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SEXY X2
MAGAZINE - SEPTEMBER 2012
his chest and remained there forever.
He walked for hours without see-
ing anybody. Evening had settled
and he was still walking. Darkness
sheltered the steps of that man who
did not stop walking.
When the day finally dawned and
the sun’s rays shortened the shad-
ows, he was overcome by a fatigue
beyond description. He had been
walking restlessly for more than
twenty six hours in a row. His soles
hurt and each one of them showed
a huge blister but he did not feel
pain, just tiredness and the grief
and fear of having remained as the
last example of a species become
extinct because of him.
He sat on the sidewalk in front of the
window of a shop now empty and
leaned his back against the small
wall holding the big glass. He cov-
ered himself slightly with the blanket
he had been dragging throughout
his walk and that now had one of its
ends covered in mud and dirt. Hold-
ing the bible tightly against his chest
he inadvertently began to bend his
legs toward his chest slowly until he
got into fetal position.
He wanted to die and get out of
that nightmare that transformed him
into the loneliest man that had ever
dwelled on earth.
- I want to die! he started to
shout.
After reading his bible over and over
again he knew by heart every para-
graph, every letter. What wanted to
be a plea became a shout:
- From the bottom of my
heart I invoke you, Lord! Listen to my
voice! Hearken unto the voice of my
cry!
- Where have they all gone?
- From the bottom of my
heart I invoke you, Lord! Listen to my
voice! Hearken unto the voice of my
cry! - he kept shouting, sprawled on
the sidewalk, his clothes dirty and
rumpled.
Tiredness prevailed over pain and
fear. He never knew how long he
slept. There were only shreds of
linked memories. It was a nightmare
half dreamt and half lived too. Im-
ages came to him as volutes where
he could see himself mumbling
philosophical postulates to people
who did not pay him attention. He
constantly repeated that section of
the bible as if that prayer could take
him out of his hell.
He felt stunned, drugged. He did
not understand what was happen-
ing to him and what had happened
around him. He only knew that he
was afraid, filled with fathomless
loneliness, and that he no longer
wanted to live but at the same time
he was unable to end his own life.
Nevertheless, something happened
during his nightmare; something
changed. It was then when ghosts
appeared. They moved around him.
There was just a few of them but
sometimes he saw them.
He tried to talk to them in a loud
voice but they seemed not to listen to
him. So he yelled at them trying to
be heard but, instead of paying him
attention and answering him, they
went away.
He tried to attract their attention by
talking about philosophy and his
complex reasoning but he did not
get it
He thought that, as ghosts, they
would be interested in holy texts and
he read his dirty bible to them but
that did not work either.
His surroundings had also changed.
Now there were high walls protect-
ing him from a deeper loneliness.
Ghosts moved slowly between those
walls and him. Surely they had
appeared because the huge wall
prevented them from going away,
which, according to his philosophi-
cal logic, ratified the idea that if he
crossed the wall even the ghostly
figures would disappear and he
would be completely alone.
Hence, he should not do so. It was
better to be sitting there under the
warm sun despite the missing Mexi-
can hat. Other laughter, and a new
fear of loneliness, and a new cry,
and again the Psalm.
A couple of nurses of the psychiatric
hospital looking after inmates in the
yard and a few more patients slowly
walking around him moved away
from him when he started to caress
one side of his head nervously with
one hand while with the other he
held his bible tightly and cried:
- From the bottom of my
heart I invoke you, Lord! Listen to my
voice! Hearken unto the voice of my
cry!
S