The dusty room
19th February 2025
María entered the deserted alcove, filled with heavy and hot air, in which light dust motes floated in the air. The look of the room fitted the description of a typical petit-bourgeois midcentury interior of the city of Las Palmas, with a bed for visitors, a dark painting with a still life and with additional miscellaneous furniture that for various reasons had been stored in there.
Technically, now that the house belonged to her and that all of her close family was dead, nothing nor nobody could prevent her from raiding the room. If she wanted to, she could put on some gloves and protective glasses and start to destroy one by one each one of the elements that composed the decoration, take a hammer and break them down into pieces or simply smash them against the floor or let them fall due to a ill-meaning elbow. She could, if she meant to, tear down the horrendous and yellowing wallpaper that was starting to peel away around the borders, eviscerate the small cushions placed on the rococo couch with a cutter knife and, if her knees didn't fail her, jump on the heavy wooden bed (which was covered by a crocheted bedspread) with her shoes on.
But instead of doing any of that, María passed besides the couch and advanced towards the cabinet placed on the back corner of the room where her grandmother used to keep all her memorabilia, protected by transparent panels and double-locked. She took on her hand a blown-glass figurine shaped like a deer, precisely the kind of object her grandma would never let her touch. The minute painted eyes of the animal stared at her with a lifeless gaze, or maybe slightly melancholically. Its crystal body, so slender that its weight was barely perceptible, glistened for one second as the last sunlight rays passed through the window.
María seemed to come back to life. With great care, she placed the deer on its sea of dust and she double locked the old glass cabinet. She then closed the door of the alcove and walked back to her living room.
The dusty room sank in a uncertain twilight not unlike a dreamless night.