SHORT TALE: THE DAZZLING EYES

Richard Vargas López

Publicado en Capital Letter No. 2

Octubre de 2002

It happened on a misty night when my soul was utterly invaded by an extreme feeling of grief. Amnesia and photophobia accompanied my odd anxiety. "Asimple nervous disorder, which doubtless soon will pass," I thought.

Some feeble people found in alcohol the nepenthes to defeat their strongest sorrow. But unlike them, it was not my demeanor to concede my troubles to be devoured by the bitterness of alcohol. My unfathomable anxiety, however, had overpowered me to such an extent that I was swallowed into an alcohol dream that night. At the Village Bar the clock killed time and I did not realize how poisoned I was until I saw unknown people around me, talking about my deepest secrets.

The midnight moved away; the bar owners switched on the light and after a few seconds, its intense gloss brought pain to my eyes. The photophobia began wreaking havoc inside me. I had come out of the bar, when a car came towards me. Its lights dazzled my eyes producing two huge shining circles in my optical nerves. When I opened my eyes, the two dazzling lights had disappeared and I was in front of my home. "The amnesia appeared again," I muttered.

I entered my house, mysteriously desolate, and went up to my bedroom to rest from my anxiety. Tucked in bed, the alcohol-slumber I had been waiting for started taking shape. I experienced how my spirit was leaving my body. My specter went and visited the bedroom of the girl whom I had always dreamed with.

Entering slowly as a shadow, and taking advantage that she would not notice his presence, he took a seat near her bed. His intense scrutiny of her wan beauty began in her slender neck. He approached her nostrils in order to feel the soft air her breathing produced...

Suddenly, my spirit possessed again my emaciated body. Now, it smelled like cedar. I could not move any part of my body, covered by earth, except my eyes. I opened them and a freezing chill caused me to tremble. There was darkness everywhere. There, I only saw the stare of those two dazzling lights that had turned into death's dazzling eyes.

"...And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming..."'

1 Poe, Edgar Allan. The Raven.