Waiting for The Big One

I had Andrés sitting at the porch looking at absolutely nothing in the morning. He saw me coming out to the porch and regarded me with reproachful eyes. As though I had committed a crime.

"Three bulls… And the healthiest… I'll never forget it", he shot me darts with the eyes.

"Is it my fault?"

"I hate it when I'm called a liar", he intentionally missed the point, irritated.

"In addition to not calling you a liar, which I never did, you haven't answered my question yet. I asked you if it is my fault that you killed those bulls."

He sneaker-gazed for some time.

"Is it my fault? Was it my decision to kill those poor things?"

"No", he kept sneaker-gazing.

"So stop pushing your responsabilities and the outcome of your decisions on me. You've done, it's done and it's over. You won't bring them back by doing it, in a million years."

Like himself, I am still in the shock of the whole I experienced yesterday. The history of the town, the bizarre event of the bulls dying God knows what from at the back of the truck. Dead on arrival. But my shock at the situation is different: finding out a power that is immanent to this town. This gave no grounds for any doubt. I had seen it happen. Saw Andrés pick the bulls, there was no possibility of him injecting any drug in them so they could die. Even if there was such a substance, how could he inject it so quickly, calculate the time for the substance's onset to happen exactly after the city limits? This would require a knowledge base from him on pharmacodynamics he simply didn't have. I'm getting more and more confused.

"I believe in you."

"Now you do, don't you? You had to see them suffer like hell to believe me."

"I believe you make it real."

"I knew you would call me a friggin' liar again." He started stomping, livid again.

"Cut that crap, young man. This is just not about truths or lies."

"What is it all about them???"

"Many times my clients arrived from psychiatrists in very bad conditions, because the traditional treatment includes heavy drugs as haloperidol, that controls most of the symptoms but leaves the patient as if he were a zombie…"

"So you think my case is for a psychiatrist, that's what you mean?"

"Shut your mouth and listen to me. I have never sent anyone to a psychiatrist. And this happens for a simples reason: I have always seen the world these people have created. This is not a fantasy world, it's real, because these people make it real. And so it is as real as any other reality you can experience. I even say that each person is a universe and what the person sees as real is really real within this universe. There's no such thing as madness per se. What there really is is a parallel universe. As many as there are people in the world."

"Still you mean that is all my creation. It's still something I invented, isn't it?" He was still paranoid I was calling him a liar.

"No. Yesterday you showed me there is something physical in it all. If it's you who is creating this physical something, I don't want to investigate you inside any further."

Andrés seemed calmer when he heard this. He told me I should have seen something in the city. That I might not want to share this with him, but that I probably saw or felt something. That we both communicated without any spoken word as on last Wednesday, what most humans say is impossible. I had to agree with him about this point.

"So this being true, isn't it possible for you that the story of the city is as true as we communicating with our thoughts?" he insisted.

I said so. Also said that regardless of it I believed him. Yes, there is something about this town that really has no explanation. Now if bulls really founded the city like humans would, it's something totally different. It was just that I needed to start from his point of view, regardless of me believing him or not. My belief (if there was one) was the least important thing in it all.

"How do you control the population of these animals in Taurinos, if they are never sold and never leave the town?"

"We slaughter them."

"And you consume the meat right here."

"Yup."

He was staring at nothing at all again in an apparently never ending pause. I thought about what to say next. However much I tried, couldn't find a sequence for that conversation anywhere, even with so much to ask about. As a miracle, he resumed the story.

"We are waiting for The Big One." He said, all of a sudden.

"As the Californians?"

"Pardon???" and he frowned at me.

I laughed and said the Californians were too waiting for The Big One. In their case an earthquake that would shake California apart from the rest of the United States.

"This power that killed the bulls yesterday. That made them found the city. That kills all those bulls that leave the town. That brings them back to that feral state. This is The Big One."

He explained me that The Big One would come alive on one of the town's farms. He, Andrés, would have to go farm to farm and see which calf it was.

"A bit complicated for you, no? Why does it have to be you? "

"Because they know I can see things they can't. As you can see, just like me."

"And if you see The Big One, you'll sure know it is what you're looking for."

"Yep. In fact, I can feel it coming. It's a matter of time right now."

"How do you know?"

"The air in town gets different. Beats me, we feel it in our guts. I, for one, do feel it. And other friends in town too. Only not with the same intensity and all of the details I see. I feel every change, long before it comes. This is why Diogo came to talk to me. He has several new calves being born right after Carnival and wants me to see them as soon as they are born."

"To make sure none of them is The Big One", I cut short.

"Right, if it's The Big One, only I will be able to find it."

"What are you going to do when you find him?"

He grinned at me.

"We'll destroy the seed. It is just there, somewhere inside it, waiting to be destroyed."

"What will you do to destroy it?"

He once again grinned at me.

"You don't want to know."

City limits | Obscurity

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