Violet Shadows - Experimental Story

Greetings readcashers.

For those who do not know me, I am a fully-fledged blogger and content curator, but in addition to that my main passion is writing micro-stories and occasionally short stories.

It is a story created using experimental writing techniques, combined with other tools.

On this occasion, I bring you a story that I made 3 years ago, and it was previously published here in its original version which is in Spanish, I have translated it into English to share it with you here at read.cash.

https://steemit.com/cervantes/@reinaldoverdu/sombras-violetas-relato-experimental

I hope you enjoy it:

Without a doubt, so as not to forget our endless talks, whenever you gave me the urge to leave we would call each other and send each other e-mails.

Little is needed to feel close. The pages were never enough for us to express our feelings, to you in the city where you were going and to me at the shitty job doing the daily publication. No matter how careful we were, time was insufficient.

Yes, I remember the past. I love doing it, perhaps because I relive moments that are dear to me. I remember that the preparations for your departure were curiously brief. However, deciding how to contact each day took us hours, although more to review the papers that you planned to reread during the trip. I did not have time to go to Roberto's stationary, so I am using the notebook that your friend José sent us, which by the way I have not known anything for a long time. Perhaps as a curiosity, it occurred to you that we would take notes every day of what happened to us whether they were important things or trifles. That record has always made me imagine that we are not far away, that is why I think that these diaries will one day be as important to us to understand our life as our own life. I don't want to think about you because it hurts me. Better wait for you to come back. And now I have to write to you, but where do I start.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow to go buy a new notebook and then several more, because who knows when you will return. Even if it comes out of hand, you make an effort and write your notes, but not in individual emails, without dating, that later I have to imagine myself what you want and what you do not want to tell me, worse still, why you are so brief.

I remember what we went through this morning. Because we had one last coffee, we were late to arrive on time. Although it was Sunday we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a crowd that came to the game. The thing that annoys you the most almost doesn't happen to us - having to run suitcase in hand in the last few minutes. If it wasn't enough, the highway was half blocked. We didn't get to see anything but there was probably an accident later on.

In view of the situation, we thought it best for you to go and get out of the vehicle to verify that it was leaving on time while I was going round and round until a white Renault coming out gave me a free spot. It took me a long time to get it done. It was then that I realized that your cane was there. I took it and hurried as much as possible.

Some got upset with me because, while I was running, I pushed the one who got in front of me. I wanted to reach you but it was impossible. I tried to convince a cold and bored cop who was unfazed by any explanation you gave him to let me run to you to hand over your baton. He said no. I reasoned with him and even told him about us (what to do in front of the guards), explaining that you were leaving without me being able to fire you because of the traffic jams. He did not listen to my reasons or my pleas. He turned to other passengers and just ignored me.

It was a miracle because he told me that he would let me pass for a second, that it was very annoying. I got to where the crowd was at the exact moment when you were going to climb with your hands on the railing and your eyes fixed on the steps. I can assure you that he saw me, I thought I saw that you were moving your lips, that you were seeing me, that you were saying something to me but I was still too far away. I imagine you wanted to say one last goodbye to me. I did not understand those last words of yours but I would have given everything you could have said in my ear. I know it's not right, and I'm ashamed to confess it but I hated that guy who stood between us. I tried to get him to let me pass, but he remained undaunted. I resigned myself to giving up our farewell and that moment so complicit that occurs between us at farewells. I needed to see that you weren't gloomy. That you try to return as soon as possible.

Above all, that you return safe and sound. How hard it is to say goodbye, right. I felt sadness, the anguish that something might not go well, but I could only turn around and go back. I imagined you placing in your seat bag the newspaper, the notepad, the letters from your nephew Mateo that you wanted to reread, and especially the pen that you only use when you want to write properly and carefully.

You liked it since that afternoon you saw it in the window of 'The Man Who Wanted to Write', that stationary near the port. I bought it secretly, and I didn't want to gift-wrap it. That would be a bigger surprise. You hugged me You kissed me. You thanked me. For giving you that gift that had cost me little, I got another in return: your little face of illusion and happiness. Better not remember. I return to your departure. Many minutes passed before I realized that you were no longer in my vision and, after looking a little longer, I walked towards the exit.

It's impossible, but I felt the contact of your skin when it went in the opposite direction from yours, something as paradoxical as it was impossible. The house, now, would be lonely and empty, the corridor without the echo of the conversations, the windows tightly closed, and I thought that the house might feel that it was sad, as sad as us, or who knows, just like me.

Despite this, I parked and went for a while to the San Juan Avenue bookstore, the one that you don't like but that I love. I went through all the aisles, looked at each shelf, stopped in front of the poetry section, and almost took out all the volumes on display.

My wandering caught the attention of the clerks and a security employee who had not been taught how to dress by anyone: eyes outlined in purple, hair dyed green, and a tattoo of an archangel on her hand. I imagined her hesitancy to dare to have that look and the magazines she would have had to look at to achieve that strange combination. I took a moment to observe her, but she did not take for granted, attentive to each aisle of the bookstore. That time was funny and tense at the same time, and it could have been less awkward if I had told the security guard that if I did not stop pacing it was because I was looking for a voluminous book, one that makes me forget your trip, that accompanies me during the long days when you will not be. I was looking for a long time until, finally, I decided on some books that explained quantum gravitation for neophytes. Something that I will never understand but that I don't care. Its three volumes occupy three thousand pages with a letter that looks more like an insurance contract than something printed to be seen by the human eye. Knowing that work will occupy a good part of my hours, surely it will take many weeks to read everything, but perhaps less than the duration of your trip. If you were here I would sit next to you and ask you to give me your opinion on these books, and you would say to me: Do you know what you do? And I would let you know that it is to chase away time, to scare away the emptiness that you leave. But I cannot teach you anything because you are not there, you will be in a hotel that I do not know, in a room where I am not.

You're going to laugh but when I got home I greeted you loudly, with the usual phrase, you already know which ones. I went up to the room as if you had not left in the morning. Of course, everything was empty, but there was a jacket of yours on the chair, the novel you were reading open to page forty-two, and a glass of sherry somewhat vinegary according to your own words. Later I did what I usually do after lunch: I went downstairs to have a glass of Bailey's. It may seem silly, but it is difficult and hard to prepare a single serving of anything if you are not there. I took a sip, looked at the flowers in the pots that were shining with color, and went to the patio and simply remained, without moving so that the air that was already refreshing would alleviate your absence.

A few days have passed, and I have almost filled a notebook. How many notebooks do you think I will fill?, I thought it would be beautiful to write the diary but, in reality, I don't like it since it is hard to write precisely because you have left, otherwise I would not do it. Nostalgia is a bad advisor in absences. Or maybe it's good. What do I know?

Now I have eyes to see other things than you. To observe the birds, the clouds, the moon at night, the shop windows. Knowing that you far away make me doubt everything. Or perhaps affirm everything, allowing us to better value what we have in common.

This reminds me that I have to do something before you return: call the telephone company so that, upon your return, the contract is ready.

Sparrows have perched on the window and always come to get their breadcrumbs.

If they have already returned, it is impossible for you not to.

I wait for you, my accomplice.

This story was made in a stage of my life in which I was exploring writing techniques, and I felt very depressed because things were not going very well, fortunately, today things have improved a lot and I face another scenario with different challenges at the level as a writer and at the level of my life as well.

I hope you have enjoyed it, leave me your comments and your appreciation, for me, it is very important.