He stood up with difficulty, supported by the fat arms of two immense men. He had already lost control of his weak and withered body, his sweaty hair clung to the red skull. Even his skin had lost its natural shine and now exuded the smell of sweat and blood. He could not hear or see well, but he knew that his two great companions and himself were not the only ones there, this time they had a very broad audience. He would have liked to be able to open his right eye a little more to know exactly where they were, since the left one was swelled up and completely shut.

When his clothes were taken away to continue the humilliation, the small audience erupted in screams, but he cared no longer. Even the contact of his bare feet with the cold snow made the least impression in him, as if he had grown acclimatised. Maybe he was imagining everything, maybe it was all a hallucination caused by the fever that hunted him every night. The only thing that his pain-numbed body could feel was the lacerating cold of an early and poorly starred night.

After having been used as a training bag for months, his captors thought that he had not understood the message they wanted to convey, they hadn't been able to get a word out of his lips, onlygroans and moans. Maybe they thought he was a very strong man, hard to... persuade.

Until now, anger and outrage were the only things that kept him conscious of what was happening and, although he knew that his pledge to silence would end fatally, he sought to ignite, in some unknown part of his mind, the forces to cook up some escape plan. He remembered then, very vaguely, the reason why he was there, at the mercy of laughter and ridicule, of humiliation and pain, practically knocking at the gates of The Sunless Lands, the glorious realm of death.

It was not a surprise for him to have been betrayed by his comrades. After all, it was an open war, and the struggles for an ideal are usually more individual than general, always driven by any sort of personal interest. When that same ideal turns its gaze and turns blind, it becomes a struggle for the survival of the strongest, a war of all against all where the most powerful must be overthrown. And he had loved power too much. He had been his most fervent lover, until he had unwittingly become a slave and servant of that power he longed to possess.

Blinded by pride, he striked against his own and his golden luck began to lose its luster. Just like a lover discarded without any regard or pity, he was abandoned at the mercy of his adversaries, a few hundre dwith the quality of vassals of authority. And once deserted to his fate, he was held captive for a long time, imprisoned and subjected to public derision and private humiliation at the hands of meager little people who boasted of possessing in their hands that power of which he once enjoyed.

Torture had been the price of treason, and he still had a huge debt to pay... it was not over yet.

The iron piercing his skin was an unexpected impact and yet he was expecting it. He embraced the moment with a resigned submission while his body was shaken again a couple of times in a row, then he fell to the ground, face to face in the snow. The sensation was impressively warm, as if he were reunited with some old memory, as if the contact with the snow confirmed something that his body, rather than his mind, had been waiting for all of his life.

Maybe he was not hallucinating after all. He knew he had already accepted his fate when he noticed a subtle and pleasing difference between this kind of pain and that of the constant torture he had suffered before. Even the blood that ran down his lips and gushed from his mouth had a different taste, maybe less bitter. Death was nothing like he imagined it, conjectures and assumptions did not belong to its kingdom, only the actuality of the moment was true, only death was the real thing.

He stood quietly for a while, listening to the murmurs around him go off, feeling drops of blod roll down his chin, hoping to see that light that many describe as the climax of the process of transition between life and death, or at least proving right that theory of having the most shocking episodes of his life appear in front of him as a sequence of images.

Nothing. Nothing changed; no light appeared, no particular image lurked his mind, no sudden desire to confess his guilt and repent for his faults.

It began to snow, but his body was so bruised and numb that snow and cold were no matching adversaries. Blood had dried around his throat, making the job easier for the bullets, hardening his breathing.

Time seemed to be playing tricks on him, stretching seconds and turning them into minutes, making him believe that he would agonize forever. For a moment his senses sharpened, he could move slightly and his touch could feel the texture of the snow through his naked skin; his taste, the sweetness of the dried blood that he'd shed until then, his eye, the only one that he could open, no longer looked at the void but seemed to be aware of the immensity of the stars. And, as he exhaled his last breath, a raw tear; the one tear he ever spilled, ran it down his cheek, he heard from afar a sweet harmony of voices, the beautiful melody of a Christmas carol.

Also check:

Extract of an essay: Rhizome

My series of bilingual writings: Deliriums

Primer Delirio | First Delirium
Segundo Delirio | Second Delirium
Tercer Delirio | Third Delirium
Cuarto Delirio | Fourth Delirium
Quinto Delirio | Fifth Delirium
Sexto Delirio | Sixth Delirium
Séptimo Delirio | Seventh Delirium
Another bilingual poem: Misery

Mis publicaciones sobre Filosofía | My Philosophy related posts

Filosofando Parte I | Philosophizing Part I
Filosofando Parte II | Philosophizing Part II
Filosofando Parte III | Philosophizing Part III

English posts:

Untold story of an aching soul deserted to the void
Untitled poem
Broadway Enthusiast Catalog: Waitress The Musical

Other:

Poema blackout

Thanks for reading

Alicia xx