The InkWell Writing Challenge | THE NIGHT ABOUT US

With this short story I assume my participation in Week 2 of Season Two Writing Challenge

We were wrong about rainy days. We were preparing to receive a season of heavy rains and nothing happened but a small cold breeze and a light dew; then, when we discovered Anselm's body, things in the village took another turn to become unrecognizable: in the following days the temperature went up until it seemed that the earth had stopped in front of the sun, so the shadows became thicker and the light more and more intense, brighter, until it not was dark again.

We all assumed it had to do with the appearance of the body and the lack of justice in what we assumed had been a crime. But when the young Jack was running around the village announcing the discovery, those of us who were watching and listening remained, in the middle of this unexpected revelation, in a dreamy state in which we did not imagine what would happen and, believing ourselves to be conscious at the same time, we assumed that it had no relevance because, like everything in the village, we believed that it would cease to have any importance very quickly.

Anselm's body, horribly shattered, seemed to have been dragged through the stick fence, where one foot was still stuck. In some corner of that degraded and bruised flesh there was still, not the spirit perhaps, but at least the memory of what that man was in life. Initially, none of us lamented it, because a short time before, Anselm had committed an act that was unforgivable for us.

A couple of days after the revelation of the body, a woman appeared in the village who claimed to be his wife, with the corresponding certificate to prove it, and who demanded the money or goods that he had left. Once she received the benefits, she went to a vast and dirty room which, to everyone's surprise, she shared with Stevens.

From that day on, the atmosphere became increasingly heavy and unbreathable. The daily smell of dust in the village became a heavy, damp smell. The clouds rolled away and the sky opened up to clarity, broken over the edge of the rooftops and fragmented uneven and incandescent over the dirt, roughness and ignorance of the street. The sun seemed to float in front of our eyes about to burst with its luminous fury that, incandescent, sprang up with the speed of an endemic. The roads were almost footprints, winding and narrow, full of ditches and dust. The houses were blurred with the yellow beam of light on the road, also yellow. We felt as if we had returned from a long journey that asked us to recognize things again, the surroundings of the town, the battered sidewalks, the worn roads, the neglected squares; even in the fertile lands small patches appeared that spread like a grayish and arid layer. And the few plants that somehow managed to survive, as the people did, produced thin and bitter fruits.

Source

When we realized that the night would no longer return, we demanded that the commissioner take an initiative. We then went to Anselm's wife to see if she had any explanation for us, but we only found Stevens lying on a small bed covered by several blankets to cope with the pins and needles of the wires that pierced the mattress.

The walls of the room were so gray, like when you pute your saliva-smeared fingerprint on the bleached partition. Stevens stretched his neck like a swan, stood up a little and, in a clumsy, heavy way, uttered some insults against us. He had an unpleasant breath in his mouth that produced a decayed tooths.

–Where is the woman? –asked the commissioner in a stern tone. Then he had no choice: he got up and spat out a bloody catarrh before answering.

–She has already disappeared. I don't know where she went.

After that he turned his head around the place, followed us with his eyes, as if evaluating whether to confront us or not; he moved a little, hunched over again and became convinced of the futility of any struggle when he saw himself in front of the barrel of the commissar's gun.

Some of us sat down in the corridor. We breathed in and heard the cicadas squeaking on the dusty road. The youngest of us took Stevens by the arm and, noticing how difficult it was to subdue him, a couple of other men intervened to tie his hands. Stevens was shaking without making a sound, struggling to untie himself until the sheriff shot him in the chest. It was as if his bones had turned to water. He collapsed and we dropped him on the floor like a bag. There he was, with his breath still longing and whitish saliva on the corners of his mouth. He was motionless, on the hardened dust, while insects appeared and threw themselves against him.

Source

In silence, petrified, we listened to the whisper of Stevens' voice, which was slowly dying in the areas of the small enclosure, where no breeze or gust of air was running. It was as if we were outside of time, contemplating the events from outside, always outside and beyond time, from the moment we looked at Stevens again as if we had never seen him. Then a rumour was heard, a rumour as light as a sigh, a whisper, perhaps of relief: something, in short. Perhaps we were all thinking that the curse was coming to an end when the cold breeze came and it was when we understood that only at the cost of life can one pay for the life that has been taken from someone, that a death without payment for another death is something incomplete.