Clark Ashton Smith: The Satyr

Raoul, Comte de la Frenaie, was by nature the most unsuspicious of husbands. His lack of suspicion, perhaps, was partly lack of imagination; and, for the rest, was doubtless due to the dulling of his observational faculties by the heavy wines of Averoigne. At any rate, he had never seen anything amiss in the friendship of his wife, Adele, with Olivier du Montoir, a young poet who might in time have rivalled Ronsard as one of the most brilliant luminaries of the Pleiade, if it had not been for an unforeseen but fatal circumstance. Indeed, M. le Comte had been rather proud than otherwise, because of the interest shown in Mme. la Comtesse by this erudite and comely youth, who had already moistened his lips at the fount of Helicon and was becoming known throughout other provinces than Averoigne for his melodious villanelles and graceful ballades. Nor was Raoul disturbed by the fact that many of these same villanelles and ballades were patently written in celebration of Adele's visible charms, and made liberal mention of her wine-dark tresses, her golden eyes, and sundry other details no less alluring, and equally essential to feminine perfection. M. le Comte did not pretend to understand poetry: like many others, he considered it something apart frorn all common sense or mundane relevancy; and his mental powers became totally paralysed whenever they were confronted by anything in rhyme and metre. In the meanwhile, the ballades and their author were gradually waxing in boldness.

That year, the snows of an austere winter had melted away in a week of halcyon warmth; and the land was filled with the tender green and chrysolite and chrysoprase of early spring. Olivier came oftener and oftener to the chateau de la Frenaie, and he and Adele were often alone, since they had so much to talk that was beyond the interests or the comprehension of M. le Comte. And now, sometimes, they walked abroad in the forest about the chateau the forest that rolled a sea of vernal verdure almost to the grey walls and barbican, and within whose sun-warm glades the perfume of the first wild flowers was tingeing delicately the quiet air. If people gossiped, they did so discreetly and beyond hearing of Raoul, or of Adele and Olivier.

Alejo Carpentier: Viaje a la semilla

I

-¿Qué quieres, viejo?...

Varias veces cayó la pregunta de lo alto de los andamios. Pero el viejo no respondía. Andaba de un lugar a otro, fisgoneando, sacándose de la garganta un largo monólogo de frases incomprensibles. Ya habían descendido las tejas, cubriendo los canteros muertos con su mosaico de barro cocido. Arriba, los picos desprendían piedras de mampostería, haciéndolas rodar por canales de madera, con gran revuelo de cales y de yesos. Y por las almenas sucesivas que iban desdentando las murallas aparecían -despojados de su secreto- cielos rasos ovales o cuadrados, cornisas, guirnaldas, dentículos, astrágalos, y papeles encolados que colgaban de los testeros como viejas pieles de serpiente en muda. Presenciando la demolición, una Ceres con la nariz rota y el peplo desvaído, veteado de negro el tocado de mieses, se erguía en el traspatio, sobre su fuente de mascarones borrosos. Visitados por el sol en horas de sombra, los peces grises del estanque bostezaban en agua musgosa y tibia, mirando con el ojo redondo aquellos obreros, negros sobre claro de cielo, que iban rebajando la altura secular de la casa. El viejo se había sentado, con el cayado apuntalándole la barba, al pie de la estatua. Miraba el subir y bajar de cubos en que viajaban restos apreciables. Oíanse, en sordina, los rumores de la calle mientras, arriba, las poleas concertaban, sobre ritmos de hierro con piedra, sus gorjeos de aves desagradables y pechugonas.

Dieron las cinco. Las cornisas y entablamentos se despoblaron. Sólo quedaron escaleras de mano, preparando el salto del día siguiente. El aire se hizo más fresco, aligerado de sudores, blasfemias, chirridos de cuerdas, ejes que pedían alcuzas y palmadas en torsos pringosos. Para la casa mondada el crepúsculo llegaba más pronto. Se vestía de sombras en horas en que su ya caída balaustrada superior solía regalar a las fachadas algún relumbre de sol. La Ceres apretaba los labios. Por primera vez las habitaciones dormirían sin persianas, abiertas sobre un paisaje de escombros.

Contrariando sus apetencias, varios capiteles yacían entre las hierbas. Las hojas de acanto descubrían su condición vegetal. Una enredadera aventuró sus tentáculos hacia la voluta jónica, atraída por un aire de familia. Cuando cayó la noche, la casa estaba más cerca de la tierra. Un marco de puerta se erguía aún, en lo alto, con tablas de sombras suspendidas de sus bisagras desorientadas.

II

Entonces el negro viejo, que no se había movido, hizo gestos extraños, volteando su cayado sobre un cementerio de baldosas.

Los cuadrados de mármol, blancos y negros, volaron a los pisos, vistiendo la tierra. Las piedras con saltos certeros, fueron a cerrar los boquetes de las murallas. Hojas de nogal claveteadas se encajaron en sus marcos, mientras los tornillos de las charnelas volvían a hundirse en sus hoyos, con rápida rotación.

Philip K. Dick: We Can Remember it For You Wholesale

He awoke and wanted Mars. The valleys, he thought. What would it be like to trudge among them? Great and greater yet: the dream grew as he became fully conscious, the dream and the yearning. He could almost feel the enveloping presence of the other world, which only Government agents and high officials had seen. A clerk like himself? Not likely.

"Are you getting up or not?" his wife Kirsten asked drowsily, with her usual hint of fierce crossness. "If you are, push the hot coffee button on the darn stove."

"Okay," Douglas Quail said, and made his way barefoot from the bedroom of their conapt to the kitchen. There, having dutifully pressed the hot coffee button, he seated himself at the kitchen table, brought out a yellow, small tin of fine Dean Swift snuff. He inhaled briskly,, and the Beau Nash mixture stung his nose, burned the roof of his mouth. But still he inhaled; it woKe him up and allowed his dreams, his nocturnal desires and random wishes, to condense into a semblance of rationality.

I will go, he said to himself. Before I die I'll see Mars.

It was, of course, impossible, and he knew this even as he dreamed. But the daylight, the mundane noise of his wife now brushing her hair before the bedroom mirror everything conspired to remind him of what he was. A miserable little salaried employee, he said to himself with bitterness. Kirsten reminded him of this at least once a day and he did not blame her; it was a wife's job to bring her husband down to Earth. Down to Earth, he thought, and laughed. The figure of speech in this was literally apt.

"What are you sniggering about?" his wife asked as she swept into the kitchen, her long busy-pink robe wagging after her. "A dream, I bet. You're always full of them."

"Yes," he said, and gazed out the kitchen window at the hovercars and traffic runnels, and all the little energetic people hurrying to work. In a little while he would be among them. As always.

"I'll bet it has to do with some woman," Kirsten said witheringly.

"No," he said. "A god. The god of war. He has wonderful craters with every kind of plant-life growing deep down in them."

Salomé Guadalupe Ingelmo: In Speculo, frater absens, idolum tuum est: Sermo septimus ad ignaros Mortuos

A ti, que estás siempre ahí, restableciendo la confianza

en lo sublime e incontestable

−¿Nos ha llamado usted?

−Sí. Mi marido, el señor Dowland… El 3-2-74 está teniendo otra crisis hipersensorial. Toma los fármacos reglamentarios. Nada más: ni supresores de la ira ni inhibidores de la ansiedad ni reguladores del sueño −las estrellas del mercado negro.

−Otro que ve a Dios en las pildoritas rosa −le susurra al compañero−. En el peor de los casos, la reacción le provocará una catatonia temporal, pero difícilmente caerá en coma. A casi ninguno le sucede –explica con una sonrisa desafiante. Todos mienten. Se aburren y además son unos viciosos, así que se hinchan a pastillas prohibidas−. Deja fluir las lágrimas, muchacho –le aconseja el policía−, y todos tus pecados serán lavados.

No se percata de los estigmas en sus palmas. Han empezado a supurar de nuevo.

La pistola de inyección libera un suspiro de alivio o de indiferencia por el padecimiento ajeno. El líquido azulado engrosa las venas. Las convulsiones huyen del cuerpo mortificado. Pero el sudor persiste como lágrimas desorientadas. Las pupilas dilatadas naufragan en unos ojos inmensos, incrédulos. Ella sabe lo que están viendo.

−No te preocupes, Jack. Ha sido sólo un sueño, una pesadilla. Ya ha pasado.

−¿Él ya no me molestará más? –pregunta turbado, al borde de las lágrimas. Con el mismo terror que arropa a los niños por las noches prendido en su voz.

−No, cariño. Te lo he explicado cientos de veces. Ese tal Dick…

Thomas Hardy: The Superstitious Man's Story

'William, as you may know, was a curious, silent man; you could feel when he came near 'ee; and if he was in the house or anywhere behind your back without your seeing him, there seemed to be something clammy in the air, as if a cellar door was opened close by your elbow. Well, one Sunday, at a time that William was in very good health to all appearance, the bell that was ringing for church went very heavy all of a sudden; the sexton, who told me o't, said he'd not known the bell to go so heavy in his hand for years – and he feared it meant a death in the parish. That was on the Sunday, as I say. During the week after, it chanced that William's wife was staying up late one night to finish her ironing, she doing the washing for Mr. and Mrs. Hardcome. Her husband had finished his supper and gone to bed as usual some hour or two before. While she ironed she heard him coming down stairs; he stopped to put on his boots at the stair-foot, where he always left them, and then came on into the living-room where she was ironing, passing through it towards the door, this being the only way from the staircase to the outside of the house. No word was said on either side, William not being a man given to much speaking, and his wife being occupied with her work. He went out and closed the door behind him. As her husband had now and then gone out in this way at night before when unwell, or unable to sleep for want of a pipe, she took no particular notice, and continued at her ironing. This she finished shortly after, and as he had not come in she waited awhile for him putting away the irons and things, and preparing the table for his breakfast in the morning. Still he did not return, and supposing him not far off, and wanting to get to bed herself, tired as she was, she left the door unbarred and went to the stairs, after writing on the back of the door with chalk: Mind and do the door (because he was a forgetful man).

'To her great surprise, and I might say alarm, on reaching the foot of the stairs his boots were standing there as they always stood when he had gone to rest; going up to their chamber she found him in bed sleeping as sound as a rock. How he could have got back again without her seeing or hearing him was beyond her comprehension. It could only have been bypassing behind her very quietly while she was bumping with the iron. But this notion did not satisfy her: it was surely impossible that she should not have seen him come in through a room so small. She could not unravel the mystery, and felt very queer and uncomfortable about it. However, she would not disturb him to question him then, and went to bed herself.

Fabián Vique: Una realidad

Me desperté a las tres de la madrugada sobresaltado, bañado en sangre, con un puñal clavado en el medio de mi pecho. «¡Menos mal!», me dije, «es sólo una realidad». Y seguí durmiendo.

Hector Hugh Munro (Saki): The soul of Laploshka

Laploshka was one of the meanest men I have ever met, and quite one of the most entertaining. He said horrid things about other people in such a charming way that one forgave him for the equally horrid things he said about oneself behind one’s back. Hating anything in the way of ill-natured gossip ourselves, we are always grateful to those who do it for us and do it well. And Laploshka did it really well.

Naturally Laploshka had a large circle of acquaintances, and as he exercised some care in their selection it followed that an appreciable proportion were men whose bank balances enabled them to acquiesce indulgently in his rather one-sided views on hospitality. Thus, although possessed of only moderate means, he was able to live comfortably within his income, and still more comfortably within those of various tolerantly disposed associates.

But towards the poor or to those of the same limited resources as himself his attitude was one of watchful anxiety; he seemed to be haunted by a besetting fear lest some fraction of a shilling or franc, or whatever the prevailing coinage might be, should be diverted from his pocket or service into that of a hard-up companion. A two-franc cigar would be cheerfully offered to a wealthy patron, on the principle of doing evil that good may come, but I have known him indulge in agonies of perjury rather than admit the incriminating possession of a copper coin when change was needed to tip a waiter. The coin would have been duly returned at the earliest opportunity–he would have taken means to insure against forgetfulness on the part of the borrower–but accidents might happen, and even the temporary estrangement from his penny or sou was a calamity to be avoided.

The knowledge of this amiable weakness offered a perpetual temptation to play upon Laploshka’s fears of involuntary generosity. To offer him a lift in a cab and pretend not to have enough money to pay the fair, to fluster him with a request for a sixpence when his hand was full of silver just received in change, these were a few of the petty torments that ingenuity prompted as occasion afforded. To do justice to Laploshka’s resourcefulness it must be admitted that he always emerged somehow or other from the most embarrassing dilemma without in any way compromising his reputation for saying “No.” But the gods send opportunities at some time to most men, and mine came one evening when Laploshka and I were supping together in a cheap boulevard restaurant. (Except when he was the bidden guest of some one with an irreproachable income, Laploshka was wont to curb his appetite for high living; on such fortunate occasions he let it go on an easy snaffle.) At the conclusion of the meal a somewhat urgent message called me away, and without heeding my companion’s agitated protest, I called back cruelly, “Pay my share; I’ll settle with you to-morrow.” Early on the morrow Laploshka hunted me down by instinct as I walked along a side street that I hardly ever frequented. He had the air of a man who had not slept.

Álex E. Peñaloza Campos: Mina

El estallido atronador lo dejó completamente sordo. De pronto sintió el frío y agreste suelo a sus espaldas. Vio algunas figuras humanas corriendo apresuradas, unas tratando de ocultarse, otras que se le acercaban diligentes. Buscó sus sentidos y percibió que, aparte de la sordera que lentamente se iba diluyendo, todo estaba bien. Sentía su cabeza, sus manos, sus pies y sus dedos: Sentía todos sus dedos. Si, los sentía. Se felicitó por su buena suerte; después de todo había salido bien parado de la explosión.

-¡Una mina! ¡Pisó una mina! – gritó un soldado.

Fue a levantarse pero no lo logró. Cuando quiso ponerse en pie notó con horror que la mina le había volado un pie y hecho trizas el otro. Entonces se desmayó.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Turned

In her soft-carpeted, thick-curtained, richly furnished chamber, Mrs Marroner lay sobbing on the wide, soft bed.

She sobbed bitterly, chokingly, despairingly; her shoulders heaved and shook convulsively; her hands were tight-clenched. She had forgotten her elaborate dress, the more elaborate bedcover; forgotten her dignity, her self-control, her pride. In her mind was an overwhelming, unbelievable horror, an immeasurable loss, a turbulent, struggling mass of emotion.

In her reserved, superior, Boston-bred life, she had never dreamed that it would be possible for her to feel so many things at once, and with such trampling intensity.

She tried to cool her feelings into thoughts; to stiffen them into words; to control herself — and could not. It brought vaguely to her mind an awful moment in the breakers at York Beach, one summer in girlhood when she had been swimming under water and could not find the top.

In her uncarpeted, thin-curtained, poorly furnished chamber on the top floor, Gerta Petersen lay sobbing on the narrow, hard bed.

She was of larger frame than her mistress, grandly built and strong; but all her proud young womanhood was prostrate now, convulsed with agony, dissolved in tears. She did not try to control herself. She wept for two.

If Mrs Marroner suffered more from the wreck and ruin of a longer love — perhaps a deeper one; if her tastes were finer, her ideals loftier; if she bore the pangs of bitter jealousy and outraged pride, Gerta had personal shame to meet, a hopeless future, and a looming present which filled her with unreasoning terror.

She had come like a meek young goddess into that perfectly ordered house, strong, beautiful, full of goodwill and eager obedience, but ignorant and childish — a girl of eighteen.

Mr Marroner had frankly admired her, and so had his wife. They discussed her visible perfections and as visible limitations with that perfect confidence which they had so long enjoyed. Mrs Marroner was not a jealous woman. She had never been jealous in her life — till now.

Gerta had stayed and learned their ways. They had both been fond of her. Even the cook was fond of her. She was what is called 'willing', was unusually teachable and plastic; and Mrs Marroner, with her early habits of giving instruction, tried to educate her somewhat.

"I never saw anyone so docile," Mrs Marroner had often commented. "It is perfection in a servant, but almost a defect in character. She is so helpless and confiding."

She was precisely that: a tall, rosy-cheeked baby; rich womanhood without, helpless infancy within. Her braided wealth of dead gold hair, her grave blue eyes, her mighty shoulders and long, firmly moulded limbs seemed those of a primal earth spirit; but she was only an ignorant child, with a child's weakness.

When Mr Marroner had to go abroad for his firm, unwillingly, hating to leave his wife, he had told her he felt quite safe to leave her in Gerta's hands — she would take care of her.

Enrique Anderson Imbert: Tabú

El ángel de la guarda le susurró a Fabián, por detrás del hombro:

-¡Cuidado, Fabián! Está dispuesto que mueras en cuanto pronuncies la palabra zangolotino.

-¿Zangolotino? – Pregunta Fabián azorado.

Y muere.

Augustus Hare: The Vampire of Croglin Grange

An intriguing account of vampirism was related by a certain Captain Fisher, to Augustus Hare, who who wrote of it in the Story of My Life.

"Fisher," said the Captain, "may sound a very plebeian name, but this family is of a very ancient lineage, and for many hundreds of years they have possessed a very curious old place in Cumberland, which bears the weird name of Croglin Grange. The great characteristic of the house is that never at any period of its very long existence has it been more than one story high, but it has a terrace from which large grounds sweep away towards the church in the hollow, and a fine distant view.

"When, in lapse of years, the Fishers outgrew Croglin Grange in family and fortune, they were wise enough not to destroy the long-standing characteristic of the place by adding another story to the house, but they went away to the south, to reside at Thorncombe near Guildford, and they let Croglin Grange.

"They were extremely fortunate in their tenants, two brothers and a sister. They heard their praises from all quarters. To their poorer neighbours they were all that is most kind and beneficent, and their neighbours of a higher class spoke of them as a most welcome addition to the little society of the neighbourhood. On their part, the tenants were greatly delighted with their new residence. The arrangement of the house, which would have been a trial to many, was not so to them. In every respect Croglin Grange was exactly suited to them.

"The winter was spent most happily by the new inmates of Croglin Grange, who shared in all the little social pleasures of the district, and made themselves very popular. In the following summer there was one day which was dreadfully, annihilatingly hot. The brothers lay under the trees with their books, for it was too hot for any active occupation. The sister sat in the veranda and worked, or tried to work, for in the intense sultriness of that summer day, work was next to impossible. They dined early, and after dinner they still sat out on the veranda, enjoying the cool air which came with the evening, and they watched the sun set, and the moon rise over the belt of trees which separated the grounds from the churchyard, seeing it mount the heavens till the whole lawn was bathed in silver light, across which the long shadows from the shrubbery fell as if embossed, so vivid and distinct were they.

Jean Lorrain (Paul Alexandre Martin Duval): Histoire de la bonne Gudule

Mme de Lautréamont habitait la plus belle maison de la ville : c'était l'ancien hôtel de la Recette générale, bâti sous Louis XV (excusez du peu !) et dont les hautes fenêtres, ornementées d'attributs et de coquilles, faisaient l'admiration de quiconque passait sur la grande place les jours de marché. C'était un grand corps de logis, flanqué de deux ailes en retour réunies par une large grille : la cour d'honneur avec, derrière le bâtiment principal, le plus beau jardin du monde. Il descendait de terrasse en terrasse, jusqu'aux bords des remparts, dominait trente lieues de campagne et, de la plus belle ordonnance Louis XV, abritait dans ses bosquets des statues licencieuses, toutes plus ou moins lutinées par les Ris et l'Amour.

Quant aux appartements, ils étaient lambrissés de panneaux sculptés du plus charmant effet, ornementés de trumeaux et de glaces, et les parquets de tout le rez-de-chaussée, curieusement incrustés de bois des Iles, luisaient comme des miroirs. Mme de Lautréamont n'habitait que le corps principal, elle avait loué des pavillons des ailes à de solides locataires et s'en faisait de bonnes rentes ; il n'était personne qui n'enviât d'habiter l'hôtel de Lautréamont, et c'était le sempiternel sujet des conversations de la ville.

Cette Mme de Lautréamont ! Elle était née les mains pleines et avait toujours eu toutes les chances : un mari bâti comme Hercule tout à ses volontés, et qui la laissait s'habiller à Paris, chez le grand faiseur ; deux enfants qu'elle avait bien établis, la fille mariée à un procureur du roi, et le fils déjà capitaine d'artillerie ou en passe de l'être ; le plus beau logis du département, une santé qui la faisait encore fraîche et, ma foi, désirable à plus de quarante-cinq ans et, pour entretenir cette demeure princière et cette santé presque indécente, une domestique comme on n'en fait plus, le phénix, la perle rare des servantes, tous les dévouements, toutes les attentions, toutes les honnêtetés incarnés dans la bonne Gudule.

Grâce à cette fille merveilleuse, Mme de Lautréamont arrivait avec trois domestiques, un jardinier, un valet de chambre et une cuisinière, à entretenir son immense maison sur un pied de soixante mille livres de rentes. C'était, sans contredit, la demeure la mieux tenue de la ville : pas un grain de poussière sur le marbre des consoles, des parquets dangereux à force d'être cirés, de vieilles glaces devenues plus claires que l'eau des fontaines et partout, dans tous les appartements, un ordre, une symétrie qui faisaient citer l'ancien hôtel de la Recette comme la première maison de province, avec cette phrase désormais consacrée pour désigner un logis très soigné : "C'est à se croire chez les Lautréamont".

L'âme de cette demeure étonnante se trouvait être une bonne vieille fille aux joues encore fraîche, aux petits yeux naïfs et bleuâtres, et qui du matin au soir, le plumeau ou le balai à la main, sérieuse, silencieuse, active, n'arrêtait pas de frotter, de brosser, d'épousseter, de faire briller et reluire, ennemie déclarée de tout atome de poussière. Les autres domestiques la redoutaient un peu : c'était une terrible surveillance que celle de la bonne Gudule. Dévouée tout entière aux intérêts des maîtres, rien n'échappait à son petit oeil bleu ; toujours au logis avec cela, car la vieille fille ne sortait que pour assister aux offices des jours de fête et des dimanches, assez peu dévote, ma foi, et nullement assidue à la messe de six heures, ce prétexte de sortie journalière de toutes les vieilles servantes.

Abraham Merritt: The People of the Pit

NORTH of us a shaft of light shot half way to the zenith. It came from behind the five peaks. The beam drove up through a column of blue haze whose edges were marked as sharply as the rain that streams from the edges of a thunder cloud. It was like the flash of a searchlight through an azure mist. It cast no shadows.

As it struck upward the summits were outlined hard and black and I saw that the whole mountain was shaped like a hand. As the light silhouetted it, the gigantic fingers stretched, the hand seemed to thrust itself forward. It was exactly as though it moved to push something back. The shining beam held steady for a moment; then broke into myriads of little luminous globes that swung to and fro and dropped gently. They seemed to be searching.

The forest had become very still. Every wood noise held its breath. I felt the dogs pressing against my legs. They too were silent; but every muscle in their bodies trembled, their hair was stiff along their backs and their eyes, fixed on the falling lights, were filmed with the terror glaze.

I looked at Anderson. He was staring at the North where once more the beam had pulsed upward.

"It can't be the aurora," I spoke without moving my lips. My mouth was as dry as though Lao T'zai had poured his fear dust down my throat.

"If it is I never saw one like it," he answered in the same tone. "Besides who ever heard of an aurora at this time of the year?"

He voiced the thought that was in my own mind.

"It makes me think something is being hunted up there," he said, "an unholy sort of hunt—it's well for us to be out of range."

"The mountain seems to move each time the shaft shoots up," I said. "What's it keeping back, Starr? It makes me think of the frozen hand of cloud that Shan Nadour set before the Gate of Ghouls to keep them in the lairs that Eblis cut for them."

He raised a hand—listening.

From the North and high overhead there came a whispering. It was not the rustling of the aurora, that rushing, crackling sound like the ghosts of winds that blew at Creation racing through the skeleton leaves of ancient trees that sheltered Lilith. It was a whispering that held in it a demand. It was eager. It called us to come up where the beam was flashing. It drew. There was in it a note of inexorable insistence. It touched my heart with a thousand tiny fear-tipped fingers and it filled me with a vast longing to race on and merge myself in the light. It must have been so that Ulysses felt when he strained at the mast and strove to obey the crystal sweet singing of the Sirens.

Hernán Domínguez Nimo: El deseo

El hálito sobre la piel la despertó antes que su voz. Era como el viento invernal que se filtra por una rendija de la ventana y obliga a acurrucarse frente al hogar encendido.

La ventana. Había recordado dejarla entreabierta para él…

Se tapó con la sábana hasta el mentón y se quedó acostada, los ojos cerrados, escuchando los ronquidos de John, agradeciendo ese momento de intimidad que le regalaba la noche.

Ya no le gustaba compartir la habitación con sus dos hermanos. Le dolía reconocerlo: jugar con ellos hasta quedar dormidos siempre había sido lo mejor del mundo. Pero ya no.

¿Por qué? ¿Qué había cambiado? ¿Ellos?

No. No había nada distinto en la expresión divertida de John cuando aparecía de repente junto a su cama para sorprenderla, ni en Michael cuando la azotaba con la almohada para empezar una guerra… Cada vez se prometía que iba a responder al juego como solía hacerlo. Pero solo despertaban su fastidio.

Se revolvió, molesta. Tal vez sí era culpa de ellos. De John, que conspiraba continuamente para sorprenderla en ropa interior y cuchichear después con Michael…

—No me esperaste despierta —dijo la voz, un leve esbozo de reproche. Se incorporó en la cama y se encontró con la extraña sonrisa a centímetros de su propio rostro. El cosquilleo la estremeció. Intentó definir una vez más qué había de particular en esa sonrisa. Se perdió en la intensidad de sus ojos.

El sentimiento de culpa apareció de algún lado. No había ruidos en la casa. John y Michael aún dormían en sus camas. La ventana estaba cerrada.

—Estaba soñando con vos… —se oyó decir ella.

Ilustración por William Trabacilo basada en la historia de "El deseo" de Hernán Domínguez Nimo—Claro… —contestó él, divertido. Entonces levantó las piernas del piso y las cruzó. Se quedó un rato así, flotando en el aire, mirándola. Ella supo que venía la pregunta y quiso evitarla, ganar tiempo:

—¿Ya encontraste tu sombra?

Él sonrió, como si supiera lo que ella intentaba.