Abre Los Ojos || Camilo Madrigal

¡No Estamos Hablando de Bruno!

Sofía returned to the nursery and laid on the bed, awaiting Mirabel’s arrival. While Mirabel would be climbing her tío’s tower for a vision, Sofía decided she should try and get some sleep, even if it meant nightmares.

She drifted off as soon as her head hit the pillow. And she was transported back into her memories of pain and sorrow and misery.

***

Eight-year-old Leo stared at the burning building, terrified. “MAMI!” he cried.

Sofía was frozen where she stood, shocked. “Mami… Leo, where’s Mami?”

Leo’s eyes filled with tears. “Mami!” he cried out again, this time Sofía joining him.

The eight-year-old twins were soon seated in an ambulance to check up on them, to see if they were okay. Their eyes were swollen with all the crying they had done and their noses were runny but there were no physical injuries. Only mental, something that couldn’t be healed.

“¿Dónde está mi mamá?” Sofía asked, her voice so hoarse, it came out almost as a whisper. “Where’s my mom?”

The nurse who was tending to them almost broke, their eyes full of tears just hearing those words come from a heartbroken child.

Her and Leo’s tears began to rapidly fall and they were soon in the comforting arms of the nurse.

Sofía learned to accept her mother’s fate sooner than her twin could. Unfortunately for the two of them, their tía Rosa blamed them for their mother’s death, meaning that she would never in a million years take them in, which left them traveling from orphanage to orphanage, from foster home to foster home. Nothing felt right, nothing was the same. There was no way to escape the cruelty of the gods and titans, no way to escape their wrath, no way to escape the fate of a demigod. A traumatic life and painful death was guaranteed.

***

Mirabel burst into the nursery, a disturbed look on her face, causing Sofía to jerk awake. Shaking, Mirabel pulled out green shining shards of… glass?

“Is that the vision?”

Mirabel nodded, mumbling to herself, “Why am I in your vision, Bruno?”

A flash of lightning and thunder shook the room as Pepa entered the room with a box in her arms.

“Tía, jeez–” Mirabel started to say.

“Sorry, sorry, I- I didn’t mean to – shoo, shoo, shoo–” she said as she was trying to shoo the clouds away. “–I just wanted to get the last of Toñito’s things - and then I heard ‘the name we do not speak.’” A rumble of thunder boomed overhead.

“Great, now I’m thundering. And a thunder will lead to a drizzle and a drizzle will lead to a sprinkle–” She then closed her eyes and mumbled to herself, “Clear skies, clear skies, clear skies–” Pepa tried to calm herself as she picked up a few of Antonio’s remaining clothes from the room: sandals, underwear, etc.

Mirabel looked at Sofía before her aunt and said, “Uh, Tía Pepa - if Bru-” When she saw her aunt’s facial expression, she corrected herself. “If he had a vision about ‘someone’ what would it mean for them?”

“We don’t talk about Bruno.”

“I know, it’s just, hypothetically, if he ‘saw’ you–”

Pepa interrupted her niece. “Mirabel, please. We need to get ready for the Guzmans.”

“I just want to know if it was generally positive... or... like less positive or–”

Félix barged in, shouting, “It was a nightmare!”