Are the doors unlocked?

[Part 10] 10/22/1990: Final day

It's been a long night, but here I am, writing the final day. This day marked practically the rest of my adolescence, if I had one, and a big part of my adulthood. Every day, without exception, I dream of the image I saw through my window at 2:26 am. This last night, of October 22nd, defined my past, present and future, but not only mine, also my sister's.

After watching the fire plague our yard, and disappear before our eyes, as the gas automatically repaired itself, as if no trace of gas had spread into our house, my sister and I proceeded to sit on top of my bed, trying to get through the night. We couldn't sleep, we had to stay awake all night, those things could appear at any moment.

2:26 am. We were telling some stories about a brotherhood that used to be fine, but now it wasn't. We were having a good time, and repeatedly looking through the window, in search of any signal.

We were alone; no one was at home, yet. Our parents didn't come back from the place they went, so my sister and I had time for ourselves. It was a special connection, like a spark that ignited as our words were exchanged, and the heat that flushed our faces made us wonder why we wanted friends, if we had each other.

Obviously, the night was not going to pass without seeing or hearing something strange that was already known. We began to hear, as when we were children, the orchestral singing of our relatives, which seemed to penetrate the walls of my room. It wasn't as loud as they used to sing, like if they wanted us to hear something apart from that.

I started to hear some kind of laughter outside, it was a lot of laughter mixed together. I started to panic, I knew what that meant. ''Army'', I thought to myself. That's when it hit me. Today would be the final day.

I looked through the window, while my sister was trying to cover her ears. The sky was turning orange with reddish tones. It was almost like a sunset, those where it is worth a good walk to enjoy the breezes that introduce the night, but in this case, it was quite the opposite.

As I looked out the window, I saw something I will never forget. Never, I will forget those images. Neither when I leave this hellhole, nor when I find myself on my deathbed. It will always be disturbing every second of what is left of my being.

Outside, in the garden, was a horde of deceased relatives, those who had disappeared en masse from the cemetery. There were not 5, nor 10, nor the 25 I had seen in the hospital the day of my accident. There were about 75 relatives. Some of them were the ones I recognized from the hospital, who were in the front rows. But many of them were relatives that even my parents had no record of meeting, as they had never mentioned them.

All of them had flowers in their hands; the same flowers that years ago were placed on their graves, or those that remained with them inside their coffins for several decades. They all had the same clothes, but in a state of decomposition. All of them were looking down, while the singing was still going on in my room. I saw how the trees around my house and in the neighborhood started to catch fire, like in the dream I had 48 hours before. They all were watching at the grass, burned by the fire of a few hours ago, all contemplating the word ''Tomorrow'', which was becoming a reality.

The only two creatures that kept their eyes pointed directly at mine, I mean, at our sight, because my sister, only being able to visualize this man, was looking through the window holding my hand, were my uncle Gary and my aunt Sylvia. Both in their wedding dresses, which I remember they wore on the happiest day of their lives.

That day my father had gone into an alcoholic coma, while my mother had followed him to the hospital. That night we were left alone with our aunt and uncle, at their house, while they enjoyed their first night as married couples.

Honestly, I don't know how we survived that night. The thick atmosphere inside that house was unbearable. My sister and I slept in the same room that night, while I could see through a gap in the door how our uncles were looking at us, standing slightly together, with a look on their faces that seemed to want to eat us alive at that moment. Luckily none of that happened.

Their wedding dresses were no longer the albino white of the dress or the charcoal black of the suit, that on numerous occasions I have seen through pictures. They were dyed a mossy green, as if they had been through the grass and turned until the original color of their garments were no longer recognizable.

The sky would begin to flood more and more of that orange that at first sight alerted us that something was happening. The fire was spreading more and more, practically all over the city; it was total chaos. Fire engines began to make themselves heard as they rapidly approached a few meters from my house. Their mission was clear, put out the fire and retire to go to sleep, but this did not seem to be a normal fire, it seemed to be a fire that would never go out. Alarms as if it were a nuclear bomb, began to sound with great force, which seemed to perforate our ears.

As we saw the creatures slowly advancing to get into the house, my sister and I started to run downstairs. This was going to be our end, and we were prepared for that.

When we were in the living room, we tried to look through the window next to the main door, to see if the firemen were really there, since I could not hear any desperate screams or anything like that. At that moment, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The firefighter's trucks were empty, as well as the block. No one was there. No one was there to put out the flames that were absorbing the entire neighborhood.

Suddenly, the whole house began to move, as if it were an earthquake. Everything we had been seeing and hearing for the last week, became present at that moment. On the record player, the lullaby began to play, in a saturated way, from the high volume it had.

The television came on, on the most important news channel in town, and it was showing images of what was happening in our neighborhood; it was like a movie. The curious thing is that you could see a great mass of people crowded on the asphalt, and the firemen risking their lives to extinguish such colossal flames, which spread through all the nooks and crannies of my beloved neighborhood. But, through the window, my sister and I could see no one. No one was there as it was shown in the TV.

I remember going into the kitchen, while the horde was about to enter our house one by one, to enjoy the massacre, with a smile in their faces, looking forward to playing with us in a macabre way. In the kitchen, I tried to find a knife. I knew that a simple knife would not save me, but I did not want to die without fighting.

My sister, out of nowhere, asked me: ''Are the doors unlocked?'', her voice trembling and sounding like she was about to faint. I nodded. They were not locked. We could run away, I know, but all the effort we made would be useless, there was no escape. The horde led by my uncle and aunt, were stepping the first centimeters of the interior of the house.

At that moment, I guess my sister went out to try to lock the front door, since the horde had split up. Some proceeded to come through the front of the house, and those who were already practically inside, through the back. I remember knowing this because as I looked outside to make sure the firemen were doing their job, I saw a group of these dead family members approaching the front door.

I was about to leave the kitchen, as I watched out of the corner of my eye as the horde was approaching me.

When my sister tried to block the front door, I heard a sharp scream. I also heard, abruptly, her clothes being ripped from her, as whatever was out there dragged her out of the house.

I began to remember, as if visions were passing in front of me in a matter of milliseconds, all the moments I had lived with her. I hope you can have a brotherly relationship as we had. I remembered all the summers, in which we would spend telling each other stories until dawn. The mornings, afternoons and evenings in which we would not be separated at any time. We had no friends and practically no parents, but we always kept in mind and repeated all the time, that we had each other.

I went in search of her, in desperation, to the door, and nothing more was heard of us for 31 years, before I decided to start writing, in a book I found by pure coincidence, the meaning of our disappearance.

The door closed behind me, and I could see my knife slowly fall to the ground, and a can of beer, which my father used to frequent, swung out and fall in front of the front door, as my sister and I faded from existence.