A collection of nine short stories developed in surreal environments, some of them tragic, others emotional. Some of these stories have been already published in peruvian magazines or newspapers.
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The pain erupted sharply on one side of his torso, under the liver. He was in the midst of hauling materials for the soon-to-be tallest building in the district when it hit, stopping him cold. He could not stand up, before the astonished gaze of the other workers. On the way to the emergency room, the paramedics queried Stefan if he had previously suffered discomfort from his gallbladder, but the patient let them know that it had already been removed several years ago. "It can't be anything other than the appendix," they told him, as they contacted the hospital to make preparations for surgery. There, the doctors on duty ruled out that it was that; Stefan received a couple of painkillers, but they didn't seem to have any effect. The man trembled, with his eyes open looking at the ceiling of the room, despite the intense fluorescent light, while the staff didn't know how to proceed.
The emergency room was light blue colored, a color some people say provides relaxation, but not in cases like Stefan's. In the midst of the pain, the walls reminded him of the apartment of Lucía, his sister-in-law's Caribbean friend. It was precisely his sister-in-law who introduced Lucía to him the previous week. The woman's apartment buzzed with life. Several guest people, all sharing her heritage, filled the space, very happy people with fire in their blood. She told the man she was sharing the apartment with her youngest niece, a twelve-year-old girl with eyes like freshly harvested chestnuts – eyes that sparkled with far more expressiveness than her aunt's. Stefan could not contain the urge to smile at those eyes, an act that was returned by the girl with a touch of coquetry that seemed to be inherited from her race. At the end of the meeting, after a barrage of filled glasses, the hostess shared her phone number with a fascinated Stefan. Two days later he went to visit her, taking advantage of the fact that her niece was at school. That daytime visit was better for him than any nighttime raid he had ever made on a woman in his life.
Around noon, the worker's breathing stopped being labored. With a somewhat weak voice, he announced that the pain had disappeared; to demonstrate it, he stood up from the stretcher, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a gesture of relief. The doctors, swallowing their disbelief, said that this recovery could only be temporary, but they could not prevent Stefan from preparing to leave the hospital on his own two feet. The man spared no time in adjusting his clothes, making sure that all his personal effects were in order, including that old knife that, according to him, was his faithful protector when he needed to walk through the dark streets that surround the construction place. He was happy with the way his unexpected illness ended: he would certainly go home with more questions than answers, but he would finally be able to drink a strong coffee and watch the news in peace.
The next day, a cloudless sunny Sunday, something unusual happened. The man was about to take a shower, when he began to feel a certain heat in his hands. He washed them immediately, but shortly afterward they began to burn. A scream shook the bathroom window; he immediately opened the shower valve and, with a desperate movement, put his hands into the running water, drowning them completely. The fall of the water caused an image of Lucía's bathroom, since she also had the shower running there last Friday. The woman was not at home, but her niece had opened the door for him and told Stefan that her aunt would be very late. The dark-haired girl sat on the couch to watch her favorite show, one about talking animals. Stefan, with his hands as if he had passed them over burning embers, tried to remember what happened before entering Lucía's bathroom. He remembered that he went to the living room to sit next to the little girl and talk about her favorite show. The next thing he remembered was that the knife was in his right hand, he on the bed and the girl on his side, a scene similar to another he had experienced the previous year, in another city, under different circumstances. There was blood on both the girl's arms and chest. He ran to the bathroom to clean himself, but when he thought he was completely clean, he looked at the mirror to see that his hair was also stained with red. Then he took some shampoo and turned on the shower to scrub himself vigorously. He did not remember, however, when he left or how he returned home. He was only sure that this had happened last Friday and no one had questioned him about it.
Stefan felt relief only after letting the water run from the showerhead for twenty minutes. He went out into the street, knowing that he had to act the same way he did when he had to flee from that other city. No time for packing, just the blind rush towards the bus terminal, hoping to disappear before anyone dared to ask something. Would he have to change his name again? To get another fake ID? He wasn't sure of. The fact is that, upon arriving at the station, he felt a piercing pain in his chest. At first he attributed it to anxiety, but the discomfort deepened, forcing him to find a seat. This did not help him, as he fell to the ground before the curious eyes of those waiting to embark. People began to seek the presence of a doctor, but Stefan understood that this would be of no use. Too late, when the morning lights were already transforming before his eyes into dark spots, he realized that it was a mistake to have washed himself in that unfamiliar shower, providing Lucia with two samples of the murderer's hair and prompting the woman to call her Caribbean friends, most of them Haitians, who knew perfectly well what to do with the hair, nails, clothes and even the tears of all those who deserved to be burned at the very deepest pits of Hell.
