Twilight's Flash Fiction / Relatos cortos crepusculares

  Being You know only what it is to be. You imagine nothingness, not being. To be is to perceive. You cannot perceive nothingness. From within being, which is your entire world, you project the ungraspable. A mistake. Being needs continuity. It seeks, invents, imagines. All to ensure continuity. The continuity of perception. And all that exists is now. Estar Solo conoces el estar. Imaginas la nada, el no estar. Estar es percibir. No puedes percibir la nada. Desde el estar, que es todo tu mundo, proyectas lo inasible. Error. El estar necesita continuidad. Busca, inventa, imagina. Todo para asegurar continuidad. La continuidad del percibir. Y lo único que existe es el ahora.

  Andrew Shadows were beginning to creep across the slope of the promontory at whose summit Andrew's remains rested. At the witching hour, every day except Saturdays, Andrew would emerge from his mausoleum and wander around the grounds, hoping to find someone to talk to. Mission impossible. Yet that evening, the faint light of dusk revealed a rather strange silhouette slowly crossing the path towards the mausoleum, then moving away, following the last traces of the sun. Andrew hurried to catch its attention. He shouted, but suddenly remembered that he no longer needed to breathe and that, without air, he could not shout either. He quickened his pace to approach the visitor. Then he remembered that he could move instantaneously. And the moment he thought of it, he appeared right in front of the strange silhouette. His astonishment was immense: the features he could make out in that shadowy figure were his own. But the silhouette was even more startled. It gave a sudden jump and clun...

Candor A young boy ran naked down a deserted street. Tears blurred his vision, and he failed to notice that he was drawing dangerously close to his executioner. When he stood before him, he stopped and pleaded between sobs: “Please, bring my parents back to life. I want everything to be the way it was before.” “My mission is not to restore life, but to take it away,” the executioner replied. “And now I shall take yours as well.” The boy stopped crying. His eyes lit up with hope. “Does that mean I'll be reunited with them?” “Yes,” the executioner replied. “You are very fortunate. I am condemned to take lives, and I never even knew my parents.” The boy looked at him in surprise. Then, with a smile, he held out his hand. “Then come with me. You'll be part of our family, and you'll have parents too.” Unable to hold back his tears, the executioner took the boy's life. Then he cast off his garments, and together, naked, they walked away in search of another dawn. Candor Un ni...

The Scimitar Hidden at the bottom of an old trunk, it waited patiently to be discovered by its owner. It is the summer of 2193. A teenager, aware of the destiny he has awaited for a thousand years, frantically searches the trunk for the scimitar that someone had hidden in the attic long ago. Despite all the precautions taken by his family over the centuries, the prophecy is about to be fulfilled. Maulana Arshad al-Din, the Sufi mystic, predicted in 1360 that Saladin would return a thousand years after his death to resume the expansion of Islam until Allah became the only God worshipped on the face of the Earth. The prophecy, recorded in one of his hidden manuscripts, also foretold the death of Richard the Lionheart at Saladin's hands. A prophecy that tore through the veil of time: Saladin had died before Richard. Believing that Richard must be in Hell, the young man searched for him in vain. He scoured the places where they had fought: Acre, Arsuf, Jaffa... Finally, he found him in...

  Something It is still beyond naming. Yet Everything is there. Past, present, and future. Sins and miracles coexist in peace. The souls of travelers know this. They cross the threshold that leads them from Nothingness to Everything. All moments coexist as one, and every moment is an act of creation. And each of them is already there before arriving. Everything is yet to be fulfilled, and everything has already been fulfilled. Without Something, there is only Nothingness, and nothing takes place without It. Souls communicate through It, and justice and injustice embrace within Its being, beyond good and evil. Algo Todavía es innombrable. Pero allí está Todo. Pasado, presente y futuro. Pecados y milagros conviven en paz. Las almas de los viajeros lo saben. Cruzan el umbral que las lleva de la nada al Todo. Todos los instantes conviven en uno, y cada instante es un acto de creación. Y cada uno de ellos ya está allí antes de llegar. Todo está por cumplirse y todo ya se ha cumplido. Si...

  The Ghost at the Café Where visual storytelling meets artificial intelligence. A mysterious figure appears in a café. A solitary customer sits at a table. Is this a memory, a dream, or an encounter between two worlds? Every image can be the beginning of a story. The Ghost at the Café is my first digital product created around a reusable ComfyUI workflow using Stable Diffusion XL (SDXL). The downloadable package includes: A reusable ComfyUI workflow (JSON). A bilingual PDF guide (English and Spanish). Three example images (PNG). A README file with instructions. Designed for digital artists, writers, and anyone interested in exploring the relationship between artificial intelligence and visual storytelling. Available on Gumroad for €5: https://7paco7.gumroad.com/l/ghost-at-the-cafe-comfyui ComfyUI and the compatible SDXL Base 1.0 model are required and are not included in the download. El fantasma de la cafetería Cuando la narración visual se encuentra con la inteligencia artifici...

Writing He began to write, and became so lost, so very lost, that no one has been able to find him since. Escribir Empezó a escribir, y se perdió tanto, tanto, que ya no lo han podido encontrar.

When a Man Loves a Woman The Evolution of Love When a man loves a woman, there is no path to follow. Time ceases to exist. There are no arguments, no others. The lover is no longer aware of himself. There is only a sublime peace surrounding the lovers. But then, once you have settled into heaven, your mind begins to think. Thinking is the enemy of feeling, because thinking means measuring. To think and to measure are, in a sense, the same act. When thought invades that space, there is no room left for love. Finally, war breaks out between the soul and the mind. And heaven disappears. © 2016 Francisco Martínez Carreño Cuando un hombre ama a una mujer La evolución del amor Cuando un hombre ama a una mujer, no hay camino que seguir. El tiempo deja de existir. No hay discusiones, no existen los demás. El enamorado pierde incluso la conciencia de sí mismo. Solo queda una paz sublime que envuelve a los amantes. Pero entonces, una vez instalado en el cielo, la mente comienza a pensar. Pensar ...

  The Dream of Time / El sueño del tiempo is now a book. What began years ago as a collection of short bilingual stories published on Twilight’s Flash Fiction — Relatos cortos crepusculares has now taken a new form. Thirty stories have been brought together in a single volume, combining fiction, visual interpretation and reflection. Time. Memory. Identity. Consciousness. Loss. Transcendence. The perception of reality. These themes appear again and again throughout the book, approached from different perspectives and through very different stories. The structure follows the idea that has gradually become part of this project: READ · WATCH · REFLECT Read the story. Contemplate the image. Pause to reflect. The Dream of Time / El sueño del tiempo is available in both Kindle and paperback editions. Kindle — Amazon.com Paperback — Amazon.com Thank you to everyone who has visited, read or followed this blog over the years. In many ways, this book wa...