ADSactly Fiction: The House Of Oblivion

in fiction •  4 years ago 


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The House of Oblivion

_Sir, you say he came here ten years ago to do a job?

_That's right, sir. From the first day he came, everyone knew he'd never get out. He, at first thought he'd be here for a couple of days, then he thought it would only be a few months. But the months went by and he stayed like everyone else. When he arrived, I wasn't here yet and there was another person in charge of this area, so I don't really know what kind of work he came to do. Some say he was a journalist, others say he was a renowned researcher from one of those many prestigious universities who were once interested in knowing what was going on. I remember that for the first 20 years, the television stations of the world came to do research to make special programs about us, but then, little by little, people stopped being interested in what was happening here. They said only we were guilty of what was happening and therefore we had to save ourselves. That's how oblivion spread, because the first to forget were the outsiders.


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_Do you see that everything is desolate and empty? It wasn't like that before. They did it on purpose so that no one would have a sense of direction or comparison. No one remembers what they used to be, what they were like, what this place was like. For them, life was always like that: there was no before and, of course, there is no after. You ask everyone if they are happy and they say yes or if they are sad, and they answer with the same statement. They do not know what they are saying because it is difficult to give an opinion when you do not have an element of comparison. And that's the first thing they took away from them: an element of comparison. How can they know how they live the present if they don't remember how the past was? Because the past was the first thing taken away from them. They say that at first they erased the dates and people started to get confused. They didn't know what day it was or what month. At first people remembered and said, but then they didn't. They also changed the names of the streets, the statues of the heroes, the rivers. Nothing here is like before.


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_Why are there so few people? I don't know if you remember the stampede 10 years ago. Well, that's where most of them fled. They left to save themselves. They left, crying, cursing this space and swearing they'd never come back. I remember that at first people used different means of transportation, but then it became very difficult for them to get out. Not only were the tickets expensive, or that little by little the planes stopped coming here or the cars ran out of gas, but they put up that wall you see there. That wall is there so that no one can get out. It was built out of pure evil, so that no one could get out. The few who are still here did not manage to get out, perhaps out of fear or because they have no memory and do not know what is bad and what is good. Because if they knew the calamity they were suffering, they would even leave, like the others did, the last ones before they lost their memory.


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_Nobody here works, nor studies. Everyone just sits around and does nothing. They eat what they are given, say what they hear, and go to bed when they are told to. The only time they half protest is when they are given food. They always have to stand in line and each one is given a number. Usually they have to wait in the middle of the sun for long hours, until the manager arrives. That's when the ruckus forms. The animal instinct comes out: they think they're going to run out of food. So they start growling, hitting each other. At that moment you can believe that they will wake up, that they will remember, but no: when they are given the bag of food, they laugh and drool over their dirty, tattered clothes. They were not so cowardly or small, but every day they hunch more and more. I don't know if it's from crawling or just from the food they carry. What is certain is that they are cowards: it is as if they had been injected with fear.


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_I hope you didn't write anything I said. I know you're leaving in a couple of days, but it's better if nothing is recorded. Especially since we don't know if those days turn into months or years. I'm the only person who remembers that's why I'm tied up here. People say I'm crazy, but the only thing that's wrong with me is my memory. I remember that we were happy and now we're not.


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Written by: @nancybriti



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To use a cliché, I could say that any resemblance to reality is mere coincidence. Your fictional story (between Orwellian and Rulfian) confronts us with a terrible reality that our country, Venezuela, suffers from: the absent or weak memory of a large part of the population, and, even more, the manipulation and debasement to which it has been subjected and which, unfortunately, very few have been able to see and face. Thank you, @nancybriti.

When fiction is similar to reality. Unfortunately, more than memory, they took the soul. Greetings and thanks for the comment, @josemalavem