Under the Milky Way

It was about eight p.m. when we finished eating dinner on the farm Taurinos. Today it was Andrés who did the dishes as it was his turn to do so. I had to keep watch over them, or else the big lads would leave everything to its primitive chaos. Andrés invited me for a stroll in the fields near the farm. I gladly agreed to go out with him, because I don't usually go to bed at the same time as the Taurinians.

If there was something in Taurinos really worth to be seen this had to be the night sky. Stars felt like fireflies around your head. The crescent moon moved lazily into becoming full once again in some more days. Andrés was looking for Orion's Belt as usual. Next to Orion, I showed him Eridanus. Andrés asked me what the name meant and I explained it was a river in Ancient Greece. He said he was having a hard time trying to find the lines and the links between the stars to form the river visually, but was silent as though he had finally managed to. I showed him the Southern Cross too. We turned around and there were Sagittarius, Virgo, Ophiuchus, Libra.

"Frigging beautiful!", and Andrés was all admiration before the Milky Way, "and what the heck is an Ophiuchus?", he inquired, wide awake to the constellation's names, "it means the one who holds the serpent; as you can see, the constellation of Serpens is right beside it, a someone was really holding it", I answered.

I commented on how good it was to simply come, watch the night sky, not thinking of anything else. Just letting the night in. Andrés agreed. Said he loved to spend moments like those. I had no doubt about it, since it was one of the only things to take his attention in the early times when we got along so awfully.

I pulled my mp3 from my pocket, put on my headphones and pressed play. The random choice of the mp3 seemed to be no random choice sometimes:

Sometimes when this place gets kind of empty. Sound of their breath fades with the light. I think about the loveless fascination. Under the Milky Way tonight…

Under The Milky Way, written by The Church

We sat down at a clearing nearby. The vision of the night sky was sheer dazzle to my sight. I had the impression I could gather those stars and put them in my pocket if only I had wanted to, so close they seemed to be. After a period of time that felt like an hour or so, Andrés surprised me asking me whether it was good for us to go back home. To think he was the one inviting me to come. I asked him if he was feeling sleepy. He said he was not.

"So why go back right now? Let's stay some more."

"There's someone coming here. Exactly on our way."

"Who can it be?"

"You know well who."

"Renan?"

"The Obscure Police, that's what I mean. Not just Renan. If it were Renan I'd ask him to join us. Just for the hell of it."

And then in a rapture, "what about getting outta here?"

"I think we cannot be hiding in the very town we live", I replied, appearing to be careless.

"You have to be the most insane being I've ever met", he shook his head and shrugged.

Now I was able to hear the sound of the horse approaching. It was coming in full gallop. Seemed to be coming from behind us. Andrés was way more nervous than me. Again, he explained that his image consolidated more and more, more and more sinister and maddening. I told him we were about to test the Obscure Police's fire power. Andrés started praying and I had him shut up.

"Welcome to the town where your prayers can't be heard", I scolded him severely for behaving like an idiot.

The sound of the horse came closer and closer from behind us. There were no more night sounds, the crickets chirping, the frog percussion ensemble, the call of the curiangos in the night, nothing else was heard around us. Dogs howled in the distance, but around us it was dead silence. I could even envision a circle where no sounds could be perceived. That same dead silence I experienced at my porch.

We were still sitting there at the same spot. Andrés shook and trembled like a machine-gun. I was a bit aprehensive (and Andrés' behavior would only make the feeling worse), but kept a calm appearance just the same. The air itself got heavy, too heavy for being breathed in. When the sound reached its maximum intensity, again I heard the horse come to a stop and approach us slowly on our back. Sounds like a thousand voices speaking at incredible speeds surrounding us. Sounds like the grass around us was being slapped by a thousand tiny little hands in a circle that came down on us, closing like it would be able to squeeze us into pure juice. Andrés shut his eyes fast. Now walking very slowly, the torturing sound of the horses hooves coming closer and closer to us.

I was divided between looking behind me or holding myself back to avoid worse troubles for the night. Now we could effortlessly hear the animal breathing from behind. The sounds of slaps we could hear before we could now feel, gently slapping the surface of our bodies. It was appallling to think they could become more than just little slaps or vibrations on the skin. The sounds of voices slowly turned out to be screams, the most threatening and horrific screams I had ever heard, coming from all sides as the circle that isolated us there and which I have already described. I shut my eyes like Andrés, in a brutal paroxysm of horror.

The Agent and his horse were now right behind us. Inches close to me and Andrés. If we just reached out for behind, we'd touch the horse's legs. The sound of the big animal breathing heavily was the only sound around us now.

Slowly I started opening my eyes. When I finally looked again at Andrés, I wished I hadn't done it. There was a huge, heinous pig sitting where Andrés should be. The moonlight only made it more and more heinous as it shone on its figure. The sound of the fatal horse breathing heavily was still the only sound around us. All of a sudden, the horse's breathing changed its rhythm. We started to hear the sound of its hooves slowly marching to be at our side, dangerously approaching our field of vision. I looked at Andrés and he was Andrés once again, in a lapse of time that seemed like it had never happened.

As the horse came marching past our left side, the voices came back as screams out of an forgotten ancient hell. Violent jerks on our clothes seemed to imply the Agent apparently never travelled alone in the still of the night. And he was right in front of us now. I have already described the anguish at seeing him at my porch. But when I raised my head to look up to him, despite Andrés' desperate whispers trying to talk me out of doing it, I saw what was mounting that horse: in all of the grotesque splendour of its monstrousness, there the Agent was.

As Andrés had foreseen, his resolution had attained its most. It was impossible to describe that being in boots welded to a solid body, shining in the moonlight like chrome, black as the night around him, topped by the monstrous head with the beak of a duck. It was also impossible to describe my fascination for the inifinitely ugly Renan himself had mentioned to me. The symbol of the Infinite on his forehead, blinking in amazingly short intervals only to launch an absurd quantity of light into my eyes that blinded me with all of that obnoxious montrousness.

I closed my eyes and that glare remained, strong as daylight, until a slap on the face pulled me violently out of all of that horror. I opened my eyes, stunned, and saw Andrés in front of me, hand raised to hit me once again. I held his arm frightened and only then did I see it was morning again. The glaring blue sky of Taurinos was all over us once again. I felt like Andrés' slap had raised the sun from the horizon for the morning. We were sitting at that clearing, the same spot we were watching the constellations from.

"Your insanity issues are just growing worse and worse", he said angrily before we stood up to leave for home, "I don't want to step out at night with you anymore."

Impact of time | Chrome

Radio Universal: Obscure Police