The Man With One Leg

“Hey, Wooden-leg, could you tell me the history of how you got injured?” said that frank and freckled boy, staring at me with those begging eyes. If he used this facial expression to earn money, we would have more pennies at the end of the day.

“Ok, ok, grimy boy, you win. Nobody can change your mind, can they? It's getting late and you have to look for shelter”. I gave him a smile in resignation. I cleared my throat, while I was figuring out how to find the right words and give the boy the drama he was waiting for.

“Once upon a time, there was blood for everywhere. A part of me was missing and in a strange way, I couldn't feel pain. I had a persistent buzzing inside my right ear and my eyes kept blinking trying to readapt after the hot flash. Suddenly, I was dragged by my armpits, into the trench, and everything vanished away. When I woke up, several days had passed. The doctors had attached this wooden leg and I had to learn to use crutches too. When I came back, everything was different....I wasn’t the same person who went to that damn war….”

The boy’s face had a wrinkle in the center of his forehead, showing doubt about the history I had told. I pointed my forefinger to his head. “A penny for your thoughts, Freckles”.

“You're the best storyteller I know, Wooden-legs. But I doubt that's true. You must have hurt your leg in some bar fight.” , rubbing his hands oh his arms, trying to warm himself.

“Smarty, tomorrow I'll tell you a story about pirates and bar fights. Good evening. Be safe and warm". At dusk, he went away, without looking back over his shoulders.

I am alone again, accompanied by my phantom pain in the amputated stump. I become invisible again in the crowd. One more night I'm going to sit near the door of the Night Club that I used to attend, where I smoked a good cigar and drank the best scotch in the city. When my worries were about being promoted to the next military rank.

I grasp the medal in my pocket, which I won when I was discharged from the army- when I became useless to society. It does not help to earn a living, but it helps to spend the days, remembering when I was known by my name: Paul.

Comments

The Marble Cube

I never saw a magnificent marble cube before. The gray blending with the white embedded as pieces of a puzzle all over the walls. The concrete floor is a dark shade of gray. I'm sure if I took off my shoes and touched my feet, it would be cold. Like a guard, the wall selects who will pass through. Natural brightness is allowed, but only the strongest bundles can reach the center of the room, exposing small particles of dust dancing in the beam of light. Precise geometry is everywhere. Squares, rectangles, straight lines. Constancy and rhythm. No one single curve to ruin the pattern. Everything inspires seriousness and rigidity. The respectable cold silence echoes in my ears, sometimes broken by a guide. Suddenly my sight reaches the center of the cube, escaping from the gray boredom of edges. I feel my body slightly bow down, in reverence, captivated by the light that comes from this center. Strong and vibrant colors, shades of brown, deep red, some spe...

Sacha

When I was six, the world seen from my garden was really, really amazing. I lived in a small house in the suburb, in a calm place, hidden from the rest of the world. I remember that our house was very simple, like a shoebox, which I could easily reproduce in my drawings. With a little bit of imagination and a large box of colored pencils, I used to change those boring white walls for a much better bright yellow facade and red doors. My garden was narrow, encircling the whole wall that separated our house from the street. In the spring, we had flowers of different colors and sizes. You could see ferns, azaleas, daisies. My favorite was the azaleas. With small flowers, formed by five petals of pink color, I used to play a silly game with them called daisy game while picking off one petal of a flower, and repeating alone to myself “he loves me ... he loves not”. Smart as I was, I knew that if I started with he loves me, I would always win the game, even knowing nothing about ...

The Metal Room

I press my right big toe at the lowest point of the silver metal cabinet, next to the ground and the cool water starts to flow through the faucet, running between my fingers and goes directly to the sink drain. I begin to rub the palms of my hands and my short nails with a brush with very thin plastic bristles. The orange soap has a funny smell and viscous texture that I never got used to, even after using it for years. In a back and forth motion, I invert the brush side and a soft yellow sponge appears with which I begin to slowly rub the spaces between each finger, rising up to my elbows. Time to rinse, the water has to flow from the fingertips to the elbows, not in the sense that it would be logical, to prevent dirt from returning to my hands. I pull on my white lab coat, covering everything but my face, a cap holding my hair and large glasses to protect my eyes. I put on my gloves without touching the outsides; it takes some time for me to do this precise...

The LEGO's Castle Girl

Search This Blog