Cinelandia, Downtown Ciudad Bastarda, October 31, 1987
#1: The Magic Hat
The package arrived days ago; it was only today that I decided to open it. It was a box about twenty inches wide by twenty inches high. Although I divined its contents, I refused to open it; I refused to believe that I now possessed something that belonged to the Magician, something as personal as his hat. From your expression I can sense that you want to know where I got it. I acquired it at a virtual auction where several of his belongings were up for sale. Although what I wanted most was his cape, the hat was the only thing that fit my budget.
About the Magician, there’s not much to say: he became famous overnight in Ciudad Bastarda one day when, during a children’s party, after having amused everyone with his “ham-handed and boring magic tricks” (so said the only survivor), he massacred almost all the children in attendance. The heads and limbs of the little ones lay scattered throughout the large banquet hall while their parents snored in the corners thanks to the sleeping pills the Magician had deposited in their drinks.
He was captured a few days later: he was caught in a clandestine garage while cutting a woman in half.
The day I took the hat out of the box I felt disappointed; even though it was made of velvet, it had holes in the base. The first thing I did was to try it on in front of the mirror and then put it on the head of the treasured mannequin I kept in my room. Everything was going well until a week ago when dead rabbits began to appear in the house.
Last Monday, when I woke up, I saw that the Magician’s hat was on the floor, and a few feet away a white rabbit was lying warm but dead. I didn’t think anything of it; I thought it might have crawled in through some hole in the house. Tuesday night when I returned from work I found another one, almost at the entrance of the door; I was able to see it shaking violently until becoming rigid like a piece of ceramic. Strangely, that day I found the hat on my bed. But what happened yesterday still has my nerves on edge: while trying to tidy the room I accidentally tripped over the mannequin and the Magician’s hat fell to the floor, rolled a few feet, and then it happened . . . As if by magic, rabbits of various colors and sizes emerged from inside the hat, running wildly from one place to another, then convulsed and died hither and yon. There were almost forty dead animals that I had to bury that night in the courtyard.
What’s the matter, why are you looking at me like that? Do you think I’m lying? Why should I make up a story like that? If you want I’ll take off my hat right now so you can see what I’m talking about.
The man walked over and placed the hat on the lap of the woman who was lying in a chair, bound and gagged; she was trembling like a small animal imprisoned in a box. From inside the hat, something was beginning to emerge.
#2: Never Strangers
There’s no doubt that F is a rather ungainly and nervous woman. The latter is apparent in the most minute detail of her behavior. For example: when she speaks in public, she gives off the impression that a sizeable number of fragile pieces of porcelain are about to shatter with each stutter in her speech.
In general, F avoids riding in taxis alone or being the last person to clear the hallways of the university where Professor X lectures, which is why she doesn’t live alone; a pair of gray cats are her constant companions. That’s why, before returning home, she makes an obligatory stop at the supermarket to buy her weekly store of feline treats. She avoids looking at the individual behind her in one of the aisles, who’s nothing more than a gangly stock boy who passes by without a second glance.
Before checking out, she pauses to eat something, a spinach sandwich and some black tea to be precise. She sits down and places her packages on the table. She avoids making eye contact with anyone, but like a snake, Señorita F feels someone staring at her. Her eyes meet those of a bearded man who smiles at her fleetingly. She immediately looks away. She opens a magazine that was sitting on the table. Something brings her to cast another glance in the man’s direction, but he’s no longer there. She gathers her packages quickly, goes to the checkout, pays, then hurries to the parking lot in search of her car.
She slides her hand into her coat pocket and realizes she doesn’t have her keys. Shaking, she opens her purse and rummages for them. A hand touches her shoulder. Her packages fall to the ground.
“Here you go; you left these on the table,” says the bearded man politely.
She feels more at ease as she pulls into her building’s parking garage. She looks at herself in the rearview mirror before getting out. She seems paler than usual, she thinks.
As she turns the key in her apartment door, the first words the nervous Señorita F murmurs are “Is someone there?” but she receives no response other than the hands that jump out from the darkness and begin to choke her.
#3: Silent Ventriloquism
The ventriloquist has died. His wife—contradicting her husband’s last wish—decided not to put “Faust” in the casket; that doll who brought the ventriloquist such fame while he was alive. She decided he’d remain with her.
“Look, my love, at what I found in the garbage can,” the woman remembered him saying that December in 1986.
“A wooden doll?” she said at the time.
“He’ll get us out of this terrible situation, you’ll see.”
She looked away from Faust and directed her gaze toward the coffin where her husband was laid to rest. The cloying odor of the funeral wreaths turned her stomach. She looked again at Faust and returned to that cold December night.
“And just exactly how will that dummy save us from this ruin?” she managed to gasp out while laughing.
“Easy. I’ll become a ventriloquist as famous as Edgar Bergen himself.”
At first, everything seemed like destiny’s idea of a bad joke. But the man was determined. He rewatched all of Bergen’s movies, practiced in front of the mirror night and day, sometimes in front of his wife, who watched him with bewilderment and pity.
As a romantic gesture, the woman brought the puppet over to the coffin glass so he could take a final look at the man who’d been his owner, although during their performances along the country’s many dusty roads for more than thirty years, Faust had always called him “master.”
“Good riddance, you son of a bitch!”
A high-pitched and macabre voice seemed to emerge from deep inside the doll. The mourners grew silent.
“You were the worst father and husband of all,” Faust said. Then he turned his wooden head and looked the woman who was holding him square in the eyes.
“I like my new voice,” was the last thing the doll said. The woman cracked a smile—in that uncanny moment it was the only movement her lips had made.
#4: The Doctor Is In
More than an hour has passed since Dr. Virginia Nogal came to and found herself, bound by her hands and feet, before the gaze of her former patient, but the situation has taken an unexpected turn.
Cristián notices that the hand and foot restraints are too tight, to the point of cutting off the doctor’s circulation, and decides to loosen them a little; after all, she is an older woman, easy to subdue with simple strangulation or a blow to the skull. Besides, she’s calmer now. When he finishes loosening her restraints, he gently removes her high heels.
The corroded atmosphere of a morbid film, with surgical utensils on a table and metal hooks on the walls, fades when the light in the garage is switched on. Even the air has become warmer as the conversation between the two old acquaintances grows less aggressive:
“Cristián, do you know what I still have of yours?” asks Dr. Nogal.
“What?”
“The drawings you made during our sessions.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“I almost don’t remember those drawings.”
“Well, there were many, I must still have about fifty of them.”
“Why did you keep them?”
“They were very pretty. Do you remember what you used to draw?”
“No.”
“You drew yourself, almost always with a guitar or some other musical instrument in your hands.”
“I like music.”
“I can see that; you have Mandragurus Springer printed on your T-shirt.”
“You know him?!”
“Of course, he’s a fabulous musician.”
“Yes, he is.”
The conversation grows languid; a chilling silence hangs in the air for an instant before being broken by the clinking of knives on the table. Cristián approaches her, gripping a scalpel. The room goes dark.
The End
“What’d you think of the show?” the man asked.
“I prefer vampire movies,” whispered the girl as she kissed him in an alley nearby while her mouth anxiously sought out his neck. 
John Better Armella is a queer poet and novelist from Barranquilla, Colombia. He is the author of five books, most recently the horror novella Limbo (Seix Barral, 2020). His short story collection 16 atmósferas enrarecidas won the Premio Nacional de Cuento Jorge Gaitán Durán. His work has appeared in English in World Literature Today, Latin American Literature Today, and the anthology Queer: A Collection of LGBTQ Writing from Ancient Times to Yesterday.
George Henson is a translator of Latin American prose. His book-length translations include works by Cervantes laureates Sergio Pitol and Elena Poniatowska, as well as Luis Jorge Boone and Alberto Chimal. His translation of Abel Posse’s memoir A Long Day in Venice was recently longlisted for the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Translation Prize. He teaches creative writing at the University of Tulsa and is a 2022–2023 Tulsa Artist Fellow.
Michelle Mirabella is a Spanish-to-English translator whose work appears in The Arkansas International, World Literature Today, Latin American Literature Today, Firmament, and elsewhere. A finalist in Columbia Journal’s 2022 Spring Contest, she is an alumna of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre and the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference.
Illustration: Rachel Merrill.
