The Present

Olaya López Muñoz

Winter’s frozen wind came early that year: it wasn´t November yet and windows were already covered with ice. Days soon became shorter and nights terribly long. I still remember the snowflakes falling on my lightly blushed cheeks, melting with the little heat I had left inside my skin. Although both mum and dad had died a couple of years before, visiting my hometown felt as if it were one of those first old photographs in which you had to stay still for a ridiculous amount of time so that the result was decent. It was also a loss of time considering the mountains of papers I had on my desk, but since I was the only child in the family and grandma needed some cares, I didn´t have much of a choice. Therefore, one Friday a month I would get in my car and drive for two hours (luckily) to the village I was raised in and spend the weekend flattering the food and behaving as a psychologist for almost everyone in the house. Few things annoyed me about urban life, but jams were one of them. You had the afternoon perfectly scheduled until the very last second, and suddenly you found yourself stuck on the road in the middle of traffic tapping random percussion patterns on the steering wheel, craning your neck as if you were drowning and you desperately need some oxygen, as if knowing what had happened further up the road would make any difference. Or any faster. To calm your crispy nerves, you start thinking about all the accumulated work you have planned for today and how it will stack for tomorrow. Oh yes, one of those days.

The clock stroked 5pm when I finally started the car after almost twelve hours of hard work, and an hour later I hadn´t passed Oxford level yet. I only wanted to lay down in bed for the eternity and I felt that even that wouldn´t be enough. I had a pretty busy and repetitive routine, every day on my way to the office I stopped by the coffee shop just the right amount of time to grab a take-away coffee and I checked my e-mail while queuing. As soon as I restarted the march I began making the first calls of the day: to the director, to my connections on the competition, to clients… At 9am I arrived at the office. Moving goods and services from concept to the customer and then you still had to convince all the potential customers that the investment was worth it: like an illusionist, I diverted the customers’ attention from the weaknesses of the product and I empowered their strengths, even when they didn´t exist. The klaxon of the white vehicle next to mine got me back from my thoughts. It had been his nose on my lane so I honked back. We advanced another couple of meters and then we stopped. Again. It was pouring with rain, I couldn´t see further than my own car and my patience seemed to be missing that day. I managed to wriggle out of congestion and take the national highway. It took me almost three hours to get there but at least both my car and my mind advanced non-stop.

I left the car perfectly placed in the same spot I had always parked in and I headed to the main door. The sunlight had already hidden behind the horizon and the sky was cloudy: it was going to be a starless night. The wooden stairs creaked one by one while I stepped on them, and they seemed to talk for the entire house. Knocked once. Knocked twice. Did she fall asleep? Knocked for the third time. I moved back to get a general sight of the façade. All the windows were closed, so I decided to go to her neighbor´s and ask for the emergency key. Grandma´s neighbor was an old woman that lived with her cats and never had visits. They used to go for a walk or knit together on the porch when the weather allowed them. The moment she opened the door, her facial expression darkened. “Oh, hello dear, I didn´t expect you today”, she said. “Good evening, I apologize for the inconvenience but my grandmother is not answering the door so I thought I could borrow your emergency key.” “Honey, I´m so sorry… but Horatia passed away a couple of weeks ago.” Those words hit my head like a hammer and I did not know why. I felt something moving inside my chest and a black circle appeared around my vision. “I had no idea”, I answered. “Yes, well, we tried to call you and your uncle, but neither of you would answer the phone. A girl said that the number didn´t exist.” She made a great pause while I attempted to put all the pieces together. “Do you want to come in, sweetheart?”, she asked. “No, no thank you. But I still want the key, if it is possible.”

It took me ten turns to open the door, and when I did, the interior of the house was completely strange to me. It was empty. The wooden shelves from the kitchen had no trace of the hustle and bustle that was usual when she prepared Christmas feast; the teapot was gone, so were the whispers of the rumors during tea time; and a deafening silence awaited. There was just one thing on the table. It looked familiar to me: a beautiful snow globe I had made for her when I was a child. The clear glass dome protected what was meant to be a miniature of a green Christmas present. When you shook it, tiny white particles seemed to froze the image, but when it had been still for quite a long time, light bathed it. I went over the whole place, accompanied by the snow globe, as one who wonders but doesn´t know what to ask. At some point, I stopped in front of one of the bare windows. Now, the marks of my different heights through my childhood years were visible on the frame. I looked outside. What time was it? I realized the sky had already darkened completely so it was impossible to tell for sure, but over the small hours, I would have said. I lied down on the mattress, covered myself with my coat and slowly fell asleep with the snow globe still in my arms.

And I dreamt.

When I was a child my room was painted yellow, the walls decorated with a frieze of bears that worn bow ties. Sunlight invaded all the space, from dawn to dusk, with an orange-colored tone that warmed up even the north’s frozen atmosphere. And it was full of laugh, and love. There were books, hundreds of books; and toys, a lot of them, too. Nevertheless, when night arrived and a little me got into bed, everything changed: the bears became beasts, there wasn´t any light at all and the toys would star in terror movies inside my head. I was in that room. I was closing my eyes with force and pulling up the blanket to my ears. Even then, when I listened carefully, a metallic, distant and regular sound wouldn´t let me get to sleep:

Tic Tac, Tic Tac…

Every night, the sound became a different shape in the interior screen of my eyelids: someone climbing the infinite stairs until finding me; the long and messy nails of a witch tapping on my wardrobe, watching me; or something that chase me, slowly but surely. One night, during a moment of bravery and being very tired I decided to investigate and go through the long corridor in search of the source of the sound. I arrived at the kitchen, where I could feel the heat of the oven and the smell of coffee. I looked at the wall clock: 6 pm. I guided myself towards the entrance, but when I crossed the door I entered the kitchen again. Disoriented, I realized there was no smell of coffee anymore, but the clock still showed 6 pm. I tried to get out of the house, but once more the door led me to the room I was before. Wall clock: 6 pm. I ran towards the exit, pushed the door with all my strength and landed noisily on the same floor tiles. 6 pm. Every time I crossed the door the place was darker and colder. I ran and pushed until my feet stumbled and I began to fall endlessly. And with it, I woke up suddenly with breathing difficulties and a cold sweat.

On my way back, I stopped to have breakfast at some cafeteria I found along the road. I chose the table by the window and ordered an orange juice and a coffee with bacon and eggs. I couldn´t remember when was the last time I had had a breakfast like that, but it seemed too long ago. I took a book from the shelves and began to read it while I ate the first bite. I must have realized that they were playing my favorite song on the radio, because by the last bite I was also humming its melody. I resumed the trip tapping to the rhythm, and with the sun dancing to the music inside my car while I took the curves and bumps, and even while I changed direction.

I soon arrived in the outskirts of the city. Surprisingly, the streets were completely unknown for me. They felt as an old memory, though I couldn’t quite tell when from exactly. I kept on advancing through the pavement, as if I were isolated inside my car and nobody could see me. But I observed. I tried so hard to make sense of everything that surrounded me. Was this the present? Was it a reminiscence of the past? I could only perceive uncomfortable silences filled with small chats and empty hearts full of great expectations, regret and fear. I arrived home and looked at the snow globe: the present inside had little of the bright green left. Everything started to collapse around me and light filtered through the fissures. Wall clock: 6 pm. I held the snow globe with such strength against my chest that the crystal dome broke in a thousand pieces at the same time that my legs decided not to bear me anymore, leaving shards all over my knees. Blood painted the fake snow red and its warmth dissolved it into a liquid that ran inevitably in between my fingers.

And I stood right there, still on the floor, losing track of the time.

December 2017