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

“Did they threaten to eat you?”
“Of course.”
“That must have been frightening.”
“Then the sky acquired a strange tinge, bringing death and desperation to the sea.”
Homer told them everything that happened since the start of his adventure while the press took his pictures and the entire planet spoke about him.


A new life
Homer received a medal from the United States congress in a sober ceremony attended by the heads of many countries, three hundred thousand soldiers, nine hundred thousand students and a lot of veterans of the world wars. Stalin declared him leader of the Soviet workers and General De Gaulle kissed him repeatedly in the cheeks. Bigger ships sailed under his flag as he sold arms to a few Latin American countries.
He had left Fifi alone in New York as he travelled to Colombia, where Uncle Hugh had gone to live. That’s called progress, Homer thought as he looked at the skyscrapers all around him, whilst recalling the death of his parents in the mist of time. They could write a story about his life. Homer imagined his name in glowing lights in the cinema, as the actor went through his years of hunger and distress in order to get his money. Fifi hoped he would come back one day after visiting the world.
Uncle Hugh had left some breakfast on the table, after rushing to interview a few important people in the city. Homer’s mind went back in time to that moment when he had appeared in the backyard, Uncle Hugh brought him presents from New York and Jose joined him from beyond the mist.
“It’s a question of words,” he said to himself.
On opening the papers he had brought in his suitcase, he examined those pages full of zeros and other things, meaning something beyond his comprehension. A bunch of papers had sent him to a realm of fantasy inhabited by ghosts and other things he couldn’t understand at the start of his life. Homer saw the past merging into the future, when he remembered his trip through the jungle in another era and before darkness had brought destruction to his world. Then he barked, the sound of his voice bringing him back to reality. His life had started while watching the ants struggling in the mud, their convolutions reminding him of the chaos brought by the sun.
Shutting the curtains everywhere, he tried to keep the sun from damaging his life, before the end of time. Homer cowered in a corner, ignoring the light filtering in some places and forming rainbows in the floor, where the dust floated in the air, the past coming getting together with the future once more.
“My life started with the sun,” he said.
Homer drew the sun amidst all the other things in the paper, because it had been part of his life forever, bringing together the beginning and the end with a limbo world in the middle. The realms of time balanced forever in something he couldn’t understand as part of his nightmares or inside the symbols written in the papers.
Uncle Hugh had to know something about his future or he wouldn’t have been at the beginning of time because it had become eternal like his life.
“Two and two are seven,” Homer said.
After he had written a few more things in the paper, the writing became more difficult to understand, the meaning of everything else dissolving into nothingness. Homer threw the papers up in the air, when they fluttered about the room and ending on a heap on the floor. The door opened and Uncle Hugh appeared holding his bag.
“I had to leave early,” he said.
That sentence stopped Homer’s daydream, where fiction and reality had mixed together in another place called limbo.
“I’ve seen the tree of life,” Homer said.
Uncle Hugh smiled. “It is in your old home.”
Homer remembered being a lonely child in a city brought back from the chaos of time. He had trusted the world before losing his parents and earning his money in his enterprises, even though the rows of lines and zeros didn’t add much to anything.
“You must know about the end of time,” Homer said.
“We must go now,” his uncle said.
“It happened before you visited us.”
“You must have dreamed it,” Uncle Hugh said.
Homer looked for his bag, before following his uncle into the street where the car waited. The memory of those days bringing tears to his eyes as they drove around the where people rested in the parks as some of them hurried through the streets to their jobs.
“You appeared by my side that day,” he said.
“What day?”
“After the darkness.”
“I don’t understand,” Uncle Hugh said.
“You were father’s special visitor.”
After driving for some time, Uncle Hugh stopped the car outside a shop with glass windows.
“It’s on the second floor,” he said.
“Will you come?” Homer asked.
“Uncle Hugh shook his head. “I have other things to do.”
“You must think in my words.”
“And bring the end of time.”
Homer went up the stairs instead of taking the lift and arrived at a long corridor, flanked by offices, where a fat man sat behind a desk in a place full of pictures of boats.
The man looked at him, after pushing his glasses up his nose.
“You must be Mr. Homer,” he said.
Homer shook his hands, hoping he wouldn’t get any strange illness living in his fingers, his eyes straying amidst the pictures of boats in the walls
“It is in the port,” the man said.
Homer smiled. “That’s fantastic.”
As the man wrote something in his book, he felt the shadows coming alive as if someone had watched his transaction, the sound of the storm interrupting his reality. He had to find out the meaning of his memories as the man gave him a set of keys to open up his dreams.
Memories
On wandering the streets after leaving the shop, Homer reached the cemetery where the graves of his parents lay behind rows of stones. He had amassed his fortune by working hard and exploiting human ingenuity. As he barked, the people in the cemetery turned to look at him. This was a country in conflict, where the rains had spoiled his work and Maria must have married someone else, he thought on remembering his childhood in the backyard, witness to his arrival from beyond reality in that sunny day.
“Hey mister,” a voice said. “Can I have a coin?”
Homer saw a child asking for some money to buy his dinner. Looking in his pocket, he found a few cents to give him amidst bits of rubbish.
“God bless you,” the child said.
The boy ran away amongst the shoppers in the market but then Homer saw the place where his shop used to be, although he had rented it, giving some of the profits to Miguel in order to help with Amelia’s education. The child is obsessed with the army, his employee had said.
The sounds of the world disturbed his concentration, as he saw the tree of life and the sun hid behind the clouds. The porter read a magazine by the door while Homer moved across the room, Maria’s ghost beckoning him from beyond the courtyard.
“You have to leave,” the porter said.
Homer reached the backyard where the tree waited for his dreams at the end of time but the man shook his arm.
“I’ll call the police,” he said.
“This building is mine,” Homer said.
“Prove it.”
Homer looked in his pockets for that contract he had signed long ago.
“You must be Mr. Homer,” the porter said.
“That’s right.”
The sun went behind some clouds, thunder echoing across the sky as Homer touched his tree, defying the Gods of apocalypse for intruding in his life, thick drops falling on his head.
“It’s raining,” the porter said.
Homer expected to see a shadow looming over him from beyond reality while the rain made his clothes wet, the world exploding in a multitude of sounds. Tears went down his cheeks, mixing with the water as he went inside the room where his coca used to wait for his customers every morning, as Maria moved her hips all the time.
“Some of the floors are rented,” the porter said.
Homer nodded. “I know.”
He saw the lift standing aloof amidst the wall, waiting to take him up into the unknown but he had to get back to Uncle Hugh’s home.
“I have to go now,” Homer said.
“It has been a pleasure meeting you,” the porter said.
Homer had a last look at the backyard before making his way to the street where he had to find a taxi to go across the town. A woman appeared by his side. Tall and slim, she smelled of perfume and moved like a tiger.
“Mr. Homer,” she said.