Our Share of Night

by Mariana Enriquez

He saw a blond, naked girl walking under a starless sky. Lost, but not scared. He saw her dancing on a red dirt path, strands of yarn hanging from her arm and her legs, unfettered, frenzied. He saw a black planet above the river. He saw his grandmother without lips or nose. He saw candles in the forest and a young woman on all fours crawling over bones. He saw men and women running, all of them mutilated, some without legs, who dragged themselves or spun in circles. He saw a starving white dog, its spine like metal balls encrusted into its back. He saw a girl in a red dress sitting beside the swamp; something that came from the water was eating her legs, but she didn’t protest. He saw a pale torso in a field of yellow flowers.

Nor did he hear Adela’s voice, though he didn’t remember it. When someone is gone, their voice is the first thing you forget.

And he left the door, the hallway, the guesthouse. He ignored the phone that rang every day. It was Vicky or it was Pablo. He still hadn’t disconnected it. He wanted to see how quickly they gave up. He expected the calls would grow more sporadic, no longer sirens in the jungle, and then fade away. If it was raining, he didn’t cross the park at a run. He liked the short, violent rains of Misiones, the rivers of red earth, the prelude to the hot, black night with its stars throbbing in the sky. A flash, silence, another flash, like an exhausted heart.