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I open my eyes. The midday sun, bathing me through the branches and leaves, bleaches my vision, rendering the jagged branches like pencil sketches.

The wave of emotion has knotted my throat and weighs upon my chest, as if every tree, every blade of grass, were fighting to tell me what ails it. I clutch the folder beneath my left arm, then undo the pin holding the fold of my right sleeve and roll it up until, a few inches below the elbow, the stump of my arm emerges like a blind, white mole. The blur of scar tissue makes me shudder with the pain of having had to hide it. A pain that intensifies with every person who discovered the stump, who strained to meet my gaze while hiding their revulsion, as I fought to focus on their words and ignore their pity.

At my feet, the grass traces the scabrous blight burned into the earth by the black vomit. On the trunks of both beech trees, thick welts—where the bark shrank and withered—mark the touch of that mass of muscle and sinew.

The brook murmurs. A breeze stirs. I imagine unseen eyes watching me, but even the birds chirping from the canopy ignore me.

I open my mouth, clear my throat. How will my voice sound after such a long silence?

“I wanted to stay away. I’ve put this off for too many years. You shouldn’t have existed in this world, so I must have invented you. I wanted to forget those memories of someone impossible. If I clung to them, I’d slide down the slope toward believing in a reality different from this ugly, somber world. I tried to convince myself I’d had an accident, that doctors amputated my arm.” When I steal a glance at the stump, the tangle of scars chills me. “But you existed. It happened just as I remember, and I remember every detail.”

The sickening tide that threatens daily to submerge me washes over me. Though I blink to keep tears from surfacing, they gather behind my eyes like water against a dam.

“You warned me, and I ignored you. Most times I need to use the hand that’s missing, I become enraged, but I dodge my own blame. I tried to convince you that you were wrong, even though I knew nothing. Many nights, before falling asleep, I wonder where you are. We came to this forest, to this world, by chance. In these past decades, I’ve lived the best I could, but even the worst moments surpass how I lived before I met you.”

A cavernous echo frays. When I rise onto my tiptoes and strain my ears, the echo fades away. My legs tingle as, for a few seconds, I cling to that illusion. Will I glimpse his silhouette from the corner of my eye? Will the pins and needles prickle?

“Wherever you are, I hope you can forgive me. I convinced you to trust me, and I remember you drawing away before you vanished, knowing that what had happened would be repeated with everyone who persuaded you to escape.”

I look around. Behind me, the grassy slope climbs beneath vines that strangle some branches of the interwoven canopy. At my feet, chunks of bark, sticks, and leaves partially conceal the splatter of muck.

“Your very substance, wherever you might have come from, now flows within me. Your world doesn’t accept returns. I know what you had to endure, why you needed others to keep their distance.”

I modulate my voice to keep it from breaking. The corners of my eyes burn, and between blinks, my vision glazes over.

“Once it touches you, it contaminates you. I stopped it from killing me, but it flows through my veins, soaks my brain, stains everything I see. It supports me as much as my own skeleton.”

When I close my mouth, I wish I had just parted my lips for the last time. I relax my shoulders, but my left arm tugs my torso towards its side. I loosen that armpit until the folder slides into my hand. I crouch, open the folder, take out the drawing, and set it upon the splatter of muck, fitting it into the clearing amid the grass. I stand up and take two steps back.

In the center of the charcoal-shaded sheet, eraser strokes reveal a greasy heap of muscles and tendons hanging in strips, its surface bulging with buboes. From the heap’s left side, a fibrous, dripping appendage extends, reaching out towards me.

THE END

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Author’s note: I wrote this novella in Spanish about ten years ago. It’s contained in the collection titled Los dominios del emperador búho.

Today’s song is “Velouria” by Pixies.

Four of Elena’s novellas translated. Only the stories of Siobhan and Kirochka are left.