THE WEDDING WITNESS

At first, in front of the video game store’s windows, his resolve was as fragile as a thread of silk. However, in an instant, after seeing the box of Oregon Trail with its image of pioneers traveling across the prairies, ideas solidified in his mind. To avoid the couple of strangers appearing at the entrance, he quickly turned around, intending to lose himself in the crowd.

“Walter,” said a voice nearby, “they’re waiting for you.”

A girl with a small nose was smiling at him.

“Walter,” she whispered again, “dear Walter…, the church is not far; there’s going to be a wedding, and besides being a relative of the groom, you’re also his witness.”

Her melodious and gentle voice carried a wealth of happy inflections.

Walter, reflecting for a moment, recognized that the charming girl (indeed, she was charming) had expressed a thought that deserved great attention.

“I’d like to come, but I don’t think I have the right outfit.”

“I think you look perfect. The casual pants with the shirt and vest give you a formal and elegant appearance.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Alice, the bride’s cousin.”

“Have we met before?”

“Yes, at a party. I remember you liked to sing and made an effort to laugh when someone told jokes in that English humor style.”

“And then?”

“You left early, I think with a tall, pale, and skinny gentleman who hadn’t said a word all evening. Famished and odd, he seemed like a sort of Martian.”

Her eyes narrowed sadly behind her glasses. She tried to emit a scream that ended up choking in her throat, and reached out her hands.

Alice took his arms and staggered toward him, pressing against his chest in a tight embrace.

“But who was that man?”

“The person who taught me to accept my dark side and face my deepest fears without regrets because life is just a battlefield.”

“What happened to him?”

Walter gazed entranced at her pretty round face, the shape of her eyes, the asymmetrical hairline, the curve of her mouth, and that pure smile.

“He no longer belongs to this world!” he pronounced.

“Come on, we should go.”

“Wait a moment.”

He had the gift of perceiving the stares watching him without ever having met their gazes before.

A black hen scuttled across the street, suddenly emerging from the nearby shop.

“Do you want some bread, witch?!” shouted a woman, tossing a handful of crumbs at it.

“Oh, come in, I have a collection of extraordinary items that you will surely love,” she said in a high-pitched voice.

“Let’s go, it’s getting late!” exclaimed Alice to Walter.

“I’m curious; I want to see.”

Behind the door, wilted flowers scattered across the floor, emitting a sickly sweet fragrance, and five steps away, a table studded with nails forming arabesques was decorated with evergreens.

“Wait here!” said the woman, disappearing into a back room.

The air in the shop was thick with a strange energy. Walter and Alice looked at the objects around them, each one more bizarre than the last. On a dusty shelf, a crystal ball emitted a soft light, and above a cold fireplace, a painting depicted a forest populated by indistinct figures.

A grandfather clock ticked slowly, but its hands moved counterclockwise, as if time itself had been reversed.

In a glass case, a collection of yellowed letters was displayed, and beside them, a series of bird-beak masks.

Finally, on a bronze pedestal, a marble statuette with golden veins depicted a winged figure with a look of torment. Its wings were spread as if the creature had been petrified mid-flight, crystallizing a moment of escape.

“What is this place?” Alice murmured worriedly.

“I don’t know,” replied Walter, “but I feel it will be highly stimulating.”

The woman returned five minutes later, without an apron, her sleeves rolled up, her face cheerful, carrying a tray with two glasses and a carafe of coconut smoothie.

“Please, make yourselves comfortable on those stools,” she said, pointing to a corner.

“We’re just passing through,” Alice tried to explain.

“Oh, but it’s not every day that you meet someone who can appreciate these treasures. Look around, explore.”

The two young people exchanged a glance. Time was passing, and the wedding was imminent, but something held them back, as if the walls themselves were enveloping them in an invisible embrace.

It was a long, tense, and silent game. Walter radiated, and looking at him, Alice felt strangely moved. A young man, that’s what he was, still a young man despite everything.

They sat down, as there was no other choice.

“You seem like one,” said the lady as she poured the smoothie into the glasses.

Walter and Alice, one facing the other, stared at each other with such astonishment and ecstatic hunger that they lowered their eyes, uneasy.

Confusedly, with a brief and fleeting bite of envy, they sensed that they would scarcely experience what the two future newlyweds were experiencing at that moment.

Both had been waiting for the green light for some time, but that color never came.

They began to sip from their glasses.

Alice thought back to the times spent with her last boyfriend. Spring in Tahoma, with the streets bordered by blue flowers and the yellow alyssum spilling over the walls. The sparkling lake, the clear sky, the distant sound of bells, Robert’s voice as it was then, and his last words:

“I want to be clear: we were never accomplices; we lacked complicity, perhaps due to our ambiguity, as if we had unconsciously desired to fail.”

Shadows born from early misunderstandings, released after the enchantment, without a true reason. Perhaps everyone has a dark corner within them from which emerge prides, jealousies, discontent, and other small, almost embryo-like, unfathomable, and instinctive evils.

How many tears shed in the name of ephemeral happiness.

There are moments in life that seem like dreams, and then return as nightmares.

Suddenly, a muffled, strangled sound came from Walter’s lips, and his face contorted.

His hands began to tremble, and his eyes, wide open, fixed on an indefinite point in the room. He felt his heart pounding wildly, as if it were about to burst. He tried to stand up.

Alice grabbed his arm. "Walter, are you okay?" 

"There's something..." he stammered, "something... in the drink..." 

The woman who had welcomed them reappeared from the back room with an enigmatic smile. "How are you, my dears?" she asked, her voice now oddly distant and distorted.

The world around Walter began to spin. The objects in the room seemed to deform, and the indistinct figures in the painting on the fireplace appeared to come to life, slowly moving towards him.

“It can’t be…” Walter murmured, as a deep anguish engulfed him.

Again, something murky and uncontrollable was emanating from the depths of his heart: the fear of not being able to fully live the precious moments of life.

“Alice, we have to leave… immediately…”

Alice tried to help him, but even walking, the shop’s door seemed unreachable, as if it had moved away by tens of meters. Every step became a titanic task, as the room seemed to expand and contract in rhythm with Walter’s accelerated heartbeat.

“Oh, please don’t leave so soon. It’s better to prevent the wedding from taking place,” the woman declared with a smile that cut through the air like a blade.

“Who are you to know, why do you say this?” Alice replied, trembling.

“That couple always fought about everything. From decorating the church to whether there should be a church at all, from the wedding meal to whether a quick refreshment would suffice, from the gift registry to the idea of donating everything to charity. Damn those who put those two together! He is Spartan and only cares about the essentials; she seems to need to make up for a previous marriage and wants everything to be perfect this time. They even clashed over the number of guests. They oscillated between his four friends and her 150 guests.”

“How do you know all these things?” Alice asked, with a mix of curiosity and suspicion.

The woman raised an eyebrow, amused by the question. “Oh, don’t underestimate the power of gossip. Walls have ears, and mouths can never stay closed for long.”

Alice crossed her arms, trying to stay calm. “Don’t you think it’s a bit petty to interfere so much in other people’s lives?”

The woman laughed again. “Petty? If someone had warned me before my disastrous marriage, perhaps I would have avoided years of unhappiness.”

“Perhaps,” Alice replied, trying not to be intimidated, “but don’t you think every couple deserves a chance? Even if they’re not perfect?”

“Oh, dear,” replied the woman with a tone of false compassion, “of course, everyone deserves a chance. But some people, if they’re not meant to be together, should understand that before ruining each other’s lives.”

“You speak as if you know every detail of their relationship. Who gives you the right to judge?”

“Who gives me the right?” repeated the woman, tilting her head slightly. “Maybe it’s my experience, maybe it’s simply that I see things as they are. Not everyone has the courage to face reality.”

Alice pressed her lips together, her anger growing. “Maybe you should be more concerned with your own affairs.”

The woman stared at her with a gaze devoid of warmth. “And maybe you should learn to recognize a warning when you hear one. Not everyone is lucky enough to have someone who warns them.” Alice stood there, stunned, her heart pounding as she struggled to decipher whether those words were a warning or a threat.

“To be honest, they even argued about who should be the witnesses, especially the groom’s witness. Look at Walter, how he’s fallen; he can barely stand.”

“It’s all because of what you gave us to drink!”

“You drank the same thing and are perfectly fine, so the problem is more serious.”

“What do you mean? That he’s somehow at fault?”

“He’s the type who can turn fortune into misfortune and order into chaos. Ask him if he brought the wedding rings.”

Walter, suddenly recovering from his discomfort, began to fumble through his pants and vest pockets.

“Nothing... I can’t find anything, yet I’m sure... I had them.”

“Just as I told you, things can’t go as planned if they aren’t meant to.”

Her voice quivered, devoid of shame, as if she took pleasure in rubbing salt into others' wounds.

“Darius should have mingled with people who shared his own ideas instead of wasting time with you.”

“Did you hear that? She even knows the groom’s name,” Alice thought. “She’s the one in charge! She’s the one who decides!”

“Anyone who has been to hell cannot bear the happiness of others,” the woman replied.

Alice stepped forward, her face twisted with anger. “What was your hell then? Why did you end up there? Maybe we can understand who you are.”

The woman stopped smiling, and her eyes filled with a chilling coldness. “My hell is knowing that my son is about to ruin his life with a woman who doesn’t deserve him. I can’t allow it.”

Alice was shocked. “You... you’re Darius’s mother?”

“Yes, and I will do everything to prevent him from making this mistake, even if it means confronting you two,” the woman replied with an unsettling calm.

“Alice, this is madness; we have to stop her,” Walter whispered.

Alice looked at the woman with newfound awareness. “Why so much hatred? Why don’t you want Darius to be happy?”

Darius’s mother answered with a harsh voice: “Because I know what it means to make a wrong marriage. I won’t let my son suffer the same fate.”

The tension in the air was palpable. Walter grabbed a heavy candelabrum from a nearby table and moved menacingly toward her.

Darius’s mother did not move, staring at him with contempt. “Are you willing to do anything to protect a lie?”

Walter, no longer holding back, struck the woman on the head. She staggered and fell to the ground, unconscious, with a trickle of blood running from her wound.

Alice watched in stunned silence, unable to believe what had just happened.

“Walter, what have you done?” she stammered, her face pale.

Walter dropped the candelabrum, visibly trembling. “I couldn’t... I couldn’t let her continue. I couldn’t.”

Alice knelt beside the woman, checking her pulse. “She’s alive, but we need to call an ambulance right away.”

When the paramedics finally arrived, Walter seemed to be enveloped in a great calm.

“There’s a whole river here, traditions are traditions,” he said, staring straight out the window.

“What traditions are you talking about?” Alice asked, increasingly confused.

“Mine. My mother had a passion for torrents, and my father, in a way, too,” he said in a strange tone.

“I still remember the water rolling slowly over the pebbles of the shore. The stone my father picked up was much larger than the others.”

Alice felt a cold breath pass around her. She suddenly felt alone and vulnerable, immersed in a sinister and unfathomable reality.