Siete minutos by Ismael Camacho Arango (the little red hen read aloud TXT) 📖

“How do you know?”
“It happened some time ago.”
“It’s spooky.”
Her mother had taught her to read palms on quiet evenings, when her brothers and sisters had gone to sleep on the muddy floor. The sun made shapes under the curtains as her teats trembled like jelly and an erection lifted his pants, but he had to be strong. Then he showed her the papers Jose had left an eternity ago.
“He was my invisible friend,” he said. “We went around the tree of life, chanting to the stars.”
“It looks like the Egyptian language,” she said.
It had to be a magical language if Jose had known it.
“Can you decipher them for me?” Homer asked.
“You can call me Maria.”
“Maria,” he said. “Will you help me to translate the papers?”
“I’m always busy.”
She lived in a small room with only three beds and a cooker in the corner, while her father slept on the sofa and some of her brothers on the floor. Homer listened to all the problems she had in her life filled with mud and tears.
“I have seen rats in the latrine,” she said.
“A latrine?”
“It’s a hole in the backyard.”
He had never heard of such a thing. They had to move over piles of rubbish strewn on the floor to go to the latrine by the shed. Maria looked relaxed, in spite of her ordeal. As she talked, he noticed the crucifix moving between her breasts like a lost angel. Homer wanted to eat her slowly, tasting every bit of her for eternity.
“Would you sleep with me tonight?” he asked.
“I’d have to marry you first.”
She wouldn’t accept the offer of his bed, even if she had to sleep with her family in a cramped room.
“I’ll buy you a house when I’m a millionaire,” he said.
“You’ll forget me.”
“I won’t,” he said.
“It says in your hands.”
Then mother appeared at the door, clutching a handkerchief.
“Your father is sick,” she said.
After running up the stairs, Homer found father in bed, the room smelling of incense and herbs. Illness was a luxury father couldn’t afford when they needed money to renovate the shop.
“He had a convulsion a few minutes ago,” mother said.
Father had gone to bed, complaining of a pain in his arm that morning. A bottle of aspirin lay on the bedside table, the best drug in the world according to her, while the clock on the wall marked the passage of time. Homer must have lived through it all in another dimension he had forgotten about.
“Miguel has gone to call the doctor,” mother said.
They waited in silence, darkness stretching up to infinity outside the window while mother muttered a prayer.
“Everything will be fine,” Maria said.
Then the room turned icy, incense filling everything as mother prayed to her God and Homer didn’t feel any pulse in his father’s wrists. Everybody had to have a pulse or they would die. He heard his own screams of pain lost in time.


Darkness
Homer struggled against the darkness swallowing his soul while hot tears ran down his cheeks. It had to be a mistake.
“He is asleep,” he said.
Maria let him suck her teats or he might have imagined it, while forgetting his pain in the toilet for a few minutes but he couldn’t rape her.
“You must take this,” she gave him coca leaves mixed with aguardiente, a good medication for a broken soul.
“Think in your mother,” she said
She helped him to the living room, where a few of the neighbours wanted to pay their respects to the family.
“We are sorry,” they said.
Miguel organised everything during the next few hours when people came to the house and Maria brought lots of cups of coffee. Mother rested in her bed, oblivious to everything going on around her but Homer might have lived through it all. Standing in the backyard, he remembered the tree swaying in the breeze on that day enveloped in time.
“Are you all right?” Maria asked.
“Let’s go to the toilet,” he said.
“I’m a virgin.”
They wrestled by the coffin while the house bustled with people, paying their respects to his father. Maria let him push her towards the darkness before a voice interrupted their concentration.
“It’s time to go,” the undertaker said.
Homer took Maria to the carriage by the front door, as the horses kicked on the floor, his mind wandering back to that moment when he had appeared beside the tree of life in another dimension. Time went in a blur, as he chewed coca leaves. He had to find a reason for that journey his parents had undertaken in search of paradise, as drops of rain joined his tears in the saddest day of his life. Homer had to go back to that limbo where his soul had come from, although he couldn’t remember much about it. His life had changed during the last few hours, when he had lost the man he loved and his mother trusted father Ricardo.
Looking in his pockets, he found some more coca leaves, the cure for the pain in his soul. Then the shadows parted, revealing more of that day lost in time, when Uncle Hugh had brought him a few presents from that other country. Homer kissed Maria’s hands, watching the cars speeding by their side while the coffin trembled in the back of the carriage. He caressed her breasts for all the help he had during his pain.
“Not now,” she said.
“I know everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll see.”
It had been a journey besieged by problems, just the way his father must have battled in a foreign country, although the memory of that journey seemed distant and frail. He had to make sure his mother didn’t come to any harm before the night ended.


The cemetery
On arriving at the cemetery, they saw the graves welcoming them to the land of the death, where father Ricardo prayed to his God. The priest welcomed them with his blessings before turning back to his prayers in order to send father’s soul to a better place.
“You must trust in him,” Father Ricardo said.
Homer didn’t want to believe in a God, cruel enough to take his father into another kingdom, never returning to his land but the priest wanted to have his attention. Then he put some holy water in the grave, scaring Satan away in the hope of getting a good place for a soul in heaven. Homer had to trust in the priest’s intentions towards his family, as the coffin descended into the bowels of the earth in order to wait for the Day of Judgment, whenever it would be.
“I want to go home,” Homer said.
Maria led him through the graves full of mortal remains decomposing in the mud, the sound of thunder interrupting his pain.
“I don’t trust Father Ricardo,” he said.
“You are paranoid.”
Homer had to awaken from the limbo he had fallen into since father’s death, as he held Maria’s hands. Then he relieved that day when he had bad news, lightning illuminating part of the cemetery in another time.
“He mustn’t touch her,” he said.
He ran through the graves, hearing Maria’s calls, the birds getting out of his way before collapsing by a mausoleum by the entrance.
“Don’t worry,” Maria said.
Homer had to think in his mother, alone in the world and in the hands of God’s representative on earth. He tried to forget the feeling of doom, while thinking in ways of helping his mother to earn their money in the shop by the market. Taking Maria’s hands, he promised her many things, even if the girl didn’t let him touch her nipples.
“Father wants me to marry a rich man,” she said.
“I’ll be the richest man in town,” he said.
Maria hoped he wouldn’t change his mind, his hand touching her pants and father Ricardo appeared amongst the tombs.
“This is God’s home,” the priest said.
“I know,” Homer said.
“You must behave then.”
Homer led Maria away from death. They ran along the fields, feeling the wind in their faces, while the priest prayed to his God and a dog chased them through the meadows.
“I don’t trust Father Ricardo,” he said.
Holding her hands, he slipped his fingers along her breasts before anyone interrupted them.
“You must think in your mother,” she said.
“She likes you.”
She crossed the street, leaving Homer all alone in a world he didn’t