Bruno isn't real.
Maybe he never has been.
Wild, tired eyes track the movements of his rats over the tiny, musty room.
Julie chirrups at him curiously from the shelf, apparently sensing his distress. Pepé and Félicia pause their scuffling to cock their heads at him, but go back to play-fighting (or whatever it is they're doing, he really doesn't need to know) when he doesn't move. Camila chases away Dora from the leading lady role in his telenovela, making Antón squeak in indignation.
Their love was never meant to be.
The rats. They are real. They scurry around and squeak and do rat things. They act in telenovelas. Telenovelas he's made, so he must be real too.
He must. Bruno must be.
The rats are real, the beloved rats he cares so much about. The rats who come to him for warmth and bring him food to share. The rats he's named after the people he loves, the people he misses, people who are also real.
The people who never speak his name.
He may as well not be real, for all it matters.
Bruno's breath hitches.
Someone remember me. Mi familia... Juli, Pepa... Mama... please remember me. I'm real.
Aren't I?
It's been ten years since Bruno 'disappeared', and he's afraid he's losing his sanity.
Then again, how sane has he ever been to begin with?
Bruno always had been the black sheep of the family. Even before he got his gift, he'd been... strange, in a way his sisters hadn't. His mind making leaps, giving him instructions that didn't make sense but that he had to follow if he didn't want something bad to happen. What that bad thing was, he never knew, but he followed his intuition anyway.
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. Throw sand over his shoulder. Skip the white tiles, only step on the yellow ones.
And then he got his gift, and suddenly he could see. He could see every bad thing that could happen, what everyone's future might be.
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock on wood. Throw salt over his shoulder. Only step in threes.
He was weird, he was crazy, he was everything the villagers said about him, but Bruno wasn't stupid. He knew his rituals got on everyone's nerves. He saw Mama's pinched, worried frown, he heard the villagers' suspicious murmurs. He knew his gift didn't help with that.
The futures he told were rarely what people wanted to hear, and it infuriated them when the bad things he predicted came true. They never seemed to notice or mind quite as much when the good things did, but that was rarer.
"Please tell us, will we have a girl or a boy?"
... A boy. But he will not make it past a week.
"Hey Madrigal, how's my business going to go?"
Well enough, if you can work with a broken arm.
"Tell me, does Carmen like me too?"
No, señorita, but she will want to be friends.
No, the villagers didn't like him at all.
I'm sorry.
Against all odds, despite everything that was wrong with him, Bruno hadn't been lonely as a child.
True, there were bullies who would pick on him, and adults who would usher their children away from him. But there were his sisters, Julieta and Pepa, who never let him feel like a freak.
And there was Angélique.
She was his only friend, and his best friend to boot. They swore to be best friends forever, in fact.
Angélique had never made fun of his rituals, always smiling fondly when he knocked on wood and joining in on jumping on the right tiles until they were both giggling like it was the funniest game in the world. She had understood him. And he had understood her. He never teased her about her love for her pet goldfish, either.
Then his gift just had to ruin that, too.
At first, Angélique thought he was joking when he told her the fish would die, and cried, asking why he would play such a cruel trick. If everyone laughing at her and showing off their bigger, cooler pets wasn't bad enough already.
And then it actually happened.
That had been the end of their friendship.
Bruno had never wished so hard that his prophecies would be wrong.
He'd distanced himself from people, after that. No use getting close to them if they were just going to hate him in the end, was there?
And it worked, more or less. People still came to him for prophecies, and as a Madrigal he had to give them, but it worked. The villagers' cruel words and turned backs hurt less, his family's concerned gazes hurt less.
His friendship with the rats had started about that time. They were sweet, and fun, and didn't think he was weird.
His... other thing... had started about the same time too.
His ruana was long enough to cover his arms, and there was always an abundance of Julieta's food in the house.
At first, it had just been a way to distract from the loneliness, to have a physical pain to ground himself in.
Now, it's a way to convince himself he's real.
He is real. Bruno Madrigal exists.
He tells himself that as he mutters and knocks on the shelf above him. He tells himself that as he gently pulls Luis away from a box he keeps there. He tells himself that as he takes out what he needs.
"Squeak."
Bruno looks down in some surprise. Beady brown eyes peek up at him from the folds of his ruana, alight with what almost looks like reproach.
"Don't worry, Mira. It's fine."
Mirana squeaks unhappily, but doesn't protest as she's deposited on the armchair.
The blade is dusty and slightly rusted, but it's still sharp.
They're still healing, the lines on his arms from the last time he did this, and they make an almost pretty pink against the faded white of older scars.
Bruno drags the blade across them and adds some red.
