Lurking Llamas Review

Sasquatch Blues

Alejandro Hodge Hernández — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 15:00:33 GMT

SOMEWHERE NEAR DESCHUTES NATIONAL FOREST, OREGON, 1994

HERE’S THE LOW-DOWN: Keiko, Thelonious, and Cooter are sitting in a van in the parking lot of a non-descript warehouse where the former two believe a sasquatch, the Bigfoot, is being housed against its will. They’re here to rescue the creature and set it free. Cooter doesn’t believe that any sasquatch exists, much less that there is one housed in a secret detention center that looks an awful lot like a warehouse. He claims to be here because breaking into a building, whether it is a secret government facility or a generic warehouse, sounds fun. This is only partly true. He won’t admit it, but half the reason he’s here is that he’s come to like the other two.

Keiko and Thelonious have been searching for the Bigfoot since they were both about eight. They think Cooter is something of a redneck imbecile. They claim to have brought him along because he’s a burglar of some repute and they themselves have never received so much as a parking ticket. Like in Cooter’s case, this is only half the story. They also secretly kind of like him.

NOW TO THE ACTION: Based on the hour, they should have started a few minutes ago. Cooter’s sitting there thinking this is some bullshit. These two nerdy dweebs have been showing him charts and videos and articles and skeletons and old textbooks for eleven months leading up to this moment and now they’re scared shit-less and won’t leave the van. He knows he’s not much of a leader, but he tries some words of encouragement.

-Y’all mind tellin me what the fuck we’re doin? Let’s get a fuckin move on.

-Cooter, do you always have to be so crass?

This is Thelonious speaking. He doesn’t much appreciate vulgar language.

-Look, all I’m sayin is that we got to get out the van and execute the mission. If y’all are right, we’re gonna kick the shit out of some feds and free a gorilla man. It’s what we came here to do, right?

-We’re not going to kick the anything out of any federal officials, ok. Not unless we can help it.

This is Thelonious again. He appreciates violence even less.

-No, we’re not going to hurt anyone, but Cooter has a point. We’re late. We should get started.

Keiko is acting as mediator.

-Alright. Yeah, alright. We should get started.

Cooter yells something obscene as an indication of agreement.

Keiko inches out of her seat and looks to make sure they’ve got all the gear ready. They’ve been careful to bring the necessary tools. They’ve got drills, crowbars, bolt-cutters, wire-cutters, grappling hooks, lockpicks, dart-guns and tranquilizer fluid, three convincing but fake handguns (Cooter wanted the bring the real deal but the others vetoed his suggestion), duffel bags, ski masks, a police radio, a sledgehammer, cheesypops, toastertarts, and a sleeve of Sierra Mist. They’ve gone through the plan a million times. They’re ready.

Keiko gives a thumbs up. Cooter, amped up and feeling braver than a bear, crawls over the stuff and climbs out through the van’s back doors. Once outside, he begins grabbing the immediate gear like flashlights and the tranquilizer gun. When he’s done, he closes the doors and sees a faded Hello Kitty bumper sticker and suddenly feels much of his courage dissipate.

Keiko gets out the passenger side and crouches down, using her binoculars to get a good look at the weak point (a largely unguarded back door they’ve been eyeing for months). Everything is at it should be. This has the counter-intuitive effect of making her more nervous.

Thelonious is sitting in the driver’s seat. His stomach has fallen into his balls. He’s not going inside; he’s the getaway driver. It was always the plan but now he regrets it. It isn’t so much that he wants to go inside the facility; in fact, that thought rather scares him. The issue is that he feels like he’s missing out. His only connection to the others will be through a walkie-talkie. Keiko and Cooter are going to be the heroes of this story. The getaway driver is never the hero.

Cooter and Keiko look each other in the eyes, for much longer than they ever had before, then close the moment with a light nod. The nod, as shallow of a motion as it is, represents a tremendous wealth of anxiety, fear, destiny, and courage. It means, let’s fucking do this. It also means, I’m nervous as fuck.

Cooter is the first to take a step away from the van and towards the facility. Keiko waits for Cooter to take a second step and then makes a quick two-step motion to catch up. Something about this makes Cooter anxious, so he quickens his pace into a sort of fastwalk. Something about that makes Keiko anxious so she quickens her pace too. This makes Cooter break into a light jog. In turn Keiko breaks into a full jog. Cooter responds by speeding up even more, and before they know it both are sprinting over the snow-dusted asphalt. They say the early bird catches the worm.

They get to the door and stop suddenly. Neither moves nor speaks. The pause lasts about a minute until Keiko mutters,

-Cooter.

Something computes in Cooter’s brain and he mumbles back,

-Yeah…yeah, on it. On it right now.

He slings his backpack from his back to his front and begins taking out all kinds of burglary equipment. He pulls out wrenches, screwdrivers, nuts, bolts, drills, a small flashlight, a dime bag of weed, and a novelty mustache before reaching what he’s looking for: a lockpick.

Without saying anything, Cooter begins to pick the lock. He feels some of the nervousness wash away; he’s in his element. It doesn’t take long. Cooter hears the click he’s been waiting for and looks over at Keiko.

-Remember. We have thirty seconds to get the guards to deactivate the alarm. Shit’s fucked if we don’t. We gotta be fast.

-Cooter, I know. I am not one to forget the plan.

-Just makin damn sure. This is a felony. Serious shit.

Keiko doesn’t respond to that last comment; there is no point, she knows. The three of them know.

Cooter takes a deep breath, holds up three fingers on one hand and with the other draws his fake handgun. As Cooter counts down, Keiko lifts her own faux-pistol and holds it in front of her. Cooter finishes counting and turns the handle. They move quickly. The door shuts behind them.

Twenty-seven seconds to go.

They don’t see any guards. This worries both. They were counting on a guard being posted at the exit to take hostage and deactivate the alarm. They glance at each other.

Twenty-two seconds to go.

Cooter starts jogging forward, half-agitated, half-cool. He’s determined to find a guard fast. Keiko follows quickly behind him.

Nineteen seconds to go.

Cooter picks up the pace; he’s growing frantic. Agitated. His nerves are beginning to overtake him. He feels Keiko pulling on his arm. She sees a turn in the hallway. She wants to take it. Cooter can’t see why he would object. They’re probably fucked either way.

Thirteen seconds to go.

Cooter follows Keiko’s lead, then, a miracle. They spot a guard coming the other direction down the hallway. He doesn’t see them. Keiko sticks the muzzle of the pistol into the small of the guard’s neck and tells him to turn off the alarm.

Nine seconds to go.

The Guard begins to make like he’s gonna start yelling and Cooter grabs him by the neck. The Guard hadn’t seen Cooter coming. Cooter gives him a look like he’s gonna rip his fucking skull from his limp, pathetic, shoulders and the guard immediately relents. Four seconds to go. He drops his arm to a button hanging off his belt and presses it. Cooter and Keiko take this to mean he has deactivated the alarm and relax slightly.

Keiko purses her lips and makes a “hush” sign. The guard obliges and keeps quiet. He’s terribly afraid. They lead the guard into a sort of broom closet, duct tape him to a column inside of the small space, cover his mouth with even more tape and close the door behind them. They do this with relative calm; there are no cameras in the facility. Even if there were, their ski-masks and gloves would make them hard to identify. Keiko nods and they begin searching for the prize.

MEANWHILE: Thelonious is beginning to feel bummed out. Keiko and Cooter haven’t been inside the facility for more than two minutes but he’s already feeling distant from them, from their shared experience. He tries to distract himself by putting his mind elsewhere. An old memory comes back to him. His older sister is telling him that Bigfoot doesn’t exist. He counters by showing her a tape of the Patterson-Gimlin film. She tells him it looks like a redneck in a gorilla suit. He protests fiercely, telling her to look at its gait, the way it moves its arms; it’s clearly some kind of wild ape. She asks him if he’s ever seen a redneck before.

The last thought doesn’t help because he’s reminded of Cooter and his thoughts go back to his friends. Trying again to distract himself, he looks at his watch. Another minute has passed. There isn’t much time until he has to back the van up to the door for their escape. Sasquatch or no sasquatch. He takes a deep breath and tries to prepare his mind.

BACK TO THE ACTION: Keiko and Cooter have searched only a small portion of the facility. Maybe a quarter. Maybe less. They’ve had to take it slow; the place has more guards than expected. They can’t count on repeating the success they had with the first guard. They need to be careful.

They make their way down a promising hallway. Something about it feels different from the other hallways; something they can’t quite put a finger on.

They eventually get to a set of large double doors. The doors are visibly heavy; made of some kind of reinforced metal and windowless. Cooter gives them a push. Unsurprisingly, the doors are locked. Before Keiko says anything, Cooter pulls out his picklock and gets to work. It is a complicated lock. Almost like a safe. This excites him. Thick, strong, doors with complicated locking mechanisms usually are built that way for a reason. He still isn’t sure he believes that a sasquatch is behind them, but something of value has to be.

Keiko can see the excitement in Cooter’s body language and starts to jitter. Is this is it? Is this the moment? She’s more nervous about what may or may not be on the other side of those doors than she was (and still is) about breaking into a secret government facility.

Cooter keeps working the lock. He’s trying to act fast because he knows they can’t stand to be anywhere for too long without the risk of getting caught. The lock is complicated as hell but he’s confident. Back when he used to regularly burglarize homes his specialty was safe-cracking. He’s good and he knows it.

It takes a few minutes, but Cooter eventually gets through the lock. He stands up and looks Keiko in the eyes; he doesn’t have to say anything, she understands. He steps back and Keiko moves forwards toward the doors. This has been her goal, her search, her life. Her life and Thelonious’ life. Opening those doors is thus her privilege, her right. In the presence of such a powerful moment, one that isn’t his, Cooter feels awkward, somewhat invasive, and oddly meek. He’s no match for the emotional weight of the situation; he’s calibrated for a simpler environment.

Keiko takes a deep breath and pushes.

The doors swing open wide. Cooter swears loudly. Far too loud; he’s put them at great risk, but he’s not thinking about that right now. In the doorway, standing right in front of them, is a nothing less than a fucking full-grown sasquatch. It’s standing there ten feet tall, covered in fur, yet looking somehow human. It is very apparent that it is male. For some reason, this is the only thing Cooter can process.

Keiko, on the other hand, can’t think of anything at all. She’s frozen in place; unable to breathe, speak, or move. For the first time in her life, she can’t believe the Bigfoot is real. Slowly, the irony of this brings her back. She was right and now she doesn’t believe it.

The sasquatch looks down at Keiko and then looks at Cooter. It takes a second or so to appraise things and then nods slowly. It understands everything.

OUTSIDE: Thelonious is beginning to get distracted (he’s thinking about hordes of Mongol horsemen lopping off European heads in 1241) when he hears a far-off sound that breaks the monotony of the night. He grabs his binoculars and tries looking in the direction of the sound. It grows louder. The sound is almost what he imagines the noise a stampede to be. It doesn’t take long for him to spot the source of it. There is a massive convoy of unmarked black SUVs screaming down the road. There is no doubt in his mind that they are headed for the facility. Panic threatens to overwhelm him. The vehicles are nowhere near as far off as he would hope. The others don’t have much time. He picks up his walkie-talkie and starts yelling at the top of his lungs.

BACK INSIDE: Bigfoot is reaching to shake Keiko’s hand when both her and Cooter’s walkie-talkies start blaring.

-SHIT HAS HIT THE FAN, I REPEAT SHIT HAS HIT THE FAN. SHIT. HAS. HIT. THE. FAN. HAUL ASS. HOLY FUCKING SHIT. HAUL ASS.

In the event of incoming company, Thelonious is actually supposed to say “threat inbound, over. I repeat, threat inbound.” Nevertheless, the severity of the situation has been understood clearly. Thelonious swearing is enough.

Bigfoot takes the initiative. It walks a short distance past Keiko and Cooter, who are still frozen in place. It stops maybe a two dozen feet down the hallway, looks back over its left shoulder at the two humans, and does a beckoning sign with its right hand, as if to say, “follow me”. This is enough to get them moving.

They don’t get too far before an armed security guard steps out from a connecting hallway and yells “FREEZE”. He raises his weapon like he intends to shoot. Bigfoot does a kind of shrug that seems to say, “why do they even try?” and then bitch-slaps the little man into another eon. The guard hits the metal wall nearest to him with an enormous thud and crumples to the ground. Cooter is pretty sure he’s dead. Keiko hopes he isn’t.

The sasquatch starts moving faster now and Keiko and Cooter break into a near-run trying to keep up. Bigfoot is leading them straight towards the weak-point they entered from. How it knows to head there is a marvel to Cooter. It is less so to Keiko, who has always felt strongly that sasquatches possess great intellect. She figures it has been thinking up escape plans for months and knows, like they do, all the weak points in the building’s security. It had just never found a way to get through those heavy doors until now.

They run into a few more guards along the way. Bigfoot dispatches each of them with impressive efficiency. Soon they are in the final stretch before the exit. The door is less than fifty feet in front of them. Behind them they hear enormous commotion. Shouting, swearing, alarms, feet. Keiko looks back as she runs. The security team has finally caught on to them. Dozens of guards are running in their direction. Only a couple hundred feet separate them.

Bigfoot gets to the door first. It doesn’t bother to turn the knob. With one quick motion it rips the door right off its hinges. To their collective relief the van is already backed up against the entrance with its rear doors wide open.

Bigfoot hurls itself into the van, causing the vehicle to shake like a wet dog. It turns around and uses its long arms to pull in Keiko and Cooter.

Thelonious, too wracked with adrenaline to digest the fact that he’s sharing a van with a sasquatch, guns it. The van accelerates awkwardly; even in normal conditions it is sluggish, and now with a full-grown sasquatch aboard it performs even worse. The fastest guards are right on their ass. Cooter has a moment of inspiration and reaches for his backpack. They need to buy a few seconds. He pulls out the tranquilizer gun. A guard sees him and draws her pistol. He beats her to it and fires a dart into her left leg. She collapses instantly. The other guards that have reached the door divert their attention to her and, for just a couple of seconds, forget the chase.

The van buckles and accelerates faster. Thelonious’ focus is total. He’s determined to get them out of there alive. The guards, now too far to catch the van on foot, begin shooting. The van hits a patch of black ice and swerves to the right. Several rounds hit the side of the vehicle. Thelonious commits to the new direction. If he tries to correct course, he risks slowing down. Speed right now is king.

After a few seconds they stop hearing gunshots. They’re still in the parking lot but outside of range. Keiko sighs in relief. Cooter opens up the sunroof. It is snowing heavily. He pulls himself half-out of the van and flips their assailants the bird.

That’s when he sees the convoy for the first time. Two Chevy Suburbans are coming at them from in front. He swings around and sees a pair each of Crown Vics coming in from both the left and the right. Behind them a Ford Pinto. They’re surrounded.

Thelonious has already seen them. Iron-focus. He makes a quick calculation. At this rate they’re gonna run into the front-facing vehicles in no more than five seconds. It dawns on him that he doesn’t have time to plan anything. Pure instinct is all he has left.

Cooter, who realizes this as well, drops back into the cabin and yells for everyone to hold the fuck on. The two Suburbans barrel on right ahead of them. Thelonious doesn’t flinch. He calls their bluff. At the last second both Suburbans jerk out of the way. Thelonious shoots the gap. The van hits a curb, bounces slightly, and pops out onto the street. Thelonious rights the van and accelerates.

They’ve escaped the parking lot but are far from safe. The two Suburbans they shook off have joined the others. Keiko counts seven vehicles tailing them. In front of them, Thelonious can make out the headlights of another two vehicles moving at high-speed. Suburbans. He takes a deep breath and prepares for the next challenge.

He waits until they’re close to do anything. This time, he decides to bluff. He takes the steering wheel and makes a quick jerking motion like he’s gonna jump to the right and take them head on but doesn’t commit. Both Suburbans, taking the bait, lurch over to the right. He jerks the wheel back around to the left and slips past the SUVs.

Behind them, the left-most of the two SUVs loses control on the ice and collides with its wingman. Both vehicles flip over and smash into the two trailing Suburbans. One of the Crown Vics tries to swerve around the disaster but slips on the slick ground and strikes another Crown Vic. A third Crown Vic brakes too late and crashes into the other two sedans. The fourth Crown Vic rear-ends the Pinto. The diminutive Ford explodes instantly. Ralph Nader warned us of this.

Cooter belts out some sort of primal screech of victory. It is not intelligible human speech, but something about it is clearly obscene. He grabs Thelonious from behind by the shoulders, proclaims him Barry Sanders of the Wheel, and almost kisses the man. Keiko and Thelonious are too excited to speak.

Cooter looks over at the cabin. The Sasquatch is drinking a Sierra Mist. He blinks. It is real. The Bigfoot is sitting in their van holding a can of carbonated lemon-lime beverage up to its lips like a recovering alcoholic Dad at a little league game. It catches his expression, grabs another can and nods. Cooter takes this as an invitation to join. As he sits down to accept, he wonders if the Yeti would behave the same way. He decides it would prefer Fresca.

DESCHUTES NATIONAL FOREST (FORTY-SEVEN MINUTES LATER): Bigfoot stands there holding the sleeve of Sierra Mist. The three of them are facing him. It is time. The Sasquatch looks first at Keiko, takes a step forward, and shakes her hand. Properly, like it had intended back in the facility. She feels its palm. Its grip. This is a real handshake; not borne out of formality but out of gratitude. Gratitude in the mature form.

It looks to Thelonious next. They’ve hardly interacted. If the Bigfoot has noticed this, it doesn’t show it. It bows before him. All three believe to understand. A recognition. A bow for the man who got them away from the facility alive.

It glances over at Cooter. Cooter swears that it is smiling. It stretches out a clenched fist toward him. Cooter takes a second to comprehend this and then understands. He doesn’t hesitate and returns the fist-bump. Before Bigfoot can turn away, Cooter says “hey” and tosses it a pack of Newports and a lighter. It grunts appreciatively.

Keiko and Thelonious are in tears now. Bigfoot looks at them. Is it a compassionate look? It is hard for any of the three to tell. They will accept it as such in the future. It makes for a better story. Good stories are important even when you have no audience for them.

The sasquatch sticks one thumb out of a clenched fist and points behind it at the forest. Thelonious is the only one to react. He speaks softly, somewhat broken, yet firm.

-Thank you.

Bigfoot takes one last look at the three of them, turns around and slinks off into the woods. Cooter thinks it walks an awful lot like his uncle.

About the Author

Alejandro is the Head Editor of the Lurking Llamas Review and the founder of Lurking Llamas Press. He works in both fiction and non-fiction, writing short stories, novels, and essays. His literary work can be found in the Lurking Llamas Review, as well as multiple books published by Lurking Llamas Press.

In addition to his literary work, Alejandro also specializes in international relations and political science, with an emphasis on Latin America. He runs another Substack publication, called North/Sur, with an international relations and political science focus.

Atmósfera venusiana

Alejandro Hodge Hernández — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 16:01:56 GMT

Jamás me sentí cómodo en Venus. No dudo que en parte era por la atmósfera. Hay algo en su composición, en su peso posiblemente, que me provocaba malestar. Hoy en día las diferencias entre el aire venusiano y el aire de la Tierra son leves; el proyecto de terraformación, al menos con respecto a la atmósfera, fue concluido décadas atrás. Igual, persisten diferencias necesarias por la proximidad de ese planeta al Sol, y mi cuerpo, a diferencia de la mayoría de gente, se negaba a acostumbrarse. La gravedad reducida (el 90,4% de la Tierra), y los días eternos (tan largos cómo 155 días terrestres), tampoco ayudaban.

Pero si es mi intención proceder con honestidad, y lo es, tengo que admitir que lo anterior no zafa para explicar del todo de mi incomodidad. Cada vez que llegaba a Venus, una sensación oscura e inhumana se derramaba sobre mi alma. No importaba si la visita era por razones profesionales o personales. Sentía que había algo indebido ocurriendo a mi alrededor; algo nefasto e incorrecto. La intensidad del sentimiento tenía picos y valles, pero jamás se iba. Sus momentos más potentes ocurrían afuera, particularmente durante las noches extensas; en dichos meses nocturnos me encontraba con bastante frecuencia en el borde extremo de la capital mirando hacia el deshabitado terreno venusiano, todavía virgen de desarrollo humano. A veces me parecía que el vacío se comunicaba conmigo mediante su oscuridad. Era una impresión que me perturbaba, pero de la que nunca pude escapar. En todos mis años visitando Venus nunca hablé con nadie de la sensación. Me parecía algo imposible de compartir; en ese tiempo no sabía porqué me sentía así y aún menos cómo ponerlo en palabras. No era algo que supe explicar hasta aquella noche; la noche que perdurará de tinieblas mi corazón por siempre.

El vuelo a Venus había sido más agradable a lo que estaba acostumbrado. La nave había despegado de Puerto Belgrano de manera puntual, algo poco común, y tuve la suerte adicional de viajar en uno de los más recientes modelos. Por lo tanto, el viaje duró menos y la cabina fue más cómoda de lo habitual. Pese al viaje agradable, no pude evitar sentir mi usual pavor al bajar de la nave. Solo hacía falta un respiro del pesado aire venusiano para que mi incomodidad volviera. Peor aún, me había tocado visitar en época de noche, algo que siempre evitaba si era posible. Esta vez no me había quedado de otra.

Del puerto espacial fui directo al departamento que mantenía en las afueras de Extrarius, la ciudad capital del planeta. Tenía planes para cenar más tarde con Alicia Choque y su esposo Max Madero, mis más íntimos amigos en Venus, no obstante, quería aprovechar un descanso antes de la cena.

El departamento era bastante sencillo. Mi compra fue una decisión económica. Viajaba lo suficiente a Venus para que me costara menos comprar y mantener un chiquito departamento que pagar un hotel cada vez que lo visitaba. Había una sola habitación con un sillón compacto, una cama desplegable que se escondía en la pared, cocineta y un baño con ducha. Su modestia, por cierto, fue en parte dictado por mi presupuesto limitado, pero no puedo negar que representaba por otra parte la distancia que quería mantener con Venus. Un departamento más amplio, más completo, me parecía representar un cierto planteamiento de pertenencia; algo que mi ansiedad venusiana no me permitía tener.

Me había quedado dormido en el sillón cuando me llamó Alicia para informarme que tenían que cancelar los planes conmigo. Aphrodite, la hija menor de la pareja, tenía fiebre y preferían quedarse con ella. Respondí que lo entendía, como era lógico, y no había problema; simplemente podíamos mover la fecha a otro momento. Alicia me agradeció y me despedí deseando lo mejor para la pequeña Aphrodite y prometiendo (por pedido de Alicia) que pasaría las siguientes horas en buenos espíritus relajándome en mi departamento después de tan largo viaje. La primera parte de mi declaración fue honesta; deseaba lo mejor para la niña, pero no puedo decir lo mismo por la segunda parte. La noticia de que mis amigos no iban a poder encontrarse conmigo me desinfló el ánimo. Como cualquier persona, los amigos tenían mucho significado para mí, pero en Venus su importancia se agrandaba. Estar con gente a la que quería me ayudaba a relajarme y sentirme más cómodo tan lejos de mi hogar. Había estado esperando con cierta ansiedad verlos; ahora estaba decepcionado y un tanto deprimido.

Pasé las primeras horas tras la llamada leyendo una novela de espionaje y comiendo una cena descongelada mediocre. Después de un tiempo me aburrí y decidí prepararme un mate y salir al balcón para observar y pensar. Me senté en la silla de metal oxidada que tenía en mi balcón y miré a la vasta nada que quedaba afuera de la capital. Tomé mi mate y dejé que los sentimientos y sensaciones pasaran por mi cuerpo como energías pasivas. Tras un tiempo largo, me sentí empezando a quedar dormido y decidí que lo mejor sería volver adentro y acostarme. Me levanté y giré hacia la puerta

Ahí, lo vi.

Fue un reflejo en el cristal. La imagen desapareció tan rápido como había aparecido, pero me quedé congelado por lo que sentía ser una eternidad después. No hubiera podido describir en ese momento lo que había visto. Todavía sigo sin tener las palabras adecuadas para pintar una imagen que haga justicia al espantoso movimiento que vi reflejado en ese cristal. No era como nada que hubiera visto antes en la vida. La mejor descripción que tengo a mi disposición es explicarlo como una energía opaca, visible, y perversa. No tenía la forma de un ser viviente, al menos uno conocido a la humanidad, pero había algo indudablemente vivo en esa imagen. No sé porqué, pero sentí--no, supe--que tenía una mente propia.

Soñé que había sido secuestrado, apartado de mi cama mientras dormía por figuras extrañas, cuyas formas no reconocía. Me llevaron con las manos y los pies atados con una soga tan apretada que cortaba la piel. Sangraba profusamente, me retorcía y gritaba por el dolor, pero mis raptores me ignoraban. Llegamos por fin a un templo sombrío; reluciente con su propia oscuridad. Me llevaron adentro hacia un sarcófago que se situaba en el centro de un gran salón de rituales. Sentí mi cuerpo siendo levantado y me di cuenta de que tenían la intención de enterrarme vivo. Intenté resistir, pero no pude. Con mi cuerpo ya dentro de la tumba, solo pude observar con terror la poca luz desapareciendo mientras cerraban la tapa. Encerrado y atrapado grité, pero no escapaba sonido alguno. Sentí el vil cajón vibrar y bajar hacia el suelo. Cuando dejó de moverse, escuché el sonido de palas y tierra siendo tirada por encima de mi ataúd. Con cada palada nueva de tierra me costaba más respirar. El aire se estaba convirtiendo en veneno. Mis tripas se quemaban. Me estaba asfixiando.

Me levanté de golpe, poco renovado, y empapado de sudor. Estaba encima de mi cama, pero no recordaba haberme acostado. Seguro de que no iba a poder volver a dormir, salí al balcón para observar el vacío. Sentí que, si me plantaba en mi silla y pasaban las horas sin incidentes, sin repetir la visión anterior, me relajaría. Cesarían las pesadillas y volvería a dormir tranquilo o, por lo menos, sin interrupción.

Pasaron horas sin acontecimiento alguno. Sintiéndome un poco aliviado, me distraje un momento imaginándome dormido en paz y quité la mirada del terreno solitario. Fue en ese instante, en mi descuido momentáneo, que la ocurrencia volvió a revelarse. Esta vez lo supe sin tener que mirar; mis oídos se llenaron con un ruido estático, un sonido proveniente de ningún mundo que pensé conocer. Pese a todo el miedo que sentía, levanté la mirada hacia el vacío, determinado esta vez en ver la bestia fantasma directamente. Reconozco, ahora, que eso fue mi más grave error.

El monstruo estaba lejos, apenas se veía contra el horizonte invisible, pero todavía se podía observar con bastante detalle. Era enorme; me faltaba perspectiva para llegar a una idea concreta, o cerca de concreta, de su tamaño, pero parecía tener la amplitud suficiente para tapar decenas de cuadras de una ciudad moderna. Pero no era su tamaño lo que me provocaba terror, sino su forma. Parecía una nube maligna, más oscura que la noche, sin forma concreta, sin un cuerpo físico. Sentí que no necesitaba un cuerpo; tomar una forma física sería un obstáculo a su existencia. A su alrededor brotaban rayos rojos, silenciosos, sin trueno. Tras unos diez segundos volvió a desaparecer y la noche venusiana retomó su posición dominante en el paisaje.

Me relajé en la silla. Mi mente estaba fija en nada y en todo a la vez. Pasé un tiempo indefinible, segundos, minutos, media hora, no sé; sentado ahí, atónito, en esa silla. Una sensación rara estaba apoderándose de mí. Un deseo. Una obligación.

Necesitaba verlo otra vez. Necesitaba verlo de cerca.

A veces vuelvo a esa decisión y pienso en cómo pudieron haber resultado diferentes las cosas si no hubiera reaccionado a mis impulsos. Es un pensamiento inútil; mi destino fue decidido el segundo en el que mis ojos percibieron el fantasma de manera directa por primera vez. Al mirar el espectro cedí control de mi destino. Se lo entregué a Venus.

Bajé a las calles artificialmente iluminadas de Extrarius. Estaban vacías. Eran las horas donde la mayoría de gente dormía, particularmente en esta zona poca transitada de la ciudad. No había mucha luz en la calle. En la temporada de noche, durante las horas “vivas” (nombradas así por los residentes) las calles están iluminadas por completo con luces de tremenda magnitud, creando un efecto parecido a la cancha de un estadio deportivo terrestre durante un partido nocturno. Pero en las horas “muertas”, en parte para ayudar a la población a mantener un ritmo circadiano saludable, en otra parte para ahorrar energía, el brillo es reducido para simular a las calles de cualquier ciudad de la Tierra durante su noche.

Se escuchaba solo el sonido ocasional de un vehículo lejano andando por las calles vacías en búsqueda de algo. Avancé una media cuadra hacia la entrada del amplio parque que quedaba entre los últimos edificios de la ciudad y el vacío venusiano. Estaba cerrada. Lancé unas miradas furtivas a mi alrededor para ver si venía alguien y salté. Crucé el parque clandestinamente, asegurándome de no despertar mis vecinos o generar sospecha. Llegué al extremo del parque y me apoyé con la cara encima de la alta cerca que separaba la ciudad y el terreno virgen de Venus. Estaba en la frontera extrema de la civilización; del otro lado de esa valla existía un mundo que la humanidad todavía no había colonizado. Volvió el miedo.

Suspiré. Tal vez era allí mi última oportunidad para volver, para abandonar lo que había iniciado. Tal vez, hasta que trepé esa barrera imponente, seguía sin haber empezado. No creo que fuese así. Supe, ahí apoyado en esa reja fría y dura, lo que tenía que hacer. Me armé el valor y subí.

Caminé por horas pensando en mi destino. Me ardían las piernas y me dolían los pies, pero seguí en marcha. Jamás cesé o aflojé el paso; la necesidad, la obsesión, me guiaba incansablemente.

Pasé mucho del camino mirando hacia el cielo nocturno de Venus. Por primera vez lo veía en toda su gloria. En época de día las estrellas jamás se veían; mientras que en época de noche las luces poderosas de Extrarius las escondían.

Su belleza era incalculable. Cualquier persona que ha pasado una noche en la Tierra bajo las estrellas de un hemisferio diferente al de su crianza lo entenderá; hay un efecto desorientador, pero a la vez hermoso, al mirar hacia un nuevo cielo por primera vez. Kilómetros detrás de mí, las luces altas de las horas vivas de la ciudad se habían encendido. Sentí pena por los habitantes, seguirían sin ver las majestuosas estrellas.

Sentí un frío invadiéndome; había llegado. No veía al espectro, pero sentía su presencia. Supe que me encontraría a mí, y no al revés. Tenía que ser paciente.

Tuve razón. Volvió el sonido; esta vez mil veces más poderoso que anteriormente. Me doblé y caí al suelo rocoso, jadeando, y apenas pudiendo respirar. Sentí que la sangre que pasaba por mis venas hervía. El dolor era insoportable. Todos mis peores recuerdos invadieron mi mente de manera simultánea. Momentos de trauma, dolor, fracaso, desamor, traición, y humillación retumbaban por mi cabeza como ramas de árboles en un huracán. Sentí mis mejores recuerdos desaparecer, siendo borrados de mi mente, para nunca volver.

Olvidé quien era y quien había sido. Ya no existía más. Yo no existía más.

Me puse de pie. La bestia creció y se retorció arriba de mi como una mancha de tinta oscura deslizándose sobre una camisa de algodón. Una inundación cósmica. Algo en su forma me indicaba furia, una furia legitima y yo la fuente maligna de esa rabia. Habían desaparecido las estrellas. Venus deseaba vencerme, pero no era algo personal. Sería una señal de más por venir.

En ese momento supe explicar la sensación que me había absorbido en cada visita a ese planeta: aquí era yo el alienígena. Era yo la bestia, el invasor, la amenaza. El monstruo que flotaba encima de mí, si aún pudiera denominarlo un monstruo, solo defendía su hogar. La humanidad ejercía un dominio en donde no tenía derecho. Quería justicia.

Hay quienes dicen que antes de la llegada de la humanidad Venus era un infierno. Dicen que la humanidad hizo de ese infierno un mundo donde podría florecer la vida.

Lo tienen al revés.

Me giré hacia las luces distantes de Extrarius. Fue lo último que vi.

Sobre el autor

Alejandro es el jefe de redacción de Lurking Llamas Review y fundador de Lurking Llamas Press. Trabaja tanto en ficción como en no ficción, escribiendo cuentos, novelas y ensayos. Su obra literaria puede encontrarse en Lurking Llamas Review, así como en varios libros publicados por Lurking Llamas Press.

Además de su trabajo literario, Alejandro también se especializa en relaciones internacionales y ciencia política, con énfasis en América Latina. Dirige otra publicación en Substack llamada North/Sur, enfocada en relaciones internacionales y ciencia política.

In the Palm of my Hand

Gabriel Bruno — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 15:01:07 GMT

I awoke to the sight of well-polished wood flooring. Well, sleeping on the ground isn’t going to be good for my back, was my first thought. What the hell? was my second. I tentatively pushed myself up. My body ached all over from my impromptu sleeping session on the cold, hard floor. Where was I?

I took stock of my surroundings. I was… in the entrance hall of an opera house? It certainly looked that way. The room I was in was wide open, with an enormous electric chandelier illuminating it. In front of me, an elegant double staircase that would bring visitors to the upper level, split in half around a hallway that stayed at ground level. Off to the side, a bathroom. And on the walls, posters for various operas and plays. All of it completely devoid of human presence, save for me.

Which didn’t answer the question of why I was here. This place looked similar to the opera house in my home city, but there were enough differences for me to confidently say they weren’t the same. I hadn’t drunk or taken anything last night before going to bed. Even if I had, I was not much of a theatre person. If I did drive somewhere in a drunken/drugged daze, there were a lot of other places I would probably go to before going to another city’s opera house.

“Hello! Anyone there?!” I tentatively called out. My voice echoed across the empty hall. I shivered. Not that it was cold, but seeing a place that was normally so packed and full of life was strange and surreal. Now that the shock of waking up in a strange place had started wearing off, I was more than a little bit spooked. How had I gotten here? Who had gotten me here?

Was this a prank of some kind? Would I walk out the front doors only to be greeted by a crowd of obnoxious social media personalities that wanted to capture my reaction on camera? Was this some sort of horror movie scenario where a kidnapper would get a kick out me painfully dying by trying to escape a booby-trapped place? Considering that I was alone in my locked-up apartment last night, the latter option seemed to be more likely.

Well, only one way to find out, I thought as I stared at the heavy wooden doors of this place’s entrance. I took a few moments to compose myself. If I was going to brave the unknown, I would do so while not a panicked mess. Once I got my breathing mostly under control, I made my way towards the doors, then checked for any obvious traps. When I was as satisfied as I could be, given the circumstances, I pushed the doors open. And was greeted by another entrance hall.

What. The. Hell.

What was going on? This door was supposed to lead me outside. This door had to lead my outside! Not to another entrance hall. That wasn’t how doors were supposed to work! I turned around, just to be sure. Yep, the place I woke up in was still here. An entrance hall connected to another entrance hall by its entrance. A mockery of architecture and all it stood for. Was I dreaming? No. The fact that I could even ask this question told me I wasn’t. I’d had some weird dreams before, many even weirder than this situation. And I always accepted my reality without any questions while I was sleeping. I still tried pinching myself like they did in cartoons, just to make sure. No luck. And now my arm stung.

With dread in my stomach, I took a step into this new place. Its layout was similar to the other one, but distinct all the same. Slightly larger, with different walls and floorings, and single instead of a double staircase. Who built this place, and why? Was this some large-budget artistic project? As I made my way deeper into the room, I realized that the posters were all… wrong. They looked ordinary enough from a distance, but upon deeper examination, I realized that none of the characters depicted on them were completely human. Some of them had extra limbs and differently coloured skin. A few of them didn’t even look humanoid. Were these supposed to be monsters? Or aliens? If I’d these on the internet just yesterday, I would have thought they were a neat art project. As of now, they just served to unsettle me further. Reminding me than I was probably very far from home.

I suddenly remembered that I had my cell phone in my pocket. With shaking fingers, I got it out. No Wi-Fi. No service. Of course. Well then. If I was in a place where plays were supposed to happen, surely there was a stage? And if there was a stage, could there be actors? Spectators? Time to get some answers out of this place.

Well, I found some spectators all right. My earlier musings about aliens might have some grain of truth after all. The showroom had about 20 audience members, spread out in the hundreds of seats. None of them were humans. Not even close.

The one closest to me had was at least 3 heads taller than me even when sitting down, though “sitting” might be the wrong word. Its legs were thin and numerous, numbering at around 80, at a glance. They all converged into a thick trunk, that then gave way to a “head” that seemed to contain most of its vital organs. The head looked soft and elongated, but somehow stayed upright. Somewhere in the middle were two large compound eyes, and a surprisingly human mouth below them. The entire thing was completely unclothed and colored light grey, though I couldn’t see anything that warranted covering it up. All in all, it looked like a fucked-up mix between a jellyfish and an octopus. It looked weird, but ultimately somewhat realistic if you could get past that initial weirdness.

Except… if I looked at it long enough, I could see some flashes of blue light beneath its skin, far too powerful to be mere bioluminescence, as if some sort of energy was building up within its body and was threatening to leak out. I could feel my hair puffing up in its presence, as is I’d just rubbed a balloon against my head. The other beings in the audience all looked similar to it, and all had something strange about them. One to my right had its legs not actually connected to the rest of its body, with a few inches of empty space between the top of the legs and the head, yet they still seemed to be supporting it in its chair. Another looked normal enough, but if I unfocused my eyes, and looked to the side a bit, I could get a glimpse of an elaborate structure floating above it, seemingly made of light. All of them were completely focused on what was happening on stage, not making any sound or big movement.

I looked towards the stage. On it was an old school globe of Earth, illuminated by a single desk lamp a few meters to the side. It hit me once again just how surreal my situation was. I wanted to just run away from this room and go back to the entrance hall, where at least I would have to look at those weird alien things. I wanted to just roll into a ball and cry. And yet… the tears wouldn’t come. I wasn’t calm. Far from it. But I was somehow managing to hold it together at the moment. And I wouldn’t lie and say I wasn’t just a bit curious about what was going on. I had to interrogate those things. The static in my hair from the one closest to me worried me a bit, so I moved closer to the one with disconnected legs.

“Um, hello?” I croaked out. No response.

Did this thing even understand English? Could it hear me? I didn’t see any ears on that big head of its.

“Hello!” I tried again, more affirmative this time. The thing briefly glanced at me, before snapping its eyes back towards the stage. Progress!

“Can you please tell me what’s going on?” I continued. “I just woke up here and I have no idea how I got there. I have no idea if you can even understand me, but…” I trailed off, unsure of what to add. The thing looked at me once again, this time for longer. Slowly, one of its legs floated upwards, until the very tip crossed its mouth vertically. It made a soft whistling sound for a few seconds, then turned back towards the stage, getting the arm back into sitting position. Did it just… tell me to be quiet? I was both disturbed by this mockery of a human shushing motion, and pretty pissed. I just had my first communication since arriving at this strange place, and I was being told to shut up? That my situation was less important than staring motionlessly for who knows how long at a fucking globe? I took a step towards it, right hand reaching forward to poke it. “Hey- “

A flash of light startled me, making me take a step back. Something wet splashed against my leg as I felt a sharp pain in my right middle finger. After a few very long seconds, my vision cleared enough to take a look at the damage. The very tip of my middle finger had been sliced off, taking a bit of nail and skin. The injury wasn’t a lot, but it was bleeding a surprising amount. I jerked my finger against my shirt, trying to stop the blood flow. The thing was looking at me, more intensely than before. Though it didn’t have eyelids or eyebrows, I imagined that if it did it would have been glaring at me.

Slowly, it turned its attention back to the stage. The seat right the two of us had been sliced in two, the left armrest completely cut off from the rest. Holy shit. Without lifting a tentacle, that thing sliced in half everything alongside a plane of its choosing. If I’d been just a bit faster, I could have lost fingers. Maybe I should stay far away from these things.

Carefully, I made my way towards the stage, keeping an eye of the audience and ready to bolt the hell out of here at the first sign of attention directed my way. I probably should leave this room anyway, but my curiosity won out over my self-preservation instincts. Besides, I wouldn’t make my progress on solving my situation by just curling up in a ball and staying away from any danger. As I climbed onto the stage, I noticed that the globe wasn’t in fact representing Earth. It had blue oceans, and mostly green continents, but the shapes were completely different. No text, no borders, and a support made out of grey plastic. If you ignored the misplaced coastlines, this looked exactly like any other cheap globe you could find in a middle school classroom.

I cautiously glanced towards the audience. So far, none of them had reacted to my presence on the stage. I knelt by the globe, and slowly, very slowly, moved my left hand in front of it, my still bleeding finger a painful reminder of what awaited me if I wasn’t careful. At this point, my hand was covering a good chunk of it, and they still didn’t care. Could they see through me? Or… maybe it wasn’t the globe they were staring at? Maybe they just happened to look in this direction, and the globe was in the way? Maybe. Probably not. I found that hard to believe when the globe was the only thing of interest on this otherwise empty stage.

Well, there was also the lamp, but a quick glance told me it was even more mundane than the globe, which at least represented a fictional world. This just looked like a normal desk lamp. The one thing of note was that it didn’t seem to have a power cable. Maybe it was battery powered? And it was the globe they were staring at, not the lamp. I briefly considered touching the globe, but in the end decided against it. One of those things almost sliced me in half when I tried to get its attention, I thought. Who knew how they would react if I messed with their toy? I decided to come back to the entrance hall for now and collect my thoughts.

Or rather, entrance halls. I’d almost forgot amidst all the craziness of these jellyfish abominations. If there was another entrance hall… did that mean there was another stage? I went back to the place where I woke up, and took the stairs. Sure enough, there was another showroom. This one had different audience members. Instead of freaky mutant jellyfish, it had humanoids that looked almost robotic, each with a metallic blue, segmented exoskeleton. Once again, all had something other, something unnatural about them that made me not want to get too close to them.

This stage had the same setup as the other one, with a globe illuminated by a desk lamp. The globe was different than the other though, with the continents being shaped differently, and colored red instead of green. I wanted to sit down and ponder the implications of… all this, but in the end, I didn’t linger for too long. I had to check something else first. Slowly, I walked towards the backstage area. I’d never been backstage before, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to be yet another showroom. Sure enough, this one had a different globe, and different audience members. Any remaining hope of this being some sort of elaborate, high budget prank, evaporated.

Unpleasant questions swirled within my head. What was this place? How did I get there? Would I be able to get out? Would I ever see my friends and family again? And yet, something else within me did its best to keep me afloat, to keep me from drowning in my own misery: curiosity. Ever since I was a kid, I’d always loved figuring stuff out, and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to try my best with this too. Besides, I was pretty sure none of the people I knew had ever seen this place. If I got back, it’d make one hell of a story to tell.

Time to see how deep this “opera house” really went.

I was pretty sure this place was infinite. Or at least so big that it might as well have been infinite compared to me. As far as I could tell, this really was an infinitely large opera house, with rooms repeating with slight variations, forever, in every direction. They weren’t always arranged as neatly as the first set I found when first waking up here. Sometimes a door would just be plopped on a wall at random points, like right next to a corner or above the ground. Once, I found two showrooms partially intersected with each other, with the stages meeting at an angle, forming a kind of arrow shape. Like I’d expected, all of them had different globes, and different audience members.

My phone ran out of battery after the first three days. I should have tried to conserve it better, but without any internet I didn’t see the point at the time. Now that I had no way to know the time, I was cursing myself for that decision. How long had it been since I arrived here? A week? A month? There was no day/night cycle in it, so I just slept whenever I felt like it, which might be unhealthy in the long run, but whatever. There were no beds in this place, but the couches found in the entrance halls were surprisingly comfy to sleep on. Thankfully, food wasn’t a problem as I’d feared. Walk far enough, and you’d find cafes stocked with fresh drinks, salads, sandwiches, and other stuff. I had no idea who or what kept them stocked, but whatever it was, I was glad for it. I’d had quite the panic a first when I got hungry and considered that I might have no food.

The more I thought about this place, the weirder it got. And I didn’t just mean the infinite architecture and freaky aliens. No, the weirdest thing was, despite said freaky aliens, how… human this place was. The food I found was stuff I could find anywhere in a big city. The architecture was indistinguishable from any opera house I’d been in. And all the seats were perfectly normal human seats, despite the variety of body plans for the things that sat within them. They all did their best approximation of sitting despite that looking very uncomfortable for several of them. Even when they were humanoid, they were often bigger or smaller than a human, yet the seats remained the same size. Which begged the question: was this place built by a human? Or if it wasn’t, was it built for me? Whatever the purpose of this place was, it seemed grand, important. Why would it be so accommodating for me, given the diversity of its inhabitants? And why me specifically? Did I just end up here as some sort of cosmic fluke, or did an entity select me specifically to take me there?

If I was chosen by someone to end up here, well that was pretty terrifying. Not just because some unknowable force took a special interest in me, but because I was starting to have an inkling of the purpose of this place, and if I was right, I was completely out of my depth. I’d referred to the spectators as aliens before. At first, that was mostly to highlight their weird nature, but as I kept observing them and learning more about them, I suspected that might be actually true.

If you ignored the obviously supernatural things about them, and only looked at the traits that all the ones within a single room shared between them, then those creatures actually seemed pretty plausible. I could see them existing on planets with different gravity and ecosystems. If they were indeed aliens, then those globes must represent their home planets. While mostly speculation, I did see some evidence of this. One room had spectators that were mermaid-like and seemed built for swimming; their globe was covered entirely by water. Another had spectators with leaf-like appendages that seemed to be used for photosynthesis. The planet had continents the exact same color as those leaves.

So those guys were aliens, and the globes represented their planet. What then, were they actually doing? Well, obviously, observing. But not just the globes that represented their planets; I believed that they were somehow observing the real, actual planet through it. Though they seemed almost bored most of the time, they sometimes expressed more, all at once. A whoop of joy, a round of laughter, a shocked gasp, or even excited chatter. Or at least, the closest equivalent to all of those in their weird alien languages. I imagined the source of these outburst were large, world shaking events taking place on the real planet. That is, if they were looking at the entire world at once. Maybe they just liked following one person, and they were reacting to what that person did. When they shifted in their seats uncomfortably, were they witnessing horrifying war crimes, or a teenage alien saying something awkward to their crush?

The globes themselves weren’t as static as I imagined. After lengthy observation, I came to the conclusion that they did rotate, albeit slowly, on the order of hours or even tens of hours. No points for guessing what the rotation time of the globe might correspond to…

As for the audience members themselves, they were obviously members of the dominant intelligent species on their planet, assuming this line of logic was correct. Yet, they all had something other about them, something unnatural. What do you call strange entities that look like you, but have supernatural abilities, and observe your lives from up high? I hesitated to call them outright divinities, but the fact was that this structure existed solely for them to gawk at their home world in tranquility.

In hindsight, I was very glad that I decided not to touch anything and only observe from a distance. There was no guarantee, but if the real planet could affect the globe, could the opposite be true? If I poked it, would a giant finger appear in the sky of an alien planet and then crush whoever was unfortunate enough to end up beneath it? If I turned off the lamp, would that make their sun disappear? Those implications made my head spin. Even if that wasn’t the case, the forces that had to be in play to create such a place were unfathomable. Which, again, raised the question. What was I doing here? And why was it so human? These questions didn’t leave my head as I entered my 23^rdshowroom of the day. Maybe this one would have the answers I wanted.

I awoke unusually well rested. While the couches weren’t that bad, they were still worse than actual beds, and the lack of pillow made my neck sore. I also usually had unpleasant dreams. Not quite nightmares, but my isolation and confusion at my place in all this was getting to me I just wanted to go home. Yet, this “morning”, for a long, long time, I finally felt at peace. Quietly, I made my way across the hall. It wasn’t like I was disturbing anyone, but this moment felt special. The showroom just across the hall, one I’d never been in before, seemed like it was calling out to me. As I approached the door, I could glimpse a very familiar light coming from within it. A light green and blue.

Earth.

I didn’t look at the audience. I didn’t want to know.

All that I had ever known, all the people I’d met, all the places I’d been, on a sphere that I could hold in one hand. As I looked at this miniature of my home planet, some tension within me that I had been holding ever since I arrived in this place released. I made a decision right there. I wouldn’t stop looking for a way to get home. But if I was stuck here, if there truly was no way back, I was at least slightly okay with it. If I was here, then maybe other people were. Maybe some of them came here purposefully, for some nefarious scheme. I didn’t want to imagine what someone with less than righteous intentions might be able to accomplish with this place. Even if I wasn’t put here for a specific purpose, I could at least do my best to protect these worlds, all beautiful in their own way.

After one last, long look, I turned around and left my planet behind. I had work to do.

About the Author

Gabriel Bruno is a French programmer currently living in Montréal. He has a keen passion for fantasy and mystery stories. In addition to writing, he likes eating, reading, and playing video games. His stories are fondly adored by many readers of different backgrounds spread our around the world.

Sendero violeta

Alejandro Hodge Hernández — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 16:00:57 GMT

¿Alguna vez viviste una noche estrellada en la selva? ¿La escuchaste? La magia. La música. La vida. La oscuridad revela un pulso, un ritmo, una vibra inmensa, natural y hermosa. Nuestros oídos lo oyen; nuestro corazón lo escucha. La vida produce la música. Seguí el latido de la música y llegarás a la magia. Siempre.

El joven no recordaba cuánto tiempo llevaba perdido. Tampoco le interesaba mucho recordarlo. Si se ponía a pensar, sentía que había estado ahí una eternidad. De manera simultánea, sentía que el tiempo pasaba rápido. Muy rápido. Esto le confundía, y esa confusión le llevaba a un sentido de pérdida. No conocía el origen de ese sentimiento, no sabía qué era lo que había perdido ni lo que le faltaba, solo que no le gustaba sentirse así. Por lo tanto, evitaba pensar. No escuchaba, no miraba, no tocaba, y si respiraba era solo porque alguna parte inconsciente de su cerebro se lo rogaba a sus pulmones. Sobrevivía. Eso era todo.

Cada noche tenía el mismo ritual. Primero, esperaba que cayera el sol, dado que no toleraba el calor sofocante del día. Más tarde, ya con la oscuridad de la noche fija en su lugar, salía caminando hasta encontrar alimento. Siempre comía en el lugar donde conseguía el sustento. Después, ya con los nutrientes suficientes para sobrevivir al día siguiente, volvía. Desde que se había perdido en la selva, pasaba todos los días durmiendo en el mismo lugar.

Su ritual solo se alteraba en un solo detalle: la distancia. La selva no se reponía. En cuanto se nutría de algún recurso —la fruta de un árbol, las nueces de un arbusto, el agua de un charco— la fuente de ese recurso dejaba de producir. El árbol se pudría, el arbusto se marchitaba, el charco se secaba. En consecuencia, el joven no tenía más remedio que caminar cada vez más lejos, noche tras noche.

Una de esas noches, el joven, ya casi al límite por la distancia que había marchado, vio un árbol cuya rama más larga y alta tenía una fruta. Era la única fruta que tenía el árbol. Reconociendo que era su única opción para comer, sumó fuerzas y trepó al árbol. Al llegar a la rama, se dio cuenta de que no estaba solo. En el extremo de la rama había un pequeño mono, sentado, alternando miradas entre él y la fruta. Dándose cuenta demasiado tarde de lo que estaba a punto de ocurrir, el joven estiró el brazo para agarrar la fruta, pero no logró alcanzarla a tiempo. En ese instante, el mono, que también había reconocido la situación desafortunada, corrió a toda velocidad hacia la fruta. Ganó el mono.

El joven, impulsado por el hambre, decidió perseguir al mono. Extendió el otro brazo, perdió el equilibrio y cayó del árbol. Chocó con fuerza contra el suelo de la selva y se desmayó al instante.

Despertó aturdido, desconcertado y sin el más mínimo sentido de cuánto tiempo había pasado. Parpadeó. Seguía de noche. Estaba echado boca arriba en el suelo. Poco a poco, los ojos del joven se iban acostumbrando a la oscuridad. Las ramas del árbol empezaron a tomar forma ante su vista. Recordó que había caído y pronto recordó por qué había caído. Maldito mono. ¿Ahora qué? Le sorprendió su propia pregunta. No recordaba la última vez que había preguntado algo a sí mismo. Preguntar significaba pensar. Responder significaba escuchar. No había hecho ninguna de las dos cosas en un tiempo ya indeterminable.

Pronto hizo otra cosa que no había hecho en mucho tiempo. Tomó una decisión. No una decisión automática —de eso vivía— sino una decisión deliberada; una decisión propia. Eligió dejarse preguntar, pensar, escuchar y responder. Había estado en autopiloto tanto tiempo que no estaba seguro de si podía o no lograrlo, pero estaba determinado a intentarlo.

Volvió la pregunta. ¿Ahora qué? Escuchó la pregunta. Escuchó para saber lo que significaba. No estaba seguro. ¿Ahora qué, qué? Su mejor suposición fue que la pregunta le estaba pidiendo un plan. Cómo proceder. ¿Qué seguía? No qué seguía inmediatamente —qué iba a comer, dónde iba a tomar agua— sino que preguntaba algo más profundo. Más que preguntar, cuestionaba. ¿Qué hacía en la selva? ¿Tenía futuro? ¿Tenía pasado? Peor, ¿tenía presente? ¿Tenía respuestas? No, no las tenía. Eran demasiadas preguntas. Había vivido una eternidad sin preguntar, sin cuestionar; ahora, estar confrontado con tantas preguntas simultáneas le estaba dando un dolor de cabeza.

Dolor. Otra cosa que no había sentido en mucho tiempo. Todo el dolor le inundó de golpe. La columna, las piernas, los brazos, el cráneo; todo se revolcaba en el dolor de la caída. Su panza ardió de hambre; su garganta, de sed. El dolor era algo extraño, algo ajeno. Quería retorcerse, pero no podía. Intentó pensar. Tenía que haber una solución, una manera de aliviar el dolor. No se le ocurrió nada. Otra vez, no tenía respuestas. Pensó en rendirse. Era tentador. Si se rindiera, el dolor acabaría, ¿no? Otra pregunta. Pero esta vez acompañada de una respuesta: no.

Sintió un calor recorriéndole los huesos. El calor se acumuló en su cabeza e ingresó en su mente. Si no tenés vos la respuesta, escuchá y la encontrarás. Claridad. El instante previo lo estaba hundiendo, ahogando; ahora respiraba y creía saber nadar. Cerró los ojos, relajó su cuerpo y escuchó.

La selva es una comunidad de centenares de millones de seres vivos. Cada uno es un individuo distinto, una vida única; pero todos laten con el mismo corazón.

pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum

El joven lo escuchaba. El sonido era débil. Débil, pero constante. Constante y real. pum. Olvidó el dolor. Respiró profundamente. Su enfoque era total. Quería escuchar. Necesitaba escuchar. pum-pum. El sonido era monótono, inmutable y distante. Bello. Hermoso. Palabras que había olvidado.

Sus pensamientos derivaron hacia su imaginación. En su mente nacían imágenes fugaces, borrosas, indescifrables. Todas parecían moverse en la misma dirección, pero fallaban en tomar forma. Detrás de estas imágenes fantasma había una figura. ¿Qué era? No tenía idea. Empezó a desesperarse; en esa figura negada estaba su respuesta. No quería perderla; no sin haberla visto, sin haber formado una memoria, una imagen propia. Le volvió la pregunta: ¿Ahora qué? Pero esta vez urgente, inmediata. ¿Ahora qué? pum-pum-pum Sintió el calor y escuchó. Las respuestas no aparecen; se buscan.

Cautelosamente —por sus heridas— se puso de pie. Se dio vuelta y miró hacia la distancia. Ahí había algo. Un color. Cerca. Un resplandor violeta. Se dirigió en esa dirección.

No tardó mucho en llegar. Había llegado a la orilla de un río brumoso. Desde ese punto de la orilla hasta donde alcanzaba su vista, y seguro más allá aún, el río estaba iluminado por el mismo resplandor violeta. Frente a él, atracado en la orilla, había un pequeño barco de madera con una capa de pintura blanca, vieja, gastada y descascarada. Adentro, había un remo. No había salvavidas.

Remó con tranquilidad. Lo único que sabía era que no había prisa. El agua estaba clara y pacífica. Por efecto del resplandor que colgaba en el aire, el río parecía estar teñido de violeta. La transparencia era tal que podía ver los peces y delfines nadando, siguiendo la corriente junto a él. Acompañándolo había dos caimanes negros, uno a cada lado, y ambos más largos que su barco. No les tenía miedo. Algo le decía que los caimanes eran sus amigos. Sus escoltas.

pum-pum-pum-pum. Otra vez imágenes crípticas se formaban en su mente. Revoloteaban, líneas intentando conectarse, intentando unirse en forma de algo. Esta vez el joven pudo ver con claridad que la forma, la figura que intentaban formar, era la de un ser vivo; no sabía si era un ser de este mundo u otro, pero supo que vivía. Se estaba acercando.

No tuvo que esperar mucho más. Enfrente, a menos de cien metros, había un muelle pequeño de madera, cubierto con la misma capa de pintura blanca, vieja, gastada y descascarada que tenía su barco. Parado en la orilla, antes del muelle, había un yaguareté. A su alrededor había un brillo de un color oro amarillento. Iluminaba la noche como un faro. Esperaba al joven con paciencia.

El joven guió el barco hacia el muelle. Al llegar, los dos caimanes subieron a la orilla y se echaron en la vegetación. Dudó en salir del barco. Cerró los ojos y respiró. pum-pum-pum-pum-pum. Otra vez el calor se derramó por su cuerpo entero. Ser valiente no se trata de jamás dudar; es tener el coraje para buscar el camino pese a todas las dudas. Exhaló y subió al muelle. Al bajarse del barco se dio cuenta de que enfrente, justo donde empezaba el bosque, había un sendero que brillaba con el mismo color violeta del río.

Los ojos del yaguareté se encontraron con los suyos. El joven, entendiendo la mirada, asintió con la cabeza. El yaguareté dio la vuelta y se puso en marcha. Los caimanes no se movieron de la orilla. Habían acompañado al joven hasta ahí, y ahora le tocaba dar sus próximos pasos sin ellos. Despidiéndose de sus guardianes con una pequeña reverencia, el joven giró y siguió al yaguareté. pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum.

Avanzaron por el sendero a un ritmo desigual. Había sectores del camino en los que corrían un riesgo tan tremendo que el joven podría haber sido convencido de que fueron diseñados con la única intención de acabar con el viajero. Se encontraron con arena movediza, cruzaron ríos llenos de pirañas y superaron lluvias torrenciales que amenazaban con arrastrarlos a las profundidades del bosque, donde vivían pumas hambrientos y serpientes venenosas. En repetidas ocasiones apenas sobrevivieron, y casi siempre gracias a las decisiones del sabio yaguareté. En esos momentos duros, el joven cuestionaba cuánto más podía durar.

Pero el sendero también tenía su encanto, sus momentos divinos y magníficos. Pasaron por lagunas llenas de tortugas hermosas, orillas de ríos donde andaban carpinchos simpáticos y amigables, e innumerables flores preciosas. Frente a esas bellas imágenes y a la maravilla de la vida selvática, las dudas del joven se evaporaban, reemplazadas por un profundo agradecimiento por estar vivo y por ser parte de este mundo.

Con el tiempo, dejó de cuestionar lo que estaba viendo. Creía en el viaje: el camino violeta que tenía delante era suyo; mientras lo caminara, mientras lo encontrara por sí mismo, sería suyo. Tan pronto como reconoció esta verdad, sintió el calor volver. Las imágenes volvieron a nadar por su mente, pero esta vez con certeza, confianza en que iban a llegar a su figura final. La figura tomó la forma de una silueta, borrosa, sombría, solo reconocible como una figura humana. Una persona. El joven supo entonces que al final de su camino le esperaba la figura de una persona. Esa figura tendría su respuesta.

Llegaron a un abra en el bosque. El joven sintió un cambio en el aire, una liviandad que no había sentido en años. El resplandor violeta salía del bosque hacia el abra. Tomó un primer paso hacia el abra y se detuvo. El yaguareté se quedó quieto. Había llegado el momento de partir. Solo él podía proceder. Sintió un nudo formarse en la garganta. Suspiró. No quería separarse de su amigo. Estaba profundamente agradecido con el gran felino. Sin su ayuda jamás hubiera podido ir tan lejos como había logrado. No quería estar solo. Pero en su corazón supo la verdad. Los amigos nos nutren el alma, nos dan fuerza para seguir la lucha y razón para disfrutar de la vida, pero en cada camino llega un momento en el que tenemos que definirnos; eso solo lo podemos hacer nosotros.

Con los ojos húmedos y una sonrisa forzada, el joven se despidió del yaguareté. Caminó mirando a sus pies; el suelo era irregular, lleno de baches y charcos. Caminó decidido, olvidando su cansancio y su hambre. Caminó pensando, ocupado en su mente, lleno de dudas, preguntas y ansiedades. Caminó porque era lo único que le quedaba; este camino era su misión, su propósito y su fin. Hasta cierto punto no importaba si no había nada al final; buscaba una respuesta, quería una respuesta, caminaba para llegar a esa respuesta, pero si no lograba encontrarla igual estaría en paz. La odisea en sí era ya un cierto logro.

pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum. Levantó la mirada. Estaba al pie de un gran templo. La inmensa estructura tenía una forma trapezoidal, con cada fachada con una escalinata central. Enredaderas cubrían gran parte de su superficie, lo cual hacía que pareciera estar construida con una piedra tan negra como la noche misma. En su cima había un templete cuadrado, parcialmente oculto de vista por una niebla blanca. Ahí le esperaba su figura, su calor.

Subió.

Las gradas eran empinadas. Cada paso era un esfuerzo. Cada paso amenazaba con ser su último. Su cuerpo estaba a punto de colapsar, de un desgaste total. Ardía todo. Dolores agudos recorrían su cuerpo como relámpagos. Su mirada ya no se posaba en sus piernas ni en lo que había adelante, sino que parecía mirar desde arriba. Estaba afuera, flotando encima de la masa flacucha de huesos y piel que era su cuerpo. Susurraba a su cuerpo y a su propia mente. Compartía amor, orgullo y apoyo. Se prometió un abrazo al llegar a la cima.

Pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum. Había colapsado al llegar a la cima. Seguía consciente, pero con apenas fuerza para asomar la cabeza. Sintió que no había urgencia. Suspiró. El piso, de piedra negra, estaba frío y resultaba refrescante. El dolor pulsaba por todo su cuerpo. Pronto recordó la promesa que se había hecho a sí mismo. Todo movimiento dolía, pero igual sumó fuerzas y se abrazó a sí mismo.

Y todo cambió.

Ahí estaba la figura, ya no era una silueta, sino un ser entero. Seguía echado, pero ya no sentía frío. Dolor sí, pero ya no era abrumador. Levantó la mirada hacia la figura. La primera cosa que notó el joven eran los ojos. Hermosos y algo cansados, pero iluminados con lo que capaz era esperanza.

Se levantó. Ahora estaban cara a cara. Era una mujer bella, presente y real. Por la primera vez en un tiempo indefinible, el joven habló.

—Te extraño.

No esperaba una respuesta, pero la recibió.

—También te he extrañado. Hace tanto que no te veo, tu versión auténtica, tu sonrisa.

—Estoy perdido. No sé dónde estoy, ni qué está pasando.

—Lo sé. Pero recordá que las herramientas que necesitás para encontrar el camino ya las tenés. Son tuyas, el que tiene que usarlas sos vos. Es tu camino para recorrer.

El joven no supo qué responder. Hizo lo único que supo hacer; la besó.

Un beso de un amor antiguo, un amor eterno, extrañado y deseado resbala en el alma; un cuerpo tenso se afloja, un panorama gris se colorea, el frío da paso al calor, y todo vuelve a tener sentido. Un individuo racional diría que es una ilusión y, hasta cierto punto, tiene razón. Pero preguntate esto: ¿si la ilusión transmite la verdad, importa? ¿No es eso la magia?

En ese momento lo entendió.

Era un ser humano que amaba y era amado. ¿Cómo lo pudo haber olvidado? En algún lugar, lejos de ese bosque, le esperaba el amor. Pero no encontraría la salida sin volver a amarse a sí mismo.

El amor es un faro, ilumina nuestro camino, pero solo si lo portamos nosotros. Para estar en sintonía con quienes amás, primero tenés que estar en sintonía contigo mismo.

El joven abre los ojos. Ve todo borroso. Parpadea e intenta de nuevo. La luz casi le ciega, pero está empezando a ver un poco mejor. Le duele todo. Suspira.

Poco a poco se levanta. Se mueve lento, algo aturdido y muy cansado, pero se levanta igual. Estira las piernas primero, después estira todo el cuerpo. Tiene un camino largo por delante. El amor le espera.

Sobre el autor

Meditations on Chain Dining

Lurking Llamas Press — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 17:02:24 GMT

Come my children, gather around, sit with me at the table of consumer capitalism. The literal table that is, for today we shall explore the fantabulous world of the mundane through the lens of corporate “casual dining” chains.

Any of us who have resided in our great (of late, ailing) republic has, inevitably, at some point dined, eaten, feasted, supped, consumed, chowed down, devoured, ingested, broken bread with, or engorged themselves at one of the nation’s several focus-group-designed eateries. You, dear reader, know their names, which I shall spare you from. If a hint is needed, I refer to establishments such as the one that names itself for the day prior to Saturday, the one that alludes to a vegetable of South American origin, the one that refers to a land mammal with keratin protrusions emanating from its head, the one that pretends to be Australian, the one that pretends to be Italian, the one that refers to the fruit that keeps the doctor away, the other one that pretends to be Italian, the sea cockroach joint, the one that pretends to be Texan, the one that pretends to be country, and the one about boobs.

These temples to mass-produced shareholder value are ubiquitous on the wide landscape of our nation’s sidewalk-less communities. There are dozens of such chains (owned, however, by a much smaller number of corporations) who compete ruthlessly to present to middle-class America their contending visions of prepackaged conformity.

Let us take a moment here to think, in other words, to ponder, to consider, to mull over, to contemplate, to reflect, or to cogitate about the experience at one of these sanctuaries of market research. If we are to understand the forms in which the mundane is utilized by these corporations, we must start from the beginning.

The structure is a start. These restaurants occupy buildings of roughly the same shape, optimized carefully by architects and interior designers who long ago surrendered their dreams in exchange for a stable upper-middle-class income. These buildings appear as islands in a sea of parking lots large enough to fit a rental car fleet, signaled to road-weary drivers passing on the interstate by signs tall enough to rival the great monuments of Europe.

This design is fundamental to the very nature of these establishments. As the consumer drowns in a sea of pavement and exterior suburban hostility, they grow desperate to be released from the hellscape of their life. Some form of respite is necessary, yet none is in sight. There is nothing to see. They know that the prefabricated box they search for will not save them from their all-but-assured fate, but it will provide them with some form of sustenance, even if they are aware of the forms in which it poisons their mind, body, and, alas, soul.

So, one, succumbing (likely unaware) to a form of existential fear, pulls into the parking lot and leaves their vehicle between an F-250 and a GMC Yukon, and walks across the intolerably hot asphalt to the intentionally heavy doors. This walk is again part of the design. It is not a long distance in an empirical sense, yet it appears to drain the soul just enough to exhaust the consumer. The purpose of this is so that when invariably the arriving party is asked to wait twenty minutes for a table, they are now too weak to come to their senses and choose a more suitable establishment[1].

Once finally seated, the individuals in question are greeted with ferociously coached friendliness. This is not your natural American friendliness, the treat-people-right bubbliness that oozes from that incredible optimism found almost exclusively on this continent, home to a world of promised opportunities. The natural form of this friendliness is the backbone of American mundanity, especially in regions like the South or the Midwest. Without it, other aspects of the mundane are left exposed to great risk, threatened by the traumatic darkness of our colonial past, which seeks every opportunity to manifest itself.

Unfortunately, as established prior, this is something else entirely. This is an artificial joviality, one defined by specific regulations in an employee handbook and instructed by videos narrated by artificial intelligence. A façade designed to disguise the fact that fentanyl and dubious relationships of a sexual nature exist among the staff. Bondage for the employee, a trap for the consumer, and a threat to American democracy. (We will return to this point of artificiality and its risks later on; keep it in the back of your mind for now.)

Past the greetings, one is then presented with the menu. This is, of course, an integral part of any dining experience. Menus are an artifact of the mundane, designed to transmit crucial information that allows us to decide how we should nourish ourselves. This is where the greatest efforts of the third-party and internal consultants are in play. Tremendous, in other words, enormous, huge, massive, immense, colossal, or gigantic amounts of money have been spent devising every single aspect of the menu, from the offerings of food, to the names for these products, to the colors of the menu, the material it is made from, its layout, the marketing synergies with associated brands held by the same private equity overlords, and, of course, the pricing strategy.

Such research-focused marketing leads to all brands, despite theoretically being rivals, reaching the same basic conclusions, generating a numbing sameness across the board. The food is almost entirely comprised of highly recognizable, palatable, mediocrity. There is always some sort of sauce advertised as being derived from a well-known alcohol brand, whisky or beer. Trademarked logos are generously splashed across the menu wherever they are mentioned. This sauce is seemingly available on every food item, yet amounts to little difference, given that the entire menu tastes the same, at any rate.

There is also, invariably, an item that has some variant of the word “sizzle” in its name. This sizzle is a most insidious option. It exists for one purpose alone: to fool the Default Mode Network into believing that the menu is not somehow excruciatingly boring. Sizzle suggests excitement, when in reality it is quite possibly the most bland item on the menu. The presentation of this foodstuff on a dangerously hot piece of metal creates the sizzle sound. This is theater of the lowest degree. A lie for the controlled. This item is so generic that I suspect that none of you, my dear readers, could confidently remember which establishment sells the “San Antonio Sizzlin’ Angus Platter.”[2]

Once one has consumed the factory-prepackaged foodstuffs, from appetizers to entrées to dessert (all of which contain a shocking amount of high-fructose corn syrup), the cheque has been paid, the tip left, and bathroom facilities utilized, there begins the long trek home (inevitably thirty or more minutes). The drive is filled with silence; nothing is left to be said, as nothing worth discussing was experienced. An element of shame hangs in the air, colored by suburban existential dread. You know this feeling, dear reader; I need not need describe it.

Now that we have established the basics of the chain dining experience, let us move on to the meat of the matter. If we are to explore the world of the mundane in this context we must start with some fundamental questions. Is the mundane present here? What form has it taken? Is it authentic? What is authenticity? Is authenticity a prerequisite for legitimacy? Is legitimacy a prerequisite for authenticity? Does the human heart crave the authentic? Why does our heart bleed when we recognize that the one we love does not consider us fully authentic and therefore does not requite the feelings which we have developed toward them, ironically or perhaps unironically due to their own authenticity that we so admire? Why did Lottie choose Jeff over me? Why have I never been able to rekindle the embers of my heart? Lottie, I failed you and thus failed myself.

Authenticity. That word has grown increasingly popular in our world that is increasingly inauthentic. When we say authentic, unless we are using it in a performative sense for social media (and thus, ironically, inauthentically), what we mean deep down is organic. This is fundamental to the mundane.

The mundane is a beautiful thing. It is the force that binds human society together; it is what creates the circumstance by which we can grow, feel, love, and be filled with joy. But it is critical to understand that it can only be formed through organic processes. Mundanity is not pre-decided, it is not intentional, it is not a product of intentional social engineering; it is the natural end result of the confluence of an enormity of factors rooted in the human experience and sourced directly from our souls.

These casual chain restaurants operate with a very dangerous core concept: that mundanity can be created in a boardroom. Every aspect of the experience in one of these restaurants has been carefully crafted so as to appear to be a mundane, generic American experience. However, there is no authenticity, no originality; nothing decided by a team of third-party consultants with a scheduled “roll out phase” is organic, and thus not authentically mundane.

Synthetic mundanity. These enterprises are desperate to create “mass appeal,”[3] which inevitably leads to a concerted project to manipulate mundanity, to forcibly mold it, to make it profitable. Mundanity, in the eyes of these corporate vultures, is not the collective glue of human society, but an instrument which can be rewired to engorge themselves with ill-gotten funds. It is a foolish and dangerous gambit, but one in which they find many willing allies, some of whom, I am sorry to say, come from the field of mundane studies.

The field of mundane studies is, I believe (as I must), a noble science at its core. That does not mean that all of its potential uses advance the human condition positively, however. We experts of the mundane seek to understand its fundamental elements in order to understand the human condition and the relationships that bind our species together. In this effort, we collect vast amounts of research: observations which detail every aspect of the mundane visible to our eyes.

The potential misuse of this body of work is, of course, evident. Armed with this information, corporations attempt to synthesize the mundane, to warp our work, and to gain profit. There are, alas, snakes, traitors, backstabbers, turncoats, rats, weasels, two-faced scum, deceivers, manipulators, phonies, scoundrels, and punk-ass buttholes that violate the ethical code of our profession to aid these soulless corporations in their criminal enterprise.

This may seem harsh, but I have cause to react in this fashion. The core danger of the synthetic mundane is that it forges the pestilent heart of modern fascism. The arrogant belief, born perhaps of despair, that our lives can be formed and molded in a laboratory of blandness as a weapon to entrench mediocrity—and its terrifying cousin, conformity—at the pinnacle of power, is a venom that threatens to annihilate our entire human project.

What does fascism need to propagate and sustain itself? Conformity. The death of individual freedom and originality.

To understand why this is so, we must recognize that, at its core, fascism is a weapon wielded by mediocre individuals—people who, under conditions of truly equal opportunity, would amount to nothing of value—to rid the world of authentic achievement and of true, earned greatness, so that their own pathetic nature is no longer a liability, but an advantage.

Fascists reject an equal world and push a narrative of superiority, but what they truly want is not a world where the best dominate because they are the best, but a world in which losers are sustained by artificial means in the key positions of power. They do this because, at a fundamental level, they understand that an imposed structure, not an organic one, is the only way they (the mediocre) will hold these positions of power for a sustained period.

Conformity in the mundane aspects of life suddenly becomes a necessity to maintain this framework. Originality, authenticity, are a serious risk, as they threaten to reveal the insufficiency, the mediocrity, of those empowered by fascism. We, as human beings, are naturally connected to true creation, to the real, and draw inspiration from it. An inspired world, a world interested in being its authentic self, in empowering that in others, is a world that rejects fascism inherently.

Now, I am not some kind of conspiracy theorist, nor a deranged radical. I am not arguing that the corporations that create and profit from these restaurants are necessarily intentionally looking to establish fascism among us[4]. What I argue is that their use of synthetic mundanity, their push to prepackage every aspect of our mundane daily lives into an artificial, unoriginal, and generic form in a search for endless and unnecessary profit puts us all at risk.

Mundanity surrounds us constantly. We derive much of our sense of human inspiration from the beautiful, authentic, and fundamentally human mundane things we see every day. Restaurants are part of this. At a genuine restaurant, one created by a human being because they love to feed people, we can be inspired in deeply profound ways. We eat food that someone put their heart and soul into preparing, that put themselves out there artistically, gastronomically, and, in a deep sense, personally. We sit in a space that reflects the personality, the goals, and dreams of those who have invited us in. And of course, we share this experience with people we love, or maybe don’t love, but nonetheless have chosen to sit down with. All of this is inspiring.

These corporate-designed chains lack all of these things. The food is designed to ensure either addiction or low costs for the owners. The space is designed to get you to spend the most money possible. And the experience isn’t the same. I think we all know this deep down. When your burger has a sauce that has a name like “Signature Alamo Spicy Mayo Bacon Burger™” and was shown on a Super Bowl ad featuring two comedians and a retired basketball player, you are deeply unlikely to find human connection with those around you[5].

The economic power of these chains means that they have the capacity to push restaurants created by real people, by members of the community, out of business. Their propaganda machines (called marketing) ensure you only hear their names, and their sales tactics, including prices that genuine restaurants cannot compete with, mean that we are increasingly left with a world of identical mediocre eateries.

Originality is dying, conformity is growing. As authentic spaces die, we lose our sense of the authentic mundane, and the synthetic mundane increasingly takes over. When we don’t see authenticity anymore, when our landscape is filled with identical mediocrity, we forget what being human really means. We let our guard down and the fascists absorb everything of value around us. Control the mundane, control the people.

We naturally glide through the mundane, shaping it through our human experiences, our emotions, and our collective individuality. It is created by us, from the ground up, and empowers us with the ability to define our daily life—the little things that are not so little when we really think about how much they mean to us.

Synthetic mundanity is a perversion of our social norms and thus a grave threat to our collective future. It seeks to shape our human experiences, define our emotions, and crush our collective individuality. It is imposed on us from above and strips us of the ability to define our daily life, repurposing the little things that are not so little when we really think about how much they mean to us to serve the greedy hearts of shareholders who have shed any notion of wishing to form part of human society.

This is why I am writing to you today; this is why I approach this topic with such passion. To surrender to the onslaught of conformist garbage thrown at us daily by moneyed interests would be a tragedy. It may not be in our power to stop the creation of synthetic mundanity, but we can at the very least try to fight for what is right, help originality flourish, and defend the truth at the core of mundanity.

Go out to dinner tonight. Don’t go to the place with its own app. Try the neighborhood joint owned by the immigrant couple that drives a 2014 Honda Odyssey. Get the house special. Leave a nice tip.

Embrace the mundane.

Yours truly,

Dr. Moriarty Cornelius Livingstone IV

Pre-eminent expert on Mundane Studies

[1] It is important to note that a sound individual (of body as well as mind) ought not to have become physically weakened by the transit from automobile to waiting room; thus, it is crucial to understand that this comes in the context of an all-encompassing system that gradually degrades the health of its victims.

[2] The answer is, in fact, none.

[3] Mass “appeal”=mass profitability.

[4]Though, I suspect a number of them would not be displeased by such an outcome as long as their profit margins are adequately protected.

[5] I have also found, through intense experimentation, that dining in these kinds of restaurants greatly reduces the probability of post-meal sexual intercourse with one’s invited companion.

About the Author

Dr. Moriarty Cornelius Livingstone IV is the planet’s preeminent expert on the mundane. He is a prolific essayist, covering a stunning range of topics and genres with a specific emphasis on the ways in which the mundane mold the world in which we live.

Dr. Livingstone also serves as head editor of our Lurking Llamas Press Classics Anthology series. He brings his nearly infinite wisdom and stunning observations to these affordable volumes of great literature.

A House & the Study of its Doors

Max Madero — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 17:01:08 GMT

A house is a universe, a transactional universe, and the door, at first, could be seen as a symbolic entry into its counteracting counterparts. But if one thinks about it, a door is much more; a door is the color of the light behind a waving lantern in the dark, or the tin color of the kite in the sun’s downward gaze, and if the universe were a reverberating star in the void of the glory of darkness, it would be its fusing light.

The door, in essence, is the same as a house, as it delimits (primitively) a space for what it is, and what should be behind it when safely shut from unwanted eyes, and nowadays, a house would fall short of being a house without its own door. Of course, a door is no more a primitive invention than a home recognized as a ‘home’ in the whirlwind of modernity, declaring someone with rights to society’s benefits from one who is property-less or is ‘legitimacy-less’ despite ‘ius vitae’ under a state. The door in the ‘insulae’ of the ‘Seven Hills’ of Rome was used (and wisely) to delimit the spread of a wandering fire befitting nightmares, for the flames many times, only until the precipice of history, devastated cities that from Dafoe to Aeneas were said to have been seen in their entirety, reducing them to the grass that befitted them by the riverbank or the pebbled shores of the sea…

A quick drum roll of fleeing images of the adobe may relish my doubts, from which I will proceed (which is the emphasis of this essay) to describe my own conception of doors in my life and their contingent significance in life’s ‘turns and returns,’ for the evolution of doors and their usage would be unfair to concentrate within a lingering paragraph:

If the home were seen from the eyes of the Mongol hordes that conquered China, the Caucasus, and the plains of the Tigris, they would see no need for the home, as they would see it as unnecessary. It is a prolongation of the world, short of the incomprehensible and pathetic, and hence, gloriously reduced to ash to let it belong to the glory of Esege Malan or Bai Ulgan, who instead should be worshiped in their might (redeemed through conquest, through the siege, the encampment, the harvest, and the great rivers).

The gardens of the Umayyads in Córdoba and Granada looked to the Persian Garden, or the recreation of the cardinal points and the center of the universe in the fountain, from which the Garden of Eden can be recreated and replenished despite the scarcity (or at least in Arabia) of trickling water in a concentric four-arched patio. Despite all Allah’s blessedness in the zest of the orange tree and the rustling leaves in the half moonlight, such spaces were indeed part of an estate or palace, but maybe not necessarily contemplated as part of it.

The door, and not the open arched gates, was needed for the power, status, privacy, and modesty of those curious inhabitants amongst facets of diverse investigation and the imagination, but I will not, again, delve into these worlds of the past and present, but let myself ponder on its divisive power in other worlds. This can be seen no more clearly than with the Westerner; the home for him is something else entirely. The house is the concretion of desire, achievement, and private life, and hence nothing but the least unredeemable of life’s articulations, for the privilege to exist in this life altogether is something else entirely. This door, in essence, is perhaps even much more sacred, but not sacred to the eyes of the Qadis of Al-Andalus, for it is not sacred enough to justify sanctity in and of itself.

Whatever a door may be for humanity’s frolic with control, and the creation and elaboration of realities, for me it can be but a sensuous ride, never parting from the fact of its necessity. For me, the door is the delimitation of worlds, and when all are simultaneously opened, the unification of space, and hence the more mundane feeling of a home: a set of walls, a roof, and the objects that we carry and discard through life’s silent advance.

But when in the sprawling home of my home in Pennsylvania, I recall all the rooms as conjoint to each other (or as a functional whole), given the ability to close one space from the other with the usage of this “door.” I can create the narrative not only internally, but also physically in external space; only by closing and opening these spaces, I can fulfill my dreams and worst nightmares from the past’s play and hence the future’s coming. But my house is not an abstract space; far from it, it is its opposing force.

Doors may, in a way, prolong this sentiment of ‘continuity’ and ‘reinvention’ through one’s life, and indeed, perhaps are among the most silently provoking extensions in one’s home. I can say that my home is entirely filled with the accumulation and epochs of experience with meaning, for in turn, doors confirm realities, destroy them, or at least shut them away.

Of course, many times we don’t notice it; I could accept openly its negation. But the indisputable fact is that doors nurture these realities, in my case overwhelmingly positively, despite life’s upsets. For if something terrible is missing from such meaning (from the death of a loved one), the space becomes hauntingly stronger, for it reveals what that space embodied, and if unaltered, it is like the embrace of a mother to a son.

Only here may doors reinvent this through the arrangement of spaces most powerfully, as they did with the Arabs with their gardens, or a naked Mongol with a dividing rug in his tent from his maiden in those deserts, changing such realities in their totality. In an abstract sense, doors are among the few objects that can reinstill the past repeatedly in the present, despite the past being gone except in the immateriality of memory, and also when reduced or modified, usher better pasts altogether, proving that postulation.

The door not only means privacy but also inherent exhibition. It means the death of a moment. It means the death of an idea. It means a beginning of a new moment and a new idea of the previous moment—of what someone is, and also could be. How may we rationalize chaos, or our own? Or going back to the point of exhibition… if it were not for my house, which is charged with such tangible symbolic meaning that can be so easily tarnished by its mundane graciousness and loving light, what do doors mean outside the privilege of my home or anyone’s home, but to one as a stranger in society, whom we never entirely know for not knowing ourselves entirely outside the comfort of a door?

Yet being one of the most primitive items in a house that denotes the necessity to live from a life narrative—a certain way of doing things that has to be carried on and not stopped for any ‘reason’—in this way, it saves us from conforming to our fated reality passively, and in others, and the great majority of times, burdens us without our noticing. For what would we do in the absence of doors, or, in the case of such a ‘reason,’ if they were prohibited?

Would we look at others with less hostility, knowing anyone could come inside or we could walk into anybody’s home altogether? Would we look at others as more or less than strangers? I believe we would look at others as less than strangers, but ourselves in the mirror as agents we don’t know—just strangers—for not previously realizing our humanity, but that the door is no more or no less than the object that shelters us from our own invisible but innate demons…

Doors, hence, and crudely so, are man’s all-too-godly creations that shed universes away and turn them alight—yet terrible and, consequently, absurd. Perhaps without them we would live in a much more ‘real’ world.

About the Author

Max Madero Dybner is an Argentine-American writer currently based in Spain. He loves drawing, Hitchcock, Borges, reading literature, and studying history. Both his fiction and his essays draw upon a vast web of diverse influences, touching on culture, the human condition, and the structure of the world that sorrounds us.

Cita previa

Alejandro Hodge Hernández — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 17:01:55 GMT

Notando que había vuelto a respirar y que seguía entero, el archiduque Francisco Fernando parpadeó y levantó la mirada. El brillo, tan inmediato como poderoso, le obligó a volver a cerrar los ojos. Sumando una vez más el coraje necesario para confiar en su capacidad visual, poco a poco, abrió los ojos.

Nubes. Parpadeó. Sí, era cierto. Lo que veía eran nubes. Se quedó atónito. Su confusión y maravilla no eran producto del simple acto de ver las nubes, sino de la perspectiva desde la que las veía. Toda su vida había mirado las nubes desde el mismo punto de vista: de la tierra hacia el cielo, de abajo hacia arriba. Por primera vez en su vida, estaba mirando las nubes de frente. Aún más sorprendente, él se encontraba parado sobre una nube.

Tardó un rato en ubicarse. Al principio no entendía nada; no tenía ni idea de cómo había llegado a estar a la altura de las nubes y aún menos sabía cómo proceder. Haciendo un gran esfuerzo, Francisco Fernando recorrió su mente buscando algún recuerdo, alguna imagen, algún dato que le pudiera explicar su situación presente. Progresivamente, lo empezó a lograr.

Recordó que hubo una explosión, sí, una explosión al lado del auto. Había dirigido a su personal de seguridad a atender a un hombre herido. ¿Por qué había hecho eso? <>, se respondió a sí mismo. Sin embargo, el siguiente recuerdo le hizo dudar de si esa había sido una decisión sabia.

Estaban volviendo de haber visitado a los heridos en el hospital. Habían doblado en una esquina, la esquina equivocada aparentemente, y cruzaron frente a una tienda de fiambres. Había ahí, sentado, un hombre, ¿no? Sí, un hombre, un hombre que se puso de pie al verlos. Se puso de pie, se subió al frente del auto, sacó una pistola de su bolsillo y… y…

En un instante, Francisco Fernando entendió todo. Lo habían asesinado. Estaba muerto. Se encontraba entre las nubes porque había ascendido al cielo. Al empezar a concientizarse de lo que significaba esta nueva realidad, el archiduque de repente se sintió débil y asustado; sintió temor al encontrarse apartado de su familia, de su mundo y de su gente. Se sentó en la nube e intentó aclarar su mente. Suspiró. Se puso a pensar en su siguiente paso. Quería distraerse, y tramar sus próximos movimientos era una forma bárbara de hacer justo eso.

Se encontraba solo; no había otra persona, ni ángel, ni fantasma, ni pájaro en su presencia. No sabía lo que tenía que hacer y su entorno deshabitado tampoco ayudaba. Igual, no se desesperó: tenía que haber una especie de clave o indicación. Solo era un tema de ubicarla. Se paró y empezó a mirar a su alrededor buscando una pista.

Después del tercer o cuarto intento de detectar alguna pista visual, Francisco Fernando vio algo que le dio un poco de esperanza. A su derecha, a la distancia y bastante lejos, el archiduque creyó ver lo que parecía ser un cartel. Decidió que su mejor opción era acercarse al supuesto cartel, con la esperanza de que de alguna manera le aclarara las cosas.

Llegando al objeto, el archiduque pudo confirmar que era un cartel. Alegre y con ganas de avanzar, Francisco Fernando dirigió la mirada hacia las letras descoloridas del cartel.

Otra vez más, el archiduque se encontró en un estado de confusión. ¿Sala de ingresos recientes? ¿Eso qué sería? Tampoco ayudaba la indicación. ¿Recto? No entendía. No había nada recto. Solo nubes y más nubes. Sintió su frustración aumentando. Intentó aplastar la sensación; algo le decía que frustrarse en el cielo era pecado. Pero tampoco podía negar que su situación era menos que ideal. No tenía ni la más mínima idea de lo que tenía que hacer, nadie estaba para ayudarlo y la única pista que había encontrado hasta ahora parecía ser inútil. Suspiró y pensó: <>.

Con su decisión tomada, Francisco Fernando volvió a escanear el ambiente detalladamente. Tardó un buen rato, pero por fin se dio cuenta de que había una muy leve silueta con forma de puerta detrás del cartel. Se acercó y empujó.

Hubo un destello de luz, un ruido tremendo y una vibración inmensa. Francisco Fernando se sintió levantado y tirado por el aire. No veía nada; todo estaba oscuro. La sensación solo duró otro instante más, hasta que la luz reapareció y los pies del archiduque volvieron a estar firmemente plantados en una nube. Un tanto mareado, pero todavía de pie, Francisco Fernando abrió los ojos.

Estaba en una sala enorme llena de gente. Sintió alivio. Tenía que ser la sala de ingresos recientes. Había llegado; tenía motivo para estar feliz. Dicho eso, necesitaba orientarse para poder determinar mejor su situación.

Observando la sala, Francisco Fernando vio que había unas diez ventanillas, cinco en cada extremo, donde se realizaba lo que únicamente se podría describir como trámites. En cada ventanilla estaba sentado un ángel que trabajaba de funcionario. En medio de la sala había cientos de sillas metálicas. Varios de los asientos estaban dañados de una forma u otra y todos tenían pinta de ser incómodos. Las personas sentadas en las sillas parecían que con cada segundo perdían ganas de seguir con la vida después de la muerte. Altavoces monótonos llamaban números a ventanillas. Con cada número, individuos se paraban y se dirigían hacia las ventanillas indicadas. Los que estaban de pie caminaban con la andadura de un zombi. El ambiente parecía chupar toda la felicidad de los presentes.

Nerviosismo volvió a apoderarse del archiduque. ¿Trámites? ¿Podría ser? ¿Para asegurarse su lugar en el cielo tendría que hacer trámites? Si no, no entendía la finalidad de la sala. Sin duda ninguna, lo que ocurría ahí eran trámites. Tenía sentido, de cierta forma. Cada día fallecían docenas de miles de personas. Hacía falta alguna forma de procesarlos a todos, ¿no? Igual, quería estar seguro; necesitaba preguntarle a alguien.

Un hombre muy anciano, pálido, con un rostro que era más propio de un fantasma que de un ser humano, pasó por delante del archiduque. Decidió aprovechar el momento.

—Perdone, señor, ¿sería posible que usted me explique cómo es el procedimiento acá? Gracias.

Sin mirarlo a los ojos, el anciano respondió:

—Hay que hacer los trámites. Todos tienen que hacer los trámites. No hay cómo evitarlos. Uno empieza el proceso ahí.

El anciano indicó un dispensador de fichas a lo lejos. El archiduque le agradeció por el dato, pero todavía tenía una pregunta más.

—¿Qué papeles hay que tener para que le acepten el ingreso?

—Hijo mío, usted justo ha llegado. Este proceso es eterno. Eterno.

Incomodado por la respuesta inesperada, Francisco Fernando tardó un rato en responder, y el anciano aprovechó el segundo de silencio para fugarse. Otra vez solo y bastante confundido, el archiduque avanzó hacia el dispensador de fichas.

Había una cola extensa y tan mal ordenada que no sería gran sorpresa si resultara que nadie supiera quién estaba a cargo de su organización. Era una de esas colas interminables donde algunos van sentados en el piso, reservando su espacio e intentando reducir la miseria de la experiencia, y otros, los parados, estiran las extremidades en formas raras, en parte para evitar que se les corte la circulación y en parte para aliviar el aburrimiento.

Pasaron lo que parecían ser horas, aunque el archiduque no estaba seguro de si donde se encontraba existía el tiempo. De todos modos, sentía que eran horas y, con todo lo raro que había visto y experimentado hasta ahora, lo único en lo que confiaba era en lo que sentía.

Eventualmente, llegó el turno de Francisco Fernando. Tomó una ficha de la máquina y buscó un asiento, pensando que, por la experiencia que había tenido hasta ahora, lo más probable era que fuera a tener una espera larga hasta que llamaran su ficha.

Tenía razón: otra vez más pasó una infinitud sentado, esperando que lo llamaran. Justo cuando estaba a punto de rendirse totalmente, llamaron su número y le pidieron proceder a la ventanilla dos. Se levantó lo más rápido que pudo y se dirigió a la ventanilla. Sentado detrás del separador de cristal, había un ángel que llevaba una expresión bastante amarga. Queriendo tener la mejor experiencia posible, el archiduque empezó con un tono cordial y respetuoso.

—Buenas tardes.

El ángel respondió con un tono aburrido y sin emoción.

—Buenas tardes. ¿Usted tiene cita previa?

Francisco Fernando frunció el ceño.

—¿Cita previa? Perdón, es que recién me morí. No entiendo todo exa—

El ángel lo interrumpió.

—Sí. ¿Antes de morir, usted reservó una cita con la Agencia de Ingresos al Cielo?

—Lo siento, es que no entiendo. ¿Cómo podría haber reservado una cita previa antes de morir? Si no tenía ni idea de que—

El ángel lo volvió a interrumpir. Le dio una mirada impaciente, como si todo fuera bastante obvio.

—Señor, si usted no tiene cita previa, tiene que llenar este formulario y entregarlo en la ventanilla B-5.

El ángel le entregó un par de papeles engrampados.

—Es que no entiendo. ¿Cómo hubiera—

—La ventanilla B-5. Tenga un buen día.

Confundido, frustrado y un poco enojado, el archiduque volvió al centro de la sala. ¿Qué sentido tenía eso de la cita previa? Nadie le había indicado nada parecido antes de morir. ¿Para qué servía, si igual tenían que procesar a todos? Estaba un poco exasperado.

Sumando desgracias, tardó un montón en encontrar la ubicación de la ventanilla B-5. Resultaba que se hallaba en una segunda planta solo accesible por una escalera invisible al ojo humano. Naturalmente, localizar una escalera invisible era bastante complicado. Preguntar por la ubicación era inútil porque nadie estaba de acuerdo en dónde se encontraba. Al final, se decidió por dar mil vueltas al lugar, con la esperanza de tropezarse con la escalera en algún momento.

Cuando finalmente encontró la escalera y subió, se encontró con otra imagen desagradable. Había una cola prolongada frente a la ventanilla B-5. Tendría que esperar otra perennidad más. Intentó tranquilizarse, convenciéndose de que podría aprovechar la cola para llenar su formulario.

Francisco Fernando aguantó y eventualmente llegó a estar frente a la ventanilla. Consciente de que su frustración probablemente no lo ayudaría en ese instante, intentó sonar sereno.

—Buen día, me han mandado desde el primer piso. Me dijeron que tengo que reservar acá una cita para iniciar los trámites.

El archiduque alzó el formulario para que el ángel lo pudiera ver. La respuesta fue rápida.

—Eso no se hace acá.

Le costó creer lo que había escuchado.

—No entiendo. Me dijeron que este trámite se realiza en la ventanilla B-5.

—Sí, eso es cierto.

—Entonces no entiendo.

—Señor, esta no es la ventanilla B-5.

Incrédulo, Francisco Fernando miró el letrero que estaba colgado en el cristal de la ventanilla. Decía <>.

—Lo siento, no entiendo. ¿Cómo puede ser eso? Si acá dice <>.

—Han movido la ventanilla B-5 al tercer piso.

Pensando que quizá el burócrata no lo había escuchado correctamente, Francisco Fernando reiteró:

—El letrero indica que esta es la ventanilla B-5.

Para énfasis inútil, el archiduque señaló el pequeño letrero.

—Señor, no se puede confiar en los carteles. La ventanilla B-5 se ha movido al tercer piso.

Dándose cuenta de que la lucha era en vano, Francisco Fernando retrocedió. Ahora, aunque intentaba esconderlo, estaba lleno de rencor.

<<¿Pero tan ineptos podrían ser? ¿Ni siquiera pueden poner un cartel que sirva? Me gustaría mandarlos a todos a la mie…>>

Cortó su propio pensamiento. No servía dejarse llevar por la furia y la frustración. Tendría que persistir de una forma u otra.

Encontró la escalera y subió al tercer piso. Al llegar, como esperaba, se encontró con otra cola enorme. Cuando le tocó su turno, entregó el formulario y el ángel lo tomó y empezó a revisarlo sin hacer comentario alguno. Esto levantó un poco el ánimo del archiduque; esta vez sí debía estar en el lugar correcto, porque si no, el ángel ya lo habría rechazado.

El optimismo de Francisco Fernando resultó estar mal ubicado. Algo en la complexión del ángel había cambiado; ya no portaba una cara de aburrimiento y malhumor profundo: había algo diferente. Francisco Fernando creyó detectar una pequeña sonrisa. No una sonrisa buena, sino una de esas sonrisas malignas que portan las personas que viven del sufrimiento de los otros.

El ángel se aclaró la garganta y, sin levantar la mirada, procedió a interrogar al archiduque sobre su posición en la monarquía, su rol en el imperialismo austrohúngaro y sus viajes de caza, tanto exóticos como mundanos. Después de recibir cada respuesta, el ángel hacía apuntes en un pequeño cuaderno. Con cada apunte, el archiduque se ponía más nervioso. No sabía qué significancia tenían los apuntes, pero los tomó como un mal presagio.

Al terminar el interrogatorio, el ángel volvió a aclararse la garganta y le dio las inevitables malas noticias.

—Antes de que usted pueda iniciar el proceso, tiene que aclarar unos temas pendientes.

El archiduque respondió con la paciencia medio agotada.

—¿Temas pendientes?

Como ya le habían hecho mil veces, el ángel le echó esa mirada que parecía decir <>.

—Según los indicios que tengo acá, usted es parte de la realeza reaccionaria, imperialista y cazador excesivo. Usted tiene que resolver estos pecados y obtener una exención para cada uno.

El archiduque no alcanzó a responder. Antes de poder formar las palabras, el ángel le dijo <> —una frase que Francisco Fernando ya había aprendido que indicaba el fin del asunto— y le entregó un panfleto que explicaba adónde tenía que ir para resolver cada pecado.

Será porque ya andaba mentalizado en el fracaso, o será porque en el mundo en el que trotaba así esa era la orden natural; nadie puede estar seguro. Pero lo que sí era innegable es que el proceso de exención era un embole.

Al principio parecía que la tarea era relativamente simple: un tanto molesta, pero manejable. Solo eran tres trámites, ¿no? Esa ilusión se evaporó casi de inmediato en la primera de las oficinas, la Oficina de Amnistía por Realeza Reaccionaria. En dicha oficina le informaron al archiduque que, para tramitar su exención por el pecado de realeza reaccionaria, necesitaba obtener primero las exenciones por privilegio hereditario elitista, aristocracia, riqueza ilícita, riqueza ilegítima, autoritarismo y abuso de servidumbre, cuyos trámites se debían realizar en oficinas distintas y con cita previa.

Pronto, el archiduque descubrió que cada una de esas oficinas también requería dos o tres pasos previos, cosa que hizo que el “primer paso” terminara siendo, en realidad, diecisiete pasos distintos.

Peor aún fue la experiencia en la Oficina de Indultos por el Imperialismo, donde, tras llegar y esperar en una cola larga, el archiduque fue informado de que dicha oficina ya no se encargaba directamente de casos como el suyo y que, en realidad, debía dirigirse a la Oficina de Regularización de Culpables de Imperialismo.

Al llegar a esa oficina, le informaron que se habían equivocado en la anterior y que sí era allí donde se encargaban de casos como el suyo. Después de volver y explicar lo que le habían dicho en la segunda oficina, los ángeles de la primera oficina por fin aceptaron su caso, pero no antes de culpar a Francisco Fernando y darle esa mirada condescendiente que ya conocía demasiado bien.

Para colmo, como en la Oficina de Amnistía por Realeza, lo mandaron a cinco o seis oficinas más, que sucesivamente lo mandaron a dos o tres oficinas adicionales, con el pretexto de que era un paso necesario para satisfacer los requerimientos obligatorios para tramitar su exención.

Pese al horror que habían sido las experiencias previas, si hubiera un monumento para reconocer la exención que más hizo sufrir al archiduque, sería la de caza excesiva. La pesadilla se inició de inmediato: tan solo al llegar al pasillo donde se situaba la Oficina de Regularización de Caza Excesiva, el archiduque ya podía escuchar los gritos de una muchedumbre enfurecida.

Abrió la puerta con un leve sentimiento de terror, no sabiendo qué esperar. Lo que vio provocó que su corazón se desinflara, dejando escapar, como aire fugaz, las pocas esperanzas que todavía mantenía. Era un despelote de categoría. Las personas estaban amontonadas, aún más aplastadas y presionadas que en La Meca durante el hach. Gritaban toda clase de vociferaciones: reclamos por la falta de atención, demandas de que cerraran la puerta con llave para que no entrara nadie más, auxilios pidiendo que dejaran entrar más aire, quejas por las demoras eternas, los carteles inútiles y las instrucciones confusas, y hasta exabruptos en los que lanzaban amenazas e insultos creativos y profanos hacia el personal.

Al parecer, el quilombo se había armado cuando “el sistema” se cayó. Las preguntas del archiduque no lo ayudaron a entender la situación. <<¿Qué es el sistema?>>: nadie tenía respuesta. <<¿Qué hace el sistema?>> y <<¿Cómo funciona el sistema?>>: tampoco. “El sistema” era una fuerza mística, una energía oscura y todopoderosa. Lo único que todos sabían era que sin “el sistema” no se podía lograr nada y que existiría un estado de anarquía hasta que dicho “sistema” volviera a funcionar. Mientras tanto, lo único que quedaba era sobrevivir, algo comparable a uno de esos cuentos posapocalípticos en los que los personajes solo siguen intentando sobrevivir por la promesa de que las cosas estarán mejor en otro lado.

El sistema tardó un eón en reiniciar. Cuando por fin volvió a funcionar, ya se había acumulado tanto retraso que Francisco Fernando tuvo que esperar un período de tiempo imbancable para su turno.

Su turno resultó ser bastante parecido a los anteriores: lo mandaron a una experiencia tediosa para poder cumplir con los requisitos, pero pudo lograrlo todo con un poco de paciencia.

Sintiendo alegría por primera vez en un tiempo indefinible, el archiduque volvió a la ventanilla B-5 para entregar sus documentos. Esta vez no le molestaron la cola ni la espera larga que implicaba; estaba demasiado feliz como para dejar que algo a lo que ya se había acostumbrado lo irritara.

Fue aún mejor la sensación de alegría un rato después, cuando el archiduque logró entregar toda su documentación con éxito y sin más obstáculos por parte del ángel-funcionario. Tenía todos los documentos aprobados y su cita previa fija para volver a la primera sala e iniciar el proceso de ingreso formalmente. Llevaba la plétora de documentos sellados que había coleccionado durante el arduo proceso de normalización como un trofeo. Su alegría revoloteaba dentro de su pecho, generando confianza y anticipación.

Francisco Fernando se presentó frente a la ventanilla dos, listo para seguir avanzando. Había esperado un largo rato con su ficha y casi corrió a la ventanilla cuando lo llamaron, tales eran sus ganas de presentar toda su documentación. A diferencia de tantas veces en las que había intuido que lo iban a rechazar, esta vez sentía lo opuesto. Sentía que era su momento. Había sufrido, sin dudas, pero ahora tendría su oportunidad de cobrar lo que era suyo, reivindicar su sufrimiento y empezar su jubilación de la vida merecidamente.

Explicó con gran detalle su situación, enfatizando cada proceso por el cual había pasado y demostrando que tenía sus documentos en orden. No quería que hubiera errores ni malinterpretaciones. Era consciente de que el funcionario, seguro tan malhumorado como los anteriores, estaría predispuesto a rechazarlo en el segundo en que se presentara frente a la ventanilla, probablemente utilizando algún requisito oculto como pretexto. En el momento en que ocurriera eso, le diría un <> y dejaría de darle bola incluso antes de que pudiera probar que había cumplido con el requisito.

Por eso, al archiduque le parecía importante demostrar, desde el inicio, que todo estaba en orden antes de que el ángel le pudiera realizar ni una sola pregunta. Por la reacción inicial del ángel, creyó que su estrategia había sido un éxito. El ángel portaba una expresión seria, inexpresiva, que no demostraba ni la menor indicación de que algo estuviera fuera de orden.

Al terminar de revisar toda la documentación presentada, el ángel dirigió la mirada hacia el archiduque y habló:

—Toda su documentación está en orden. Ha cumplido con los requisitos necesarios para obtener su ingreso.

Radiante, el archiduque empezó a agradecer copiosamente al ángel. Le agradeció por parte de él, por parte de su familia, por parte de sus amigos, por parte de su nación y por parte de cualquier grupo de individuos mínimamente interesados en su destino. Hubiera continuado así si el ángel no lo hubiera interrumpido.

—¿Usted tiene las copias legalizadas?

Todo el color se borró del rostro de Francisco Fernando.

—¿Copias legalizadas?

—Sí, claro. ¿Usted tiene las cuatro copias legalizadas de cada uno de sus documentos? Es necesario para tramitar el ingreso.

El estómago del archiduque se hizo un nudo. La confianza que tenía antes estaba a punto de desaparecer.

—Nadie me dijo nada sobre copias legalizadas.

El ángel ahora portaba una sonrisa. Se estaba divirtiendo.

—Hace falta tener cuatro copias legalizadas de cada documento oficial. Para obtener una copia legalizada de un documento, hay que ir a la oficina notarial relevante para cada documento y pedir la legalización. Ojo: hay que ir con cita previa para la revisión inicial; ahí le van a explicar los requisitos individualizados para legalizar dicho documento. Hay que cumplir con todos los requisitos que le pidan y volver para la segunda revisión, también con cita previa. En la segunda revisión van a verificar si todo está en orden y, si todo está como Dios manda, le van a otorgar la legalización de la copia. Hay que hacer este proceso para cada documento individualmente y hay que…

El archiduque había dejado de escuchar. Se sentía a punto de desvanecerse; no podía hablar y no podía respirar. En su mente solo había un pensamiento, una frase:
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