At a certain point, I stopped having vivid dreams.
Back when Juanito's father was still alive, I would have them regularly.
You know the kind.
Dreams where you can smell things and touch things--dreams where you are really there in a certain place.
I would wake up from those dreams completely disoriented, wondering where everyone had gone to. Lying in the darkness with the residue of scents in the air and sounds in my ears, the earth would shift, Juanito's father would make a sound and I would be back, grounded in the present and familiar darkness of our bedroom.
After Juanito's father died, I waited for him to come to me in a dream.
Isn't it so that all the dead come to visit those who are alive? In dreams, they come either to comfort us or to accuse us. I've heard the stories and so I waited for Perez to come to me too.
Perez with his crooked smile and his bright eyes glinting with amusement. Juanito had his stocky build, the broad curve of his shoulders, the same tilt to his lips.
Goddammit, but Perez never visited me and if I dreamed anything at all, I had no recollection of them. And so, after more than a year of living as if I were dead, I decided to take my four year old son and go home.
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Light filters through my bedroom window and I'm up.
I can hear the duende banging about on the other side of the wall.
I don't know what they're doing, but just like that I feel really really annoyed.
It annoys me even more when they start singing.
I check the time on my phone and wonder that the neighbours aren't banging on our door asking us to cease the ruckus.
I roll my eyes at the ceiling and get out of bed.
Will you be quiet, I shout.
There's a click and the duende is standing in the doorway to my bedroom.
Finally awake, the duende says.
If anything, they look even more wrinkled and caustic today.
Good morning to you too, I say. And thank you for respecting my privacy.
Hah, the duende says. What happened to good manners and right conduct? Respect your elders, young woman.
Good manners be damned, I answer back. You don't seem to have any, so why should I?
I push past them on my way to the bathroom.
In case you're wondering, the duende says. I've made breakfast.
You can eat it by yourself, I mutter. I'll make my own.
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