“Take a tock” he says, Anyone there?
The boy is not sad. We are in the subway in the afternoon, the car is almost empty. There is an empty seat. Mother and child occupy what is in front of me. The woman’s question worries me. Could there be no one in that body, or worse yet, a different child than the one he had hoped to find? If someone asked me the same question, I would immediately answer:
-I.
That’s the answer we give when they knock on the bathroom door.
-I.
Everyone is “me”. But who am I?
The mother returns to the attack after checking her mobile messages for a while:
-Plug Click, Anyone there?
The boy continues indifferently. We looked at each other and smiled.
“There’s no one,” I joke.
“Don’t say that,” he replies. Can you imagine the body of an empty child?
The idea of an empty body still bothers me. I can imagine an empty house, an empty room, an empty coffin, but not an empty body. Then the child seems to have read my thoughts:
– The dead are empty. There is no one among them.
“You’re back with the dead again,” complains the mother. Then he turns to me and explains:
– He likes to pretend to be dead.
“Not because I love,” protested the boy, “not because I like it. I’m dead so no one is answering.
The woman and I smiled again but My smile is so pale. I’m really scared. At that moment, we come to a station that is not mine, but from which I got off anyway.