Exilios

A man named Eugenio Valenzuela had always believed that he possessed a peculiar gift: the power to make others fall asleep simply by speaking. It was not something he had ever sought; indeed, it was something of a curse—yet, as with many such peculiarities, it was an enigma he had long since accepted with quiet resignation.

At first, Eugenio had tried to deny it. He was a man of intellect, a reader of obscure texts, a collector of philosophies, and one who reveled in the pursuit of ideas. Yet, whenever he would engage in discourse with others—whether a colleague, a friend, or even a casual acquaintance—their eyelids would grow heavy, their posture slacken, and soon, they would drift into slumber. It was as if the very essence of his thoughts, so profound and intricate, acted like a lullaby to the human mind.

The phenomenon was not universally predictable; some would fall asleep after a few sentences, while others could endure for longer, perhaps even an entire hour, before succumbing to the tranquility of his voice. It had never been deliberate. Eugenio would explain complex theories of metaphysics, the works of forgotten authors, or the latest convolutions in his own thinking, and with each word, their minds would unravel, the intricate threads of his speech weaving a blanket of sleep.

This curious effect was no mystery to him, yet it began to weigh heavily on his existence. For, you see, Eugenio had once sought the company of others for the sake of conversation, for the exhilaration of shared intellectual exploration. But now, he was alone. The people he met, once eager to hear his thoughts, now fled from his presence, or greeted him only with brief pleasantries, lest they fall into unconsciousness once more.

The irony of his situation did not escape him. Eugenio had been gifted—or perhaps cursed—with the power to think in solitude, but the very act of speaking, which he had once cherished as a means of sharing his thoughts, had become the barrier between himself and others. He could no longer ask a question without leading the conversation into a sleepy oblivion.

And so, Eugenio wandered the city, seeking the company of those who might somehow withstand his words. He spoke to strangers in cafes, to passersby on the street, and to old acquaintances who, in their attempts to maintain their composure, found themselves nodding off in his presence. He had long since ceased to notice the exact moment they slipped into slumber. It was as though he were perpetually surrounded by a sea of unconsciousness, with no one to see or hear him but his own mind, echoing in the hollow of his isolation.

One afternoon, Eugenio found himself seated across from an elderly man, a philosopher he had met years before, in a small, dimly lit library. His old acquaintance, who was notorious for his endless curiosity, had come to him for one final conversation. They had spoken for an hour, each topic leading to another, and soon, Eugenio began to explain a concept he had recently encountered in his studies—a theory on time and perception that was still unformed in his mind, but that he believed held great potential.

As he spoke, the elderly philosopher’s head grew heavy. His eyelids fluttered. Eugenio continued, his words flowing with increasing speed, unaware of the gradual retreat of his companion’s consciousness.

But just as the philosopher’s breathing slowed, Eugenio paused, suddenly struck by an epiphany.

He had noticed Lucas Portero almost immediately upon entering. Lucas was a figure in the town, not because of any particular skill or talent, but because of the strange sense that he was always on the edge of something, always watching from the corner of his eye, as though waiting for a moment that would never arrive. Lucas, a wiry man with unkempt hair and a perpetual gleam of mischief in his eyes, leaned against the bar, scanning the room with an almost predatory curiosity. His gaze landed on Eugenio, and a slow grin spread across his face.

“Ah, Eugenio Valenzuela,” Lucas said as he sauntered over, his voice tinged with an ironic warmth. “The thinker who sends people to sleep.”

Eugenio, startled by the intrusion, offered a half-hearted smile. “I do seem to have that effect,” he replied, his voice a touch weary.

Lucas sat down across from him without asking. “You know, it’s a shame. You could help everyone, you know. You really could. If only they’d listen.”

Eugenio raised an eyebrow, his thoughts immediately rising in defense of his solitude. “Help everyone? With what? My words are nothing but a lullaby to them. It seems the world would rather dream than understand.”

Lucas leaned forward, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I remember you. We were young once, both of us. And you were there that night… remember? You made a deal with me. You were drunk, of course, but you said you’d forget. I knew you’d forget, but I never did.”

Eugenio frowned, the fog of old memories clouding his mind. “What are you talking about? I don’t—”

“Don’t pretend, Eugenio,” Lucas interrupted. “It was a deal. A promise, really. I said that you’d speak, yes—speak your thoughts—but only if you gave up the one thing you really wanted: the ability to have people truly hear you. You wanted to be a man of ideas, didn’t you? A man who could shape the world with his words, untethered from the expectations of others. I told you it would come at a price.”

Eugenio’s mind reeled. He had always prided himself on his intellectual pursuits, never bothering with frivolous things like promises or bargains. He was too dedicated, too focused. But as the haze of memory began to lift, a familiar, uncomfortable sense of recognition began to stir in his chest. It was true. He had been drunk that night, too drunk to fully understand the weight of his words, but Lucas’s insistent voice brought fragments of the past into focus.

The deal. The promise.

“You said you’d speak, but no one would truly listen,” Lucas continued, his voice a whisper of accusation. “You gave me your word that you’d trade real communication for the solitude of thought. I knew you’d forget. But now, here you are, just as I told you you’d be—surrounded by a world that sleeps while you speak. And here I am, trying to remind you of the price you paid for your solitude.”

Eugenio’s thoughts spun wildly, the very foundation of his existence seeming to shift beneath him. He had thought that his gift—or curse, as he had often considered it—was simply the result of an accident, something beyond his control. But now, it seemed as if it was a deliberate consequence of his own choice, a choice made in the haze of youth, when all things felt possible.

“Why are you telling me this now?” Eugenio asked, his voice trembling with disbelief. “What do you want from me, Lucas?”

Lucas leaned back, a shadow of pity crossing his face. “What do I want? Nothing. I just wanted you to know, Eugenio. The deal is done. You could still help them, but you can’t undo what you agreed to. And you can’t break the rules of your own bargain.” He glanced around the cantina, his eyes gleaming with a strange satisfaction. “Now, all you have is your mind, and the world is a dream that you cannot wake them from.”

Eugenio sat in stunned silence, the weight of Lucas’s words settling into the very marrow of his bones. He had chosen this, all those years ago. In the end, it was his own decisions, his own desires that had led him to this point—this strange, unyielding solitude where his thoughts, though vast and untroubled, would never again find the echo of a human voice.

The cantina hummed with the low murmur of forgotten conversations, and Eugenio felt the old isolation creeping back around him. He looked at Lucas, but the man was already slipping away, vanishing back into the shadows of his own past.

“Remember,” Lucas called, as he disappeared through the door, “your words will never again be heard. But they will echo forever inside your own mind. And that’s where you’ll remain. Alone.”

He found the journal in a corner of the cantina’s forgotten storeroom, wedged between broken chairs and dust-caked bottles of mezcal. It was his own, bound in worn leather and covered in a thin layer of grime. The handwriting on the first page was unmistakably his, yet younger, less steady, as if the words had been written in haste—or under the influence of something stronger than haste.

Flipping through the pages, he saw it all laid bare: the night of the deal, scrawled with the uneven eloquence of drunken certainty. He had been eighteen, full of questions he thought no one else could answer, weighed down by a world that seemed both unbearably loud and incomprehensibly hollow. He had written of his frustration, his loneliness, his longing for quiet. That was the night he made his plea—not to a god or devil but to the universe itself, or perhaps to some darker corner of his own mind.

“Give me the wisdom to understand,” he had written, the words underlined so forcefully they nearly tore through the page. “But take away their noise. Take away their endless questions, their foolishness, their misunderstanding. Let them sleep if they cannot think. Let me think if I cannot connect. Let me be free of them.”

The realization struck him like a physical blow. The poppy effect—the strange sleep that overtook anyone who listened to him for too long—had not been the heart of the deal. It was merely a side effect, a shadow cast by a far greater transaction. He hadn’t traded wisdom for the ability to lull others into slumber. He had traded something far more fundamental: the chance to be understood.

The journal’s final pages were blank, save for one chilling line scrawled at the very end, in handwriting that was unmistakably his own but which he did not remember writing:

“You asked to be left alone, and so you shall be—forever, even in your thoughts.”

He closed the journal slowly, his hands trembling. The cantina was silent, the air thick and still. He glanced at the cracked mirror hanging on the wall, expecting to see his reflection—his face, pale and hollow—but it wasn’t there.

For a moment, he thought he heard something faint, like laughter, or maybe the echo of his own voice. Then it was gone, and he was alone, utterly and irreparably alone, his thoughts reverberating into an infinite silence.

He turned the journal over in his hands, feeling the weight of its leather cover and the blank pages that stretched on from his final entry. Something about those empty pages unsettled him. The texture of the paper was different, rougher than the earlier ones, and in the corner of each sheet was an embossed emblem: an unfamiliar sigil and an address.

The address was strange, almost nonsensical. He didn’t recognize the street name, and no part of the city seemed to match the combination of letters. He felt a creeping unease—he had lived here for years, but the name of the street, Calle del Silencio, tugged at him like a forgotten memory trying to resurface.

Curiosity, or perhaps some darker compulsion, led him to wander the streets that afternoon, searching for the place where the journal had been made. The city unfolded itself like a labyrinth, and eventually, he found it: a narrow, cobblestoned street tucked between two alleyways he didn’t recall ever seeing before. The air grew heavier as he walked, the din of the city fading into a muted hush, as though sound itself dared not follow him here.

The shop was a small, dusty storefront, its wooden sign swinging lazily in the breeze. The words on the sign were faded but legible: Encuadernaciones del Olvido—Bindings of Forgetting. The door creaked as he pushed it open, and a faint bell tinkled overhead.

Inside, a thin man with gray hair and spectacles sat at a cluttered desk, surrounded by stacks of books and papers. The man looked up as if he had been expecting him. “Ah,” the shopkeeper said, his voice slow and deliberate. “You’ve found your way back.”

“Back?” the man asked.

The shopkeeper gave a small smile. “You don’t remember this place, do you? That’s to be expected. Most don’t, not after the deal is made. But you’ve been here before. This journal of yours—” He gestured at the book in the man’s hands. “You made it here, though you wouldn’t recall. A book of your own making, your own thoughts, bound and sealed.”

“But why?” the man asked. His voice felt small, like it belonged to someone else.

“Because that was the nature of your deal,” the shopkeeper replied, standing now and moving closer. “You wanted freedom from others, so you wrote it all down—your thoughts, your insights, the very essence of what connected you to the world. You bound it into this book, and in doing so, you severed yourself. You carry it with you now, always, and so long as you carry it, you are alone.”

The man stared at the journal, suddenly aware of how heavy it felt, how it seemed to thrum with a quiet pulse, as if alive. “But the blank pages…”

The shopkeeper nodded. “Ah, yes. Those are what remain of you—what you could still become, if you were to change. But you won’t fill them, not as you are now. That’s why you came back here, though you may not have realized it. Perhaps you want to undo it.”

“Can I?” the man asked, his voice trembling.

The shopkeeper’s smile deepened, though it held no comfort. “Perhaps. But only if you can pass the book to another. Only if you find someone willing to carry it for you. But I warn you—whoever takes it will bear the same burden you do now. You will be free, yes, but they will be bound in your place. That is the only way to undo the deal you made.”

The man felt a cold pit in his stomach. “I don’t remember agreeing to any of this.”

The shopkeeper shrugged. “You were younger then, desperate, drunk, perhaps foolish. The reasons don’t matter now. What matters is what you do next.”

“And what if I can’t find someone to take it?”

The shopkeeper’s eyes gleamed. “Then you carry it forever. Until the day the blank pages run out, and you, too, are written away.”

The man left the shop, the journal heavy in his hands, the street behind him vanishing as he turned the corner. For a brief moment, he thought he heard a faint sound, like the rustling of pages or distant laughter. Then it was gone, and he was left alone with the book, and the weight of his own silence.

As he stepped outside, the street behind him shimmered strangely, as if dissolving into the air. He glanced back over his shoulder—and froze.

The shop door creaked open, and a figure stepped through, his footsteps quick and impatient. He was young, no older than eighteen, and his face was achingly familiar. The man’s breath caught in his throat. It was him. Or rather, it was what he had once been: angry, restless, burning with the naïve certainty that the world owed him something.

The younger man didn’t notice him standing there. He strode into the shop, his voice sharp and insistent. “I was told you could help me,” the younger version of himself said to the shopkeeper. “I’m tired of this. Tired of them. I want to think, to know—without all the noise.”

The man’s grip tightened on the journal. His heart thudded in his chest. He knew what would happen next; he had lived it. The shopkeeper would smile, offer him a drink—or perhaps only the illusion of one—and the deal would be struck. This young version of himself, raw and full of hunger, would bind his own future in pages he couldn’t yet understand.

But now, holding the book in his hands, he realized he had a choice. He could step into the shop, place the journal on the counter, and offer it to the young man. He could end his burden here and now. But to do so would mean passing the weight of silence onto this younger self—sacrificing him to the same lonely exile he had lived for decades.

His hands trembled as he stepped forward. Inside, the shopkeeper glanced at him, his expression neutral but his eyes glinting with something knowing. The young man turned to face him, and their eyes met.

“Who are you?” the younger man asked sharply, his impatience cutting through the air.

He didn’t answer right away. His mind raced. Would the younger version of himself understand what he was offering? Could he grasp the consequences of taking the book? And if he explained, would the young man even listen—or would he dismiss it as yet another voice lost in the noise he was so desperate to escape?

The journal felt impossibly heavy now, its leather cover warm and pulsing faintly, as if alive. He took a step closer and held it out. “This is what you’re looking for,” he said quietly.

The younger man hesitated, staring at the book with suspicion and curiosity. “What is it?”

He searched for the right words, but none came. Finally, he said, “It’s everything you think you want. And everything you don’t.”

The younger man frowned, his gaze flicking between the journal and the shopkeeper. The silence stretched, thick with possibility.

“Take it,” the shopkeeper said softly, his voice as smooth as glass. “Or don’t. The choice is yours.”

And there it was, the moment hanging suspended in the air. The older man could feel the weight of the decision pressing down on both of them, as if the universe itself were holding its breath.

The younger man reached out, his fingers hovering just above the journal.

But whether he took it or pulled back—whether the burden was passed or carried forward—was a mystery left unwritten. The story ended there, like an unfinished page, the outcome forever unknowable.