Consequences of Magic
“You are Mateo V. You are a 15 years old student, a friendly and a loving boy; you love your family, especially your mother, remember? She is the person you love more than anything else in your life. You have changed. But, despite everything that has happened, that you have done, I still consider you my brother,” said Santiago to me while he hugged me, when I arrived home one day after being absent for more than a week, with my face as white as milk, with my pupils seeming to be a boat shipwrecking in a blood sea, with nothing more than pants on my body, with a question tormenting my head, with thirst of knowing the answer. Who am I?
My brother hugged me, and it looked like he would never let go of me. I felt the humid and cold sensation of water running down my neck, down my chest. I looked at my brother, and saw his eyes flooded in tears. He demanded some answer too, some explanation, to his single question: What happened to you? I moved my hand up to my pocket, and tried to find something that was in there with my fingers. I got hold of that little but mighty something. I let go of my brother and I stretch my arm so that my hand was close to his face. I could see the blue veins and the red arteries pumping out of my fist, my knuckles getting red, and my hand moving up and down unceasingly as I moved it close to my brother. Finally, I opened my hand, and my brother’s eyebrows went up immediately, his eyes were wide open, as well as his mouth, and he did not close them for about a minute. In my hand there was a hollowed, circular object. It was shining as bright as the sun at its zenith, projecting light and luminous rays. But these rays became less visible and more audible. It shined no more, and it buzz out loud. Our ears heard thousand buzzes at the same time, as if million bees were flying close to us. And our minds were capable of deciphering words from the buzzes. The object was talking to us and it told us to put it on our fingers. My brother raised his arm slowly, he stretched his fingers, and tried to grab the ring I had in my hand. I moved my other hand rapidly and firmly, and with an “auch!” my brother stopped the movement of his hand. I pointed at the ring and told my brother, “This happened to me.”
“All happened one day that I escaped from school,” I told my brother once I bath, I put some clothes on, and we sat at the table to eat. “I was walking down the mall’s hallways and I suddenly heard million buzzes—Santiago, I am telling you my story. Shut up!—. I turned my head away from the noise, but it was present all around me. I moved, I ran. My hands tried to move the bees away from me, but my hands felt no bees, nor any other animal surrounding me. There was nothing more than air by my side. The buzz continued, and the lights began to buzz too, the people in the mall buzzed also, and every other object buzzed as well. I kneed on the floor, put both my hands in my ears, and closed my eyes as hard as I could. In the moment I opened my eyes, I saw a reflection, but it was not me in there. The figure I saw was not defined, it moved as waves do in the ocean, and it transformed every very often. It began being my mom. Then an enormous wave swept the image away, and I could see my dad. After that, a luminous spark from the light above me made the image change and there you appeared. I said hello with my hands, I smiled, I showed my teeth, I showed my tongue, and the image of you imitated me as a mirror would do. As the buzzing surrounding me increased, the shape I saw was more and more disfigured; first I was enormous, brown, I had four legs and I was galloping, then the tide in the image increased and I was very small, I had yellow and black stripes, and I had wings and I flew. A final wave took place in the ocean image and I was an inanimate object, a round, shining object. I was a ring. This ring widened and closed as a mouth does while talking, and understandable sound waves came out from that reflection. The ring was saying, ‘Do you want to be powerful? Do you want to be capable of overcoming every problem—Hey brother, do not interrupt me!—you face? My answers, of course, were all positive. The ring commanded me to find it. As I walked, my right leg went to the front of my left leg, and my left leg did the same but in an opposite direction. My legs crumbled, and I fall to the ground. All I saw was moving, all I saw had tides moving in it, all I saw changed shape. I finally got to what I thought was a trashcan, and locating the ring was easy. Its voice and its rays were as a magnet, the ring was the negative pole, I was the positive pole, and we were attracted so easily. Days later, I will find out that we had too became inseparable. I was so naïve; I grab it, and finally I put it on–Stop! I am talking! – I put it on my finger.
“In the moment I put the ring on, I felt the power and the complete domination over my body the ring talked about. I felt as if my muscles had gone through years and years of tough exercise, as if my body had gain an extra force, as if I had a Spartan body. I felt secure of –Can you please shut up?!– I felt secure of myself. My mouth opened, showing all my teeth, and I jumped in joy. I remember I thought I loved the ring, and that it was the best thing that had ever happened to me.
“I went to the bathroom to see if my feelings agreed with my appearance, and I was surprised with what I saw. In my eyes I had round and grey glasses. I had a beard, which covered the sides of my face, my jaw, the bottom of my mouth, and the upper part of it. I had few hair in my head, and the hair I had was mainly grey hair. I had considerably shortened and I got fat. I was wearing a formal pink shirt and a V-sweater over it. I smelled as if I had smoke hundreds of cigarettes in the last ten minutes, as if I had drunk thousands of coffees while I was in the mall. Just smelling myself got me nauseated. I had become one of my teachers. I was the teacher I hated the most. And I talked like him, I moved like him, I thought like him.
“I remembered that I had been thinking of him the moment before my encounter with the ring. I had rejoice myself thinking that I was having a great time while my schoolmates were suffering in the class of this—Please, stop talking now!— of this teacher.
“Only hours later I understood why I had transformed into that teacher. I understood that in the moment I put the ring on, I will immediately change to be the person I was thinking of before putting the shining object on my finger.
“I put the ring out of my finger right away, and when I looked up at the mirror once again, the image was of a 15 year old—I am tired of you. Please shut up!—boy. My eyes closed immediately and opening them was painful. Both my hands went directly to both by temples, trying to alleviate the pain. I felt as if my head was going to explode. Finally, the pain eased and I opened my eyes. But I felt a sudden emptiness in my chest, I lacked air, and my heart pumped faster than ever. I did not remember what I was doing in there, why I was there, and where I was supposed to be.
“But my sudden loss of memory did not worried me. I was so excited for the new power I possessed that I did not think I will end up losing millions of memories and that I would end up being—Hey! Why can’t you be quiet for just a minute?!— being an NN.
“Days later, I transformed into my mom when I had school meetings. I turned into some of my friends and talked about me with other people, getting to know what everybody thought of me. I was able to make some school decisions when I had the appearance of my school director. I enjoyed those times. The ring became an obsession, it was the vodka drink for the alcoholic I had become, and the cigarette for the smoker I was.
“But every time I used the ring and I turned to be me again, I saw I was deteriorating. I saw a 15 years old boy with grey hair, with lines and wrinkles all over my face, with yellow, decayed teeth, and with some of them missing. I appeared to be 90 years old when I had only 15 and a full life ahead of me. But that was not all. As days went on, I forgot my home address, the school I went to, all the things I had learned in the school year, my mom’s name, my father’s name, your name, my name. There was a time when I was not even able to add, subtract, divide, multiply, or even count numbers. I did not know in which country I lived, or in which city, in which street, in which building, in which floor I lived.
“I was not able to use the ring anymore. Not because I did not want to, but because I did not have any memory, any idea, of a person I used to know. The memory I had of any person was faint, was distorted, was useless. I was not able to think of a person, and therefore I could not transform in anyone.
“I was homeless. I lived in the water tunnel next to this house. I ate bread full of mold and drank water from the tunnel. It tasted so awfully I knew my tongue would commit suicide if it could.
“Every day, I saw you walking to the school bus. You were a stranger to me. Until you walked close to me, and gave me some money. There was something so familiar with you, something that truly opened my eyes. So I followed you one day—that day is today—that you were coming back from school, I entered asking who am I, and you received me with a hug and an answer. You had recognized me, and you wanted to help me. Thank you.”
I was looking down to the floor while I told my story. Tears had fallen down to the ground, and a lake of tears had formed on it. I look up and faced my brother. I wanted to know what he thought. But he was not there. I was in front of me. That 15 years old, friendly, and loving student was facing me. I look at the hands of my replicate, then at his fingers, and there it laid the shining, hollowed, circular object I had brought home. And then I understood that my brother was not the one that had been interrupting me.