The Twilight Zone

by Nona Fernández

I looked at the photographs they were carrying and I said to myself: they don’t realize that I know where that person is, I know what happened to him.

The government was resorting to the only unbeatable weapon it had left: the suspension of civil rights.

This door we unlock with the key of the imagination. Behind it we find another dimension. Ladies and gentlemen, you’re about to enter a secret world of dreams and ideas. You’re about to enter the twilight zone.

Time isn’t straightforward, it mixes everything up, shuffles the dead, merges them, separates them out again, advances backward, retreats in reverse, spins like a merry-go-round, like a tiny wheel in a laboratory cage, and traps us in funerals and marches and detentions, leaving us with no assurance of continuity or escape.