, good, old, little Billy-Billy, stumbled out. One, two, three pounding steps, then nothing. Billy succumbed to the ale. The door shut again. "BANG!"
“George, don’t do it? Please!” Lobo cried desperately. He began his way to the not so distant entrance. He stretched out his whole body, attempting to reach the room before…
“Sha la la la. Tonight you’re going to die!”
“BOOM BOOM BOOM”
Lobo shoved the door open. He was just on time to see the whole scene, this time clearer, this time bloodier.
As Sarah’s cadaver felt to the ground, blood and smashed pieces of brain splashed the room, her horribly distorted face, and Lobo’s helpless and feverish body.
“No, please, no! I came to… came to… I… Sarah! I! Doooooooooooooooon’t!” Lobo wailed before the gruesome scene. It had happened again. Nothing could stop and erase that moment: not his body, not his mind, not this time, nor any other power. She was looking at him with a terrified, bloodied expression. Her sight conveyed that of an angelic child that does not understand the punishment. Over and over and over he had dreamt that face, felt that lead-overdosed gaze. He had been there many, many times.
Lobo bent his head, as if looking down an endless cliff that yearns for his remnants. “She was… She…” Lobo attempted. He leapt his head all of a sudden. He looked straight to the couch where he had been that night.
“I’m not there. I'm not there! I’m here. I’m here, Sarah,” that he said, and nothing else. He stood silently by the threshold as the whole scenario lost its light to the prevailing darkness of the night.
Light. Shinning, dazzling light.
Lobo woke up beneath a bench at Rochester Park, five miles away from where everything took place. It was early in the city's icy morning. The rays of the sun crept to his face as his eyes opened.
“Whoa! What am I doing here? Where am I? Sarah! Where’s Sarah!?” he asked himself.
Lobo felt silent for a second, wandering with his sight all around the place.
“She’s away now,” he whispered in realization.
A white, dirt-stained, street dog was passing by and looked at him. Both of them stared silently at each other. The filthy beast showed Lobo his yellowish fangs and puffed in disdain; after that the dog got lost in the multitude of light, bushes, and people merging all over the park.
1 comment:
Graxias por leer. Sigo trabajando.
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