Roots

Published December 19th, 2020
Translated September 2023

This tale I wrote it first like in 2015.  It didn’t have an ending first time. Second time it was this version. I’ll be boring you with this tale for the following three or four Wednesdays. Afterwards, I’ll publish the bettered version. I hope you can learn something out of it. Because between this and the second one there’s a different universe in between.

NOTE: It is highly possible that the translation gets better than the Spanish original.

ROOTS 1

Beating in the darkness there’s a blooming red rose. Each petal oozes enough life to light itself and nothing more in a flickering spark. It won’t last much before before falling; among the excited voices from the shadows of the darkness around; at ground touch it flattens against it. A thick drop of a vibrating liquid boiling before freezing into snow.

A roof under a sad sky. It is a green house annex to the store. Flowers and other plants are shown in metallic shelves to outdoors temperatures. There are more shelves  with resting tools on them around.

A young man, his body about to swim inside a turtle neck sweater; exits the automatic door. Manure, white gloves, a pair of Wellingtons in his cart. Besides the garden, it seems the drainage needs fixing. He has a check list on his hand, 3 and a ¼» PVC tubes. Coples and copper plumbing are better, is the advice of the area expert in an orange mono. They even suggests an additional payment for installing it. A little expensive but worthy, he has no idea of plumbing or tubes. Plus, the expert seems to be a looker. Given the embarrassed smile he allowed himself.

The dust sweeps the wind over the only green garden among dry grass lots. It takes rest a second on the white van with an orange logo and it’s driver. She gets off the vehicle methodically, opens the trunk, downloads a light carrier cart that can be used as vertical wheelbarrow. She places the tubes, the wielder and the tools she can’t carry on the ranch work belt she wears on the suggested  curve of her hips.

She walks in a flexible but stiff swinging in her blue denim pants —special clients, special services * Women can decide to do the same as  some men who don the good suit to business when the client is specially charming. Don’t blame me. Women can perfectly decide when, where and with whom to flirt. The opposite can happen too. * — Thinks her in a blink-smile-moment.

The Victorian house, whited, has a floral ring bell in the front fence.

And their bombs and their guns.
In your head, in your head, they are dying…
In your head, in your head,
Zombie, zombie, zombie,
Hey, hey, hey. What’s in your head,
In your head,
Zombie, zombie, zombie?

Hey, hey, hey, hey, oh, oh, oh,
Oh, oh, oh, oh, hey, oh, ya, ya-a…

Open eyes and big pupils look at the metallic bath where her soul is leaking into. Neither her eyes, dead ones, neither ours could see it. We shall content with the drops, an out of service tap, falling. Falling. Aaaall night long; to understand what’s coming down her wound, chin, face. Her bound hands behind the back and  her body weight ankle hung from a hook (a hook part of a hoist). Her feet, torn apart.

Little by little the drops stop falling. They get dry over the already rusted hemocytes on the still soft flesh. Later, the flesh and blood will sustain a different kind of beauty. A slit of light peeks in, the door ajars and we can see 5 cylinder bundles.  We can’t see them really well but we can perceive the love they have been placed there with.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, oh, dou, dou, dou, dou, dou…
Another mother’s breakin’,
Heart is taking over.
When the vi’lence causes silence,
We must be mistaken.
It’s the same old theme since nineteen-sixteen.
In your head, in your head they’re still fighting,
za zi da di da da pin
za zi da di da da pin
With their tanks and their bombs,
And their bombs and their guns.
In your head, in your head, they are dying…
za zi da di da da pin

The long fingered hand slides the i-pod to the back pocket and stops the song. The blue faded jeans with the dark knees, loam and green spots, cross a hall of falling apart furniture, yet spotless as transparent dust grains.

TO BE CONTINUED