The Dangers of Smoking in Bed

by Mariana Enríquez

One of the boys stank; he stank because his one and only set of clothes was also his mattress. That kid wanders around the city, he fills it with his stench so no one ever forgets him. They say the social workers couldn’t get the clothes off him because they were stuck to his body with dirt. They say he had lice, but also white worms in his scalp, and sores under his arms, from the dirt; no one had ever bathed him. He was a little animal, he shat himself from fear and didn’t clean it off. That’s the kid most people see, the most popular ghost, the one who touches you with his black hands, the one who brushes against the jacket slung over your chair and leaves it stinking of dead meat. But there are also kids who fell off balconies after their junkie mothers left them there. Kids who had keys hung around their necks at three, four years old. Kids who murdered taxi drivers and died of overdoses, whored themselves out, went looking for crack.