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 where Andrew's remains rested at the summit. 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 attract 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 an...

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...

Posthumous Kisses At midnight. Hidden by the shadows. Tasting of eternity. Black kisses. Kisses in mourning for the death of your love. Icy onyx stones embedded in my lips. Bitter kisses, but kisses nonetheless. Besos póstumos A medianoche. Ocultos por las sombras. Con sabor a eternidad. Besos negros. Besos de luto por la muerte de tu amor. Gélidos ónices incrustado en mis labios. Besos a margos, pero besos al fin.

  The Empty Table Every morning, as he had done for so many years, he rose with the quiet joy of knowing he would have breakfast with her. She always waited for him in a small, secluded café in the city centre, not far from his home. He stepped inside wearing the smile of someone about to meet the person he loved. The empty table tightened around his heart. Someone had to tell him, as they had every morning for the past year, that she would not be coming back. Then, for a fleeting moment, he remembered that she was dead. Slowly, almost unable to walk, he made his way home to wait for the next morning. La mesa vacía Cada mañana, como desde hacía tantos años, se levantaba con la ilusión de desayunar con ella. Ella siempre le esperaba en una recoleta cafetería del centro, cerca de su casa. Entró con la sonrisa de quien va a reunirse con su amor. La mesa vacía le encogió el corazón. Alguien tuvo que decirle, como cada mañana desde hacía un año, que ella no volvería. Entonces recordó, s...

Someone Someone proposed a fabulous deal to him. A million euros later, he found despair waiting for him, sitting in front of his door, and without asking for permission, it settled in his wallet, never to leave again. Alguien Alguien le propuso un negocio fabuloso. Un millón de euros después, encontró a la desesperación esperándole sentada frente a su puerta, y sin pedirle permiso, se instaló para siempre en su cartera.

Descartes and the Whole I had always admired Descartes’ legacy: the idea of dividing a problem into parts in order to understand it better. However, I had to live through an extraordinary experience to discover that this principle is not universally applicable. The whole can be more than the sum of its parts. The hybrid cyborg industry began to develop in 2030, following the revelation of the existence of alien beings and the subsequent coexistence and collaboration with them. It was they who introduced the first hybridization techniques. Thirty years have passed since then. The evolution of these systems, together with their growing ability to undertake increasingly complex projects, led to an exponential growth in their production and deployment across countless environments and activities on Mars. But that is not what matters. My brother and I founded the company in 2030. Six months ago, he died from a strange virus. Among his final wishes, he stated that he wanted his organs to rem...

Where the Waves Disappear Life is sometimes a solid rock, sometimes water. As we move toward twilight, it becomes more like water: elusive, fluid, touched by the gentle movement of the waves. And within that movement, old longings begin to reveal themselves, but now in peace, as though they had become part of the landscape, as though they no longer belonged to us. And when, at last, the waves disappear into a small, secluded cove, movement ceases, and stillness softly calls us to rest. It is then that infinity comes to visit, and the gentle face of life’s meaning allows itself to be seen. READ · WATCH · REFLECT READ — Read Where the Waves Disappear in English and Spanish. WATCH — Explore the visual interpretation of the story. REFLECT — Discover more stories, images and reflections. Donde las olas se pierden La vida es a veces una sólida roca, a veces agua. A medida que se avanza hacia el crepúsculo, se vuelve más agua: inasibilidad, movimiento acariciador de las olas. Y ...

The Thing And God said to the Human Being: —Consciousness receives the thing. Then thought arrives and covers it with everything memory holds. It compares it. It judges it. It interprets it. It translates it. And with every word, every memory, every judgment, it moves a little farther away from it. Until the thing is no longer the thing. And it becomes what you desire from it, what you fear from it, or what you believe you can do with it. God fell silent for a moment. —And remember one more thing: the moment I called it “the thing,” I too moved away from it. La cosa Y Dios le dijo al Ser Humano: —La conciencia recibe la cosa. Después llega el pensamiento y la cubre con todo lo que guarda la memoria. La compara. La juzga. La interpreta. La traduce. Y con cada palabra, con cada recuerdo, con cada juicio, se aleja un poco más de ella. Hasta que la cosa deja de ser la cosa. Y se convierte en lo que deseas de ella, lo que temes de ella o lo que crees que puedes hacer con ella. Dios gu...

Reflections While a slice of watermelon was being devoured by an eager diner, it said to another slice that was about to suffer the same fate in the jaws of another diner, a friend of the first: —They don’t know we can talk. —But what kind of perverse being would create a world in which some creatures have to kill and eat others in order to survive? —Perhaps it is all of us, and there is no single being responsible for anything. —Do you mean that, in reality, that being would be us? —I mean that, because it is so horrible to accept that reality, we invent an answer that allows us to feel absolved. Reflexiones Mientras una rodaja de sandía era devorada por un ávido comensal, le dijo a otra que estaba a punto de correr la misma suerte en las fauces de un amigo del primero: —Ellos no saben que dialogamos. —Pero ¿qué perverso personaje sería capaz de crear un mundo en el que unos seres tienen que asesinar y comerse a otros para sobrevivir? —Puede que seamos todos nosotros y que no exi...

We We are not ourselves. We imagine that we are. Nosotros No somos nosotros. Imaginamos que lo somos.

Unrepentant Letters Four fifty p.m., June 15, 2030. Zarzuela Palace. The Prince’s Pavilion. A mounted emissary approaches the main entrance and requests an audience with His Majesty King Felipe VI. Clad in metal armour, the stranger identifies himself to the Royal Guard as Don Íñigo de la Cruz y Manrique. His mission is to inform the King of a plan to bring fifteen Walloon regiments back from Flanders following the Battle of Ramillies in May 1706. The regiments are to reinforce the Bourbon forces in the War of the Spanish Succession. Five p.m., June 15, 2030. An enormous craft hangs motionless in the blue sky above the Prince’s Pavilion. A faint beam of light descends upon the building, passes through the roof and reaches the King’s private offices, where Felipe VI is accompanied by Don Íñigo, who has just presented his credentials. Within the beam, two humanoid figures materialise. They identify themselves as Seth and Ra and claim to exist in the year 4024 of the terrestrial calendar....

A Christmas Tale For Childs These were the last days of 1899. A girl was leaning against the wall, tired. The snow was covering his scarce clothes, and his little trembling hand stretched asking for an alms. A horse carriage stopped in front of her. The coachman hurried to open the door, and an old man, with some difficulty, descended from the carriage.   “Hello little girl.” “Sir...” “I am coming to get you.” “Why?” “It's Christmas Eve and I want you to come to dinner with my family.” A smile was drawn on the girl's face. The old man took her by the hand and helped her into the carriage. When they reached the palace, a maiden escorted her to a large room. After bathing her in hot water, she helped her put on a beautiful pink dress that was on a large bed. That Christmas Eve was very special. The next day, the girl told the old man: “I must go. Thank you very much for your kindness. You are a wonderful family.” And the old man answered her: “I have a sur...

Home Sweet Home As usual, I came home late, and the little ones were already asleep. I can only enjoy being with them on weekends. Their mother takes care of feeding and raising them the rest of the time. Today has been a terrifying day. Shortly after I arrived, a huge and strange earthquake began. The vibrations repeated every five seconds or so, shaking the very foundations of our home. Frightened, I looked out the window and discovered what was happening. Someone, armed with a huge axe, was cutting down the gigantic tree we have lived in for years. Ignoring my desperate cries for help, he kept striking the base of the trunk again and again. During our neighborhood meetings, we often comment that this part of the forest has become a dangerous place. We are a peaceful community of parrots, parakeets, and canaries. But lately, these restless humans have been making our lives impossible. Hogar, dulce hogar Como siempre, he vuelto tarde a casa y las crías ya están durmiendo. Solo puedo d...

  Diálogos con ChatGPT. Lo que creemos ver (vídeo) Ilustración generada con IA mediante Stable Diffusion XL (SDXL).  Hacer clic sobre la imagen para ver el vídeo en YouTube.

 Después de hablar sobre la velocidad de la luz, surgió una pregunta inesperada. ¿Vemos realmente la realidad? O, dicho de otro modo, ¿hasta qué punto observamos el mundo y hasta qué punto observamos nuestras propias interpretaciones? En este segundo episodio de Diálogos con ChatGPT , la conversación nos lleva desde la luz hasta una cuestión más profunda: qué significa realmente observar. Porque quizá el verdadero misterio no sea la luz. Quizá el misterio sea nuestra forma de mirar. 👇 Artículo completo en Medium: Stats for Diálogos con ChatGPT(II): Lo que creemos ver. #DialogosConChatGPT #Filosofia #Ciencia #Fisica #DobleRendija #Reflexion #InteligenciaArtificial

  The Crimson Place - El lugar carmesí  Ilustración generada con IA mediante Stable Diffusion XL (SDXL) Click on the image to watch the video on YouTube. Hacer clic en la imagen para ver el video en YouTube.

  The Song of Resting - La melodía del reposo   Ilustración generada con IA mediante Stable Diffusion XL (SDXL) Click on the image to watch the video on YouTube. Hacer clic en la imagen para ver el video en YouTube.