Twilight's Flash Fiction / Relatos cortos crepusculares

Masks By day, he served as a torturer for the Inquisition. By night, he became a humble and devout monk. It was a clear night as he returned to the monastery. Suddenly, he realized someone was following him. He quickened his pace. Behind him, he could hear the stranger's laboured breathing. After several yards, with his heart pounding in his chest, he summoned the courage to stop. Silence. He could hear nothing. Yet he dared not look back. He began to walk again, slowly, and once more those footsteps echoed behind him, hammering against his ears. He almost collapsed with terror when he felt a gentle hand resting on his shoulder. He turned. Standing before him was someone who looked remarkably like himself, yet horribly transformed. Greenish skin. Hollow, transparent cheeks. Eyes wide open in death. "I have come to warn you. If you enter the monastery, within a week you will look exactly like me. You will be lying beneath the earth. Someone inside is waiting to ki...

Tales from Hell My life of crime has brought me here. To Earth, I should say. Where I come from, this is the fate reserved for the worst of us. The cruellest punishment imaginable. Yet my crimes were not without reason, even if no one believes that. When I was very young, they locked me inside filthy cubicles. From above, they tried to wound me with long pointed spears. Eventually, they would let me out into what I believed was an open space. I searched desperately for a way out by following the wall, only to end up where I had started. In time, I realised the enclosure was circular. Later, they did it again. Only this time, one of them stood before me, holding something that looked like a cape. I charged at him. Again and again. Until he stopped moving. It happened several more times. And now, after my death, I find myself here. They tell me that even worse experiences await me. Here... they tell me that I am a fighting bull. Cuentos desde el infierno Mi ...

The Crypt As every year, following the Martian calendar, the spaceship landed silently near the cemetery. Silence. A sad silence was made when one by one they entered the crypt to honor their deceased, their famous deceased. Lights of the sunset. No one broke that silence and slowly, the numerous family prepared to return to the spaceship. The slow footsteps of the relatives leaving the cemetery could still be heard weakly, when from inside the superb stone construction, a strange whisper made the youngest of them turn towards the crypt. It was not the time to hear any sound from the crypt. The deceased rested on a huge bed lovingly prepared. Every five years, he woke up and the family came to spend the five hours of his resurrection with him. But that happened during the idus of the ternaries, that is, within three months. The young man ran to the crypt, opened the gate, entered the room and found Edgar sitting on his bed. "Hello Robert. I had to come back to life beca...

The Cathedral As a child, he had visited the cathedral with his parents. He was so impressed by that imposing space, the weak illumination of enormous blue candles and the endless elevation of the immense columns that he was certain that when he was older he would live there. He knew that that imposing black marble building would belong to him. Now, as bishop, he entered that monument with the certainty that he would accompany it for the rest of his life, and that he would be buried there. His father had directed the construction of the cathedral many years before, and knew all the secrets of its structure. When he was little, he fed his imagination by talking to him about the hidden rooms, the endless corridors beneath the floor, and the strange circumstances in which the best stonemason died. Now, all those secrets belonged to him. One night, when the city was sleeping, he climbed into the dome and faced a small door. His father had warned him never to open it. Driven by ove...

Tears He took refuge in his thoughts. Outside, his senses only perceived noise. After a few moments, without knowing how, two twin tears began to slowly furrow his cheeks. Tears full of memories, of future pasts. Virgin tears, so pure that they was concentrating all the feeling of the universe. Tears for human suffering. Tears for having lived. Those tears contained everything. And they detached themselves from the cheeks and reached the ground. And the feeling, that it was themselves, was dispersed in thousands of small tears extending through the soil to reach the other end of the world. And so the feeling took over the Earth. Lágrimas Se refugió en sus pensamientos. Fuera, sus sentidos solo percibían ruido. Después de unos instantes, sin saber cómo, dos lágrimas gemelas empezaron a surcar, lentamente, sus mejillas. Lágrimas llenas de recuerdos, de pasados futuros. Lágrimas vírgenes, tan puras que concentraban todo el sentimiento del universo. Lágrimas por el sufrimien...

The room The dimly lit room had become his entire world. A living space, sometimes sweet, sometimes hostile, but always surprising. There he lived the most unlikely adventures, ever since his brain had refused to obey him. Sometimes, the pale blue of the walls became the sky through which he flew as an aviator in the midst of a spectacular storm. At other times, the room became a battlefield where he confronted the armies of Genghis Khan. And sometimes it was the engine room of a submarine engaged in a fierce battle against the forces of evil. One summer morning, someone opened the window wide, and the penetrating light invited him to freedom. Without a second thought, he launched himself through that long-awaited fissure, toward the future. What was surprising was that the nurses at the psychiatric hospital could see him floating out through the window, defying the laws of gravity and heading toward infinity, beyond the reach of everything and everyone. La estancia La estancia...