Autor:   Enrique Arroyo Villegas

The room 4

He studied the door carefully. With the machete he made some indentations in the wall, resulting in what he imagined: the plaster was dead; it would be easier to tear off the frame with the door and everything.

He was exhausted and, for the first time, he was hungry.

He checked that the frame had wood stains embedded in the wall.

He patiently gathered up his few things and, without thinking twice, gave a solemn kick to the door, which fell dead, with a crash and dust; in that kick was all the contained rage, for the unfair and for the time.

It was early. The hallway was dark. He found that other doors similar to his were open. Unhurriedly he entered each of the rooms lined up in the hallway. There was no one, he was the only living being in that maze.

The interiors were scrambled, littered with trash, like his, and with a window identical to the one that corresponded to him. He pried for a long time trying to find some forgotten personal object that would lead him to know who his confinement companions had been. All he found was a harmonica and an American red scarf.

At the end of the hall was an old wooden staircase, whose steps, when he stepped on them, screeched like a pained animal.

He descended until he came to a kind of hall, with a counter and empty key lockers. That, at one time, was a cheap hostel.

He opened the door like the one that opens the hells without the company of Virgilio.

The light blinded him a little. Under his feet a flower bed with overgrown grass, and in front there was a damp and muddy dirt road where yacaretes and iguanas of beautiful colors passed by. Flocks of birds and crows lay by the puddles. No animal was scared to see him.

On the other sidewalk, an old wooden house with a rusty fence, full of papaya trees, some green and most of them fallen on the ground. He was curious to enter it. He shouted several times to make himself known but received no response.

The first thing he noticed among the cobwebs that covered everything was the clock stopped at an undetermined time; then, pushing aside the webs, and taking care that none of the giant spiders that guarded his work attacked him, he advanced to the interior of the house.

One by one, he went through the messy rooms, until he found in a bed, wrapped in blankets, the skeleton of an animal, a dog.

“What happened? How long was I locked up? Where are the humans?”, he asked himself.

He walked along the path that led to the sea. He knew the town and the hostel, which he never entered before the confinement. He remembered that afternoon when men who looked like astronauts loaded him onto a truck and took him there.

He skirted the sea along the cliff until he could see his white house on top of a rock.

He had rented it to a black friend, an old turtle fisherman who went to live with his children. He kept all the memories of the old man: harpoons, lobster traps, and nets. And he decorated one of the walls with a figurehead that he found on the beach; it was a blonde mermaid with lipstick-smeared lips, which the fish had preserved. He touched her wooden breasts every night when he went to sleep.

He returned to his life as usual, and tomorrow he would go fishing at night if the moon favored him.

He remembered that he kept several gallons of coconut oil and cans of kerosene for his stove. Fortunately, no one had invaded his home during his absence.

He looked out the window, the one that was always stained by the grease of flying fish that got lost at night and, like insects looking for a light, crashed on it.

He cut his nails. He drew brackish water from the well to shower. He thought that despite the beard and long hair pelicans would recognize him; those who were his eternal friends, with whom he chatted every time he went down to the sea.

He ate the forgotten contents of a can. He got into his pallet. The sand stung between the sheets, but he was so tired that he fell asleep without thinking about anything else.

Dawn, the sun drew a red thread on the horizon.

Seagulls hovered over the cliff looking for something to eat. One stood on the railing of his little terrace and looked at him.

—Hello Friend.

He offered him the sardine remains. That the seagull gladly received.

The small beach between the rocks was full of objects that the tides had brought there, skeletons of white trees burned by the sun, which resembled old dead dinosaurs, remains of a boat with a written name that could not be read, large conch shells pink, pieces of candles dirty by the algae, in short, a kind of things that in time would recycle.

He left for the mountain he knew, where he found wild guavas, coffee, a breadfruit tree, which he loved so much.

“How long will my matches resist ... I´d better keep the fire burning”.

He had plenty of paper sheets, only the tobacco was missing, but with luck, he would find some lost plant in the bush.

“What if I go down to town?”.

He thought about it for several days.

He put a backpack on his shoulder, took the Panamanian machete, and started on his way.

First, he reached the house of his friend, the turtle fisherman. The doors were open. The sand and the dust had invaded it.

He recognized his friend´s clothes. In the kitchen he found everything he could need and even tobacco. He lit one filled with desire.

He sat down on the front steps.

“What happened?”.

Winter had entered with its rains, so he calculated that at least it would be April.

He continued his journey to the bank, which stood with its doors deliberately broken. There were bills on the floor.

On the director´s desk was a newspaper that spoke only about the millions killed by the virus. There was a note that mentioned that millionaires took refuge in bunkers.

“Is it just me and the millionaires left?”.

He laughed out loud.

“The seventh seal —he thought—, and the angel opened the seventh seal”.