Friday, May 6, 2011

The Dreams Collector

The Closet

The apartment was empty. Empty and dirty, as if nobody had been there for decades. Faded curtains made of thick fabric, pierced by moths and rodents that roamed on their own through the whole house, let dim rays of light filter into the desert room laying before them.

Despite all the chaos and disorder, the old owner of the building could have sworn with a hand on the Bible that for years, every week without fail, the rent of the 8 º F appeared timely on his doorstep, on Sundays mornings.
Always.

From the room full of dirt that at some point had been the kitchen, a tall, slim shadow covered by a very long, black cloak with wide hood, came out slowly, supporting his weight on a gnarled wooden cane.
He walked slowly, his face covered up to the nose, his straight, white hair cascading to his shoulders.

Without paying attention to the almost solid darkness that reigned on the floor, or the spiderwebs that had invaded all the white plaster walls, the mysterious figure crossed the desert room, raising huge clouds of dust everywhere under his feet.

With ease and quietness, the old man stood upright in a corner, setting aside with unprecedented sensitivity a little spider hanging from the ceiling, just in front of him. With trouble, he bent down to put it on the ground, watching it run away as far and as fast as its tiny legs allowed it before getting up again and face the wall.

Practically nil, completely covered with dust and dirt, a small metal cabinet remained half hidden in that area of ​​the department. That was the only furniture in the flat.

The hooded man pulled out a tiny silver key from the folds of his robe, put it in the lock and turned gently until he heard the gears flick. The doors opened by themselves.
The insides were divided in two parts, right down the middle. On the left, a hanger that barely reached his chest, displaying several racks of cloaks and robes identical to those he was wearing. On the right, just two shelves with some photographs and a pair of drawers plated in aluminum.

The old man's bony hand caressed one of the pictures frame and pushed it gently toward the depths of the closet. In the empty room echoed the sound of the pulleys starting to wheel.
Beyond the clothes in hangers, a thick metal wall began to rise in a clumsy, struggling against the rusted guides and ripping squeaks from the sides, until leaving on the sight a little entrance to a dark, narrow passage. Impossibly tilted stairs disappeared into the blackness of the passage, down as far as the eye could reach.

Not far from the hidden door, a transparent glass torch hung from the wall. The aged man clutched it in his fist, and a faint glow lit up the hallway in front of him.
Closing the closet behind him, the hooded elder started down the stairs step by step, floor after floor, until reaching a depth nearly equivalent to the basement of the building.

The room then extended before the old man was full of shelves, each packed with hundreds of glass beads, the size of a child's fist.
He placed the glass torch in one of the supports of the wall, and the magical glow it emitted instantly deployed to the half dozen identical devices occupying lecterns along the wide room.

Under the supernatural light of the crystals, in the spheres lined by thousands on different shelves, a heavy fog began to emerge from their very heart until they were entirely full of it. In some, the smoke was white as snow, in other gray, and in less, black as coal.

So were dreams, and nightmares, of a lifetime as a wanderer.
Dreams of children, youngs and adults, of elders. Illusions, breathtaking nightmares which could choke anybody in fear just with only approaching to look their essence.
All sorts of fantasies and dreams locked for all eternity in the secret room.

The old man slowly wen over to one of the shelves further away from the door, and carefully placed two new orbs in separate engraved silver bases. And once again, the mysterious hooded man turned around to slowly climb the stairs that would lead him to his next discovery.

1 comment:

  1. This story will be published in a small tale book of several authors, in my native lenguage.

    So there it is, hope u enjoy reading it as much as i did writing it.

    ReplyDelete