Twilight's Flash Fiction / Relatos cortos crepusculares

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...

Awakening As on every other night, we went to bed early and, as always, held hands until we awoke. That morning, as dawn was breaking, I felt a strange coldness between my fingers. I tried to pull my hand away from whatever I was holding. Then I realized I was caressing the skeleton of her hand. Despertar Como cada noche, nos fuimos a dormir temprano y, como siempre, permanecimos cogidos de la mano hasta despertar. Aquella mañana, mientras despuntaba el alba, sentí una extraña frialdad entre los dedos. Intenté apartar la mano de aquello que estaba sujetando. Entonces comprendí que estaba acariciando el esqueleto de su mano. Ξύπνημα Όπως κάθε βράδυ, πήγαμε νωρίς για ύπνο και, όπως πάντα, κρατιόμασταν από το χέρι μέχρι να ξυπνήσουμε. Εκείνη την ημέρα, στο ξημέρωμα, ένιωσα μια παράξενη ψυχρότητα ανάμεσα στα δάχτυλά μου. Προσπάθησα να απομακρύνω το χέρι μου από ό,τι κρατούσα και τότε συνειδητοποίησα ότι χάιδευα το σκελετό του χεριού της.

The Door From above, I watch them wheel into the crematorium the coffin in which my body lies. Then twenty tongues of flame begin to caress it. My cells scream, begging for it all to stop. They do not know what is about to happen to them. Within seconds, the temperature rises above a thousand degrees. Outside, I see my loved ones: some are crying, others whispering, and one of them stares into space, trying to guess where I am. Then something extraordinary happens. From each of my cells, another identical cell detaches itself. One by one, they slowly become transparent until they vanish from mortal sight. Yet I can still see that they are alive. They move toward me and take their places until they form my new body. A body of light, free of every burden. When everything is over, someone places the ashes in an urn and hands it to my relatives. Wailing and emptiness. A door appears, and beyond it I see a brilliant light. I do not know what to do. I feel myself drawn toward it, and at the ...

Those Who Receive Me and Those Who See Me Off We are wave-beings, concentrations of waves moving through space. When we interact, it is our waves that interact. Over time, those waves change their characteristics, and perhaps that is what we call aging. There are unwritten laws that never fail. The wave-beings who received me when my collection of waves first became visible are the same wave-beings who will see me off when my waves oscillate at a frequency at which they can no longer be seen. Although the appearance of their waves may suggest otherwise, they are still the same wave-beings. Quienes me reciben y quienes me despiden Somos seres-onda, concentraciones de ondas que se mueven a través del espacio. Cuando interactuamos, son nuestras ondas las que interactúan. Con el paso del tiempo, esas ondas cambian sus características, y quizá a eso lo llamamos envejecimiento. Hay leyes no escritas que nunca fallan. Los seres-onda que me recibieron cuando mi conjunto de ondas se hizo visibl...

Walking Through Hell Hell is an infinite space and, in its endless hunger, it devours feelings and reduces the soul to nothing. Peace, always a blessing, hides behind the dense fog cast by hell’s shadow, until it disappears without a trace. Nothing escapes its gaze, cold as steel, nor its relentless designs. Like a black hole, it swallows everything around it and reduces it to memory. As one moves deeper into hell, the path thickens, the trails of the mind grow darker, understanding fades, and the only place left to us is solitude. Such is dementia. And the only space, also infinite, that can devour it is love. Transitar por el infierno El infierno es un espacio infinito y, en su infinita ansia, devora los sentimientos y reduce el alma a la nada. La paz, siempre una bendición, se esconde tras la densa niebla que proyecta la sombra del infierno, hasta desaparecer sin dejar rastro. Nada escapa a su mirada, fría como el acero, ni a sus implacables designios. Como un agujero negro, engul...

Fate How sad is the fate of human beings! To exist, as in a dream, only to cease to exist in an instant. To be part of the dreams of eternity and, in an endless cycle, to cease to be part of everything. To stop loving. To stop suffering. To search for the meaning of life without ever finding an answer in this relentless dream of loss and abandonment.  Destino ¡Qué triste es el destino del ser humano! Existir, como en un sueño, para dejar de existir en un instante. Formar parte de los sueños de la eternidad para, en un ciclo interminable, dejar de formar parte de todo. Dejar de amar. Dejar de sufrir. Buscar el sentido de la vida sin encontrar jamás una respuesta en este sueño implacable de pérdida y abandono.

  Intermediary and Original There are intermediary words. They do not name the essence of a thing directly. Instead, they help us move, through reasoning, from one truth to another. They are useful constructions, but constructions nonetheless. And sometimes they can obscure the truth so completely that, instead of helping us understand a thing, they prevent us from seeing it clearly. How can we recognize an intermediary word? Consider two of the oldest words we use to name our perceptions: space time We might call them original words. But do they really correspond to direct perceptions? Space is determined by light. Time is determined by memory. Without light, there is no space. Without memory, there is no time. So perhaps space and time are not the original words after all. Perhaps the original words are: light and memory . Intermediarias y originales Hay palabras intermediarias. No nombran directamente la esencia de una cosa. Nos ayudan, mediante el razonamiento, a pasar de ...

The Edge Now my life is almost full and my death almost empty. That was what I thought after leaving the operating room. Although I confess that, at times, death came to have a sweet, almost ambrosial taste, I was grateful that it had passed briefly through my life, on tiptoe. Even so, death had time to gather all my memories of those I had loved, and they came to comfort me in what seemed like a gentle welcome into their world. But unexpectedly, a brilliant light intervened and led me back through the places of my childhood, until, finally, I was dazzled by the lights of the operating room. El filo Ahora mi vida está casi llena y mi muerte casi vacía. Eso fue lo que pensé después de salir del quirófano. Aunque confieso que, en algunos momentos, la muerte llegó a tener un sabor dulce, casi ambrosíaco, agradecí que hubiera pasado brevemente por mi vida, de puntillas. Aun así, a la muerte le dio tiempo a reunir todos mis recuerdos de aquellos a quienes había amado, y ellos vinieron a rec...

The Postman When he was a child, he always looked forward to the arrival of the postman. Once a week, someone sent him a drawing with an affectionate dedication. Years passed, and the drawings gradually became true works of art, while the dedications turned into poems filled with feeling. Letters carry feelings. Perhaps that was why he became a postman. He devoted his life to bringing hope to every home. One day, he knocked on a door to deliver a letter, and a little girl opened it. She greeted him with a broad smile. “Do you know who I am?” Surprised, the postman shook his head. “I am the person who sends you a drawing and a dedication every week.” “But you are only a little girl, and I have been receiving those letters for more than thirty years.” The girl smiled. “I am feeling itself, and your eyes see me through the gaze of innocence. You see me as I was when I first began sending you those letters. For feeling and innocence, time does not exist.” El cartero Tu españ...

VER   The Crimson Place In my dreams, I discovered a crimson place. At first, when it chose me, its image filled me with unease, yet I could not deny that I felt drawn to it. Slowly, I made my way toward it. The trees formed a dense canopy of green and blue and folded behind my steps, sealing off my return. As I moved toward the center, time flowed backward faster and faster. By the time I reached it, I had become a helpless little boy. Then I saw him.  And I knew he was me. The crimson grass grew and swayed beneath a gentle orange wind, while thoughts, transformed into great multicolored birds, soared above the transparent pearls that fell from the trees. Then, borne by those radiant birds, the pearls ascended toward infinity. READ · WATCH · REFLECT READ — Read The Crimson Place in English, Spanish and Japanese. WATCH — Watch The Crimson Place on YouTube in English and Spanish. REFLECT — Discover more stories, images and reflections.   El lugar carmesí En...

Customs At customs, they found in his suitcase the loves he had lost in his youth. A security officer confiscated them. Now he can no longer find the memories that once led him back to the happiness he had once known. He is hollow. Aduana En la aduana, encontraron en su maleta los amores que había perdido en su juventud. Un agente de seguridad se los confiscó. Ahora ya no puede encontrar los recuerdos que lo devolvían a la felicidad que una vez conoció. Está vacío.

The Well Someone brought seawater and poured it into an ancient well. Since then, on full-moon nights, in the silence of the night, waves can be heard breaking softly against the walls of the well. The well is now their home. Yet they never stop longing for the sea breeze. So, whenever they can, some of them escape to spend a while at sea. But they love the well so deeply... that they always return. El pozo Alguien llevó agua del mar y la vertió en un pozo milenario. Desde entonces, en las noches de luna llena, en el silencio de la noche, se oyen las olas romper suavemente contra las paredes del pozo. El pozo es ahora su hogar. Pero nunca dejan de añorar la brisa del mar. Por eso, cuando pueden, algunas escapan para pasar un tiempo en el mar. Pero aman tanto el pozo... que siempre regresan.

The Room The dimly lit room had become his entire world. A living space, sometimes gentle, sometimes hostile, but always surprising. There he lived the most unlikely adventures, ever since his mind had stopped obeying 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 opening, toward the future. The nurses at the psychiatric hospital saw him float out through the window, defying the laws of gravity and heading toward infinity, beyond the reach of everything and everyone. La estancia La estancia, poco iluminada, se había converti...

Nothing To see the sea, to float upon its crackling waves, to taste the salt breathed by marine creatures, to return to the origins. To return to the experiences of the mother’s womb and begin a million times. To become aware of the thoughts of the starfish when they tell you that you are not alone in the universe, and to grow like them, without taking up any space. To befriend the sun’s rays in order to understand the language of the sun, and to fill your hands with photons to offer them to the moon, so that she will not feel alone. To begin and end in nothingness. Nada Ver el mar, flotar sobre sus crepitantes olas, saborear la sal que respiran las criaturas marinas, volver a los orígenes. Retornar a las experiencias del vientre materno y empezar un millón de veces. Ser consciente de los pensamientos de las estrellas de mar cuando te dicen que no estás solo en el universo, y crecer como ellas, sin ocupar espacio alguno. Hacerse amigo de los rayos solares para enten...

The Visit of Infinity I woke up early, as I did every morning, ready to go to work. When I tried to sit up, I realized I couldn't move. For a moment, I thought I was still dreaming. Wake up, I told myself. I looked up at the ceiling. Then my eyes wandered across the pictures on the walls and toward the window. Wait a moment. There should have been a wardrobe beside it. There was nothing. Everything beyond the window was black. Half the room had become a black space, and the door had disappeared into it. Even if I managed to stand up, I thought, there would be no way out. Then, unexpectedly, I succeeded. At the same time, I watched the black space continue advancing until the entire room had been reduced to a single point of light. A strange point that never ceased to shine. Amid the deepest darkness, the point of light drifted toward me. Then I heard it laugh. It seemed amused by my bewilderment. It came closer... and closer... until it swallowed me. Inside t...