Sandra did not know Robert had stayed behind and that they were consistently moving farther away from each other. She stepped forward a little more, very slowly, full of fear, in absolute darkness, unable to notice the declivity of the area, connected by a stairway. She lost her balance and fell down the stairs, ending up motionless at the bottom, unconscious, because she hit herself hard on the head forming a red bruise.
Robert wandered the street swerving aimlessly. A sudden, strong explosion nearby startled him and knocked him off his feet. Once on the ground he covered his head and a rain of small metal and plastic scraps fell over him. A few meters away a heap of junk smashed hard into the pavement. After recovering a bit from the scare, Robert got to his feet unharmed, except for his wet pee-stained pants.
Ashamed, he kept to his overwhelmed, uncertain path and approached some voices close by, tripping over a man’s leg. He grabbed to it firmly, it was soft. He noticed the presence of other people and he cried for help over and over, but the man and the others fell to the floor and rolled down the street a little. Robert did not have any other choice than to let go so as to not harm himself even more.
He was a bit tired, so he crawled until he reached a wall on which he sat next to and placed his back on the cold marble. He stayed there a long while, sad and pensive.
A cane unexpectedly hit him in the ankle.
“Ow!” groaned Robert.
“Sorry, are you blind?” asked an unknown voice.
“Yes, I can’t see a thing, please, help me, I can’t find my mommy.”
“Well, kid. Tell me a bit of what happened to you.”
He listened intently to the kid’s short story.
“Well, everything is a mess,” answered the blind man with the cane, “everyone is blind, and your mother must be as well.”
“My mommy is also blind?” he asked incredulous.
“I am blind and everyone in the line behind me is also blind, so we cannot help you find her.”
“What do I do?” asked the helpless child.
“Well, see here, if you want you can come with us. We’re headed to a medical facility to ask for help. Go to the end of the line and hold onto the hand of the person in front and follow what they say.”
Robert got up and slowly passed by the dozen people that formed the line until he reached the last one and he grabbed their hand as if his life depended on it.
“Kid, don’t grab my hand so tightly, chill, you’re going to break it,” said the ill-tempered man.
Robert loosened his hand and did not say a thing. He preferred to keep it shut since he recognized the voice of that individual.
“What’s that smell? Disgusting! Kid, did you piss yourself?”
The line of people moved forward, advancing somewhat slowly.
“Kid, are you mute as well as blind? Answer me…”
“No,” answered Robert tersely.
When the first blind person encountered an edge, an obstacle, or an anomaly, they would tell the one behind them and they would then in turn do the same. It went like that until the message passed through the entire line and reached Robert. The blind man before him only kept on complaining, that he pulled his hand, that he smelled bad. Furthermore, the messages he gave were unclear and most of them at the wrong time. He even had to hold tight onto his hand to avoid falling in many occasions.
“Kid, I’ve already told you not to grab on so tight, and your hand is all sweaty,” he whined.
“It’s just that I almost fell,” he replied.
“That voice! I know you, you’re the chocolate thief.”
“No, no, you’re wrong, I don’t know you,” he said.
“Yes, it is! It is you! You made me look bad this morning, you’re gonna pay…”
Robert got scared, he got very nervous and, fearing storekeeper Miguel’s revenge, he let go of his hand and walked away in another direction.
“Hey, stinky! What are you doing? Come back here! Come back here I said! Come back!” he shouted.
Robert escaped as fast as he could. He tripped several times, though he got up and kept on going. He hit a sign with his shoulder that said “Warning, Construction Site” and he almost lost his balance, but he kept moving forward. He slipped and fell on his backside down an embankment until he made it to the bottom, right next to the vehicle that had destroyed the perimeter fencing of the site. Robert would never notice the presence of a corpse that sat in the driver’s seat.
The half-built construction was a legacy of the famous economic crisis and, ironically, was promoted by his father. The four-story skeleton, out of the six projected stories, rose out of the vacant lot. The terrain was a bit muddy and there were still some remaining puddles from a great storm that had passed some days before in the city.
He was in some pain and had some scrapes; his nerves made him want to defecate. He lowered his pants and squatted. As he did his thing his hand came upon a plastic that was in one of the legs of his pants. He grabbed the damp wrapping, which he felt had something long and soft inside. Robert recognized the famed lost chocolate bar and he heartily devoured it in an instant. The mystery had been resolved. Thanks to a hole in his pants pocket, it had wound its way down to the bottom of his narrow pant leg.
The ingestion of sugar made him thirsty, so he solved it by drinking from one of the dirty puddles of stagnant water. He wandered and stumbled around the new surroundings for hours and the only viable way out was through the dirt ramp that trucks used to get in. The fence door, closed shut with a chain and lock, was intact. The slope from which he had fallen was too steep, impossible for a weak, blind child to climb. He nestled in a corner of the site to sleep. He was very tired, hungry, bruised, and weary. He cried a while as he thought of his mother, until he fell asleep.
A rumble of his stomach woke him up due to how hungry he was, but the cramp continued down to his intestines and, without giving him time to react, a powerful diarrhea invaded his underwear. He felt sick and was forced to stay naked from the waist down, though he could not clean the remainder that was left stuck to his skin and the bad smell stuck to him. The intestinal discomfort continued all day long. Night caught him by surprise again in an awful situation, without food or water, each time weaker, filthier, and more ragged. He got cold and a bit of a fever gave him the shivers.
The rising ambient temperature announced a new day. He could barely move that morning and he slept terribly. He had gotten used to his bad smell, but not to the cloud of flies that always accompanied him and kept sucking on the corner of his lips.
His hunger and dehydration forced him to move to survive. He ate a bit of some plants he found in the brush and he once again drank from the putrid puddle. He sought refuge in the shade again to rest and he slept during the whole day to try to regain his strength.
The warm caresses of the sunbeams of the new day woke him up. The diarrhea came back to him again. His rest area was covered in numerous defecations and the sticky clouds of flies made his life
