The ladder was missing a rung, and in its place was a dark hole, as if from a lack of teeth. If you think about it, one step is not too much. With a little effort with your leg, you can overcome its gap. I’m talking about the stairs of a rural hotel where my wife and I spent a few days recently. We were warned on arrival:
-Be careful in the first part of going up to the second floor, one step is missing. The moth had eaten it and we had to remove it. They are making us new.
The wooden ladder groaned like a weathered animal every time you stepped on it. When you removed it, it gave the impression that it was in more pain than when you lowered it. I felt so sorry for him, but I had no choice but to use him to get to our room. The fact is that I began to see the hole that appeared because of his complaints, not as the simple absence of one of its elements, but as a wound. A black sore that looks like the infection has spread to the rest of the structure, even the rest of the house. I thought of a mouth missing a part, but the problem went much further. It was then an infected ulcer, a metaphysical wound. That ladder was like a wound to his soul. It was not that he was injured, but that his injury had a mental nature. A psychotic ladder.
My wife was surprised that I was reluctant to go back to the hotel as we settled there with the idea of resting and reading when we went out. We each bought three or four books to keep a few more in the room, even if we got tired of the first one (books like bullets, beautiful picture: I killed myself with some book. read). One day, I woke up at about three in the morning and went to see the stairwell illuminated by the light of my cell phone. What I saw by projecting light at the bottom of the hole was a very old dog that was raising its eyes, looking at me or trying to do so, because I was dazzled and it emitted a groan as I went up the stairs. The animal seemed to live there, in that hole, it became the spirit of the house. When I was leaving the hotel, I inquired about the animal from the reception, but I was assured that they did not have dogs.