Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

Estefanía “Fanny” Giraut doesn't say anything. Although her eyes remain invisible behind her sunglasses, somehow her face conveys the impression that her eyes are simply looking straight ahead. Straight ahead and into the distance. As opposed to eyes that look at some concrete element in the public or in the court. A long moment passes. Audience members clear their throats, and cough and shift in their seats. Fanny Giraut's face doesn't show any alteration that could be associated with emotional reactions or any other kind of reactions. Her mouth is perfectly visible. Her mouth injected with collagen and silicone and painted dark red. In the middle of her sunken cheeks and unnaturally taut skin. The frequency of the throat clearings seems to increase.

“This court will remind the witness,” says the synthesized voice of the clerk, “that she is under an oath which also requires her to answer the questions she is asked.”

Silence. There is something essentially nonvisual in the way Fanny Giraut appears to be simply looking straight ahead. Without her gaze focusing on any specific visual element. Lucas Giraut changes position, uncomfortable, and tries to get the idea of his mother sitting in a chair warmed by his own body heat out of his head.

“Mrs. Giraut?” says the top-heavy judge. Staring at the witness. With a hint of confusion or incomprehension in his tone.

And then something happens to Fanny Giraut's face. Something that can't be identified with any type of visible emotional reaction. Something that is still quite nonvisual. Not quite an answer. Some sort of facial expression. Which makes very clear that Fanny Giraut's face lacks the internal structure necessary for making an expression. Some sort of facial expression with her wide-open mouth and her intensely white, pointy teeth. An expression that bares her teeth. And which doesn't create any wrinkles around her mouth. A clenching of the tendons in her neck. An expression that bares her teeth and clenches her tendons, producing a not-very-human effect. A slight trembling of her picture hat.

“I should have strangled him at birth,” says Estefanía Giraut through her teeth. Spraying little drops of saliva. With something that Lucas can't make out, but which seems to be a stream of white saliva slipping down her chin. With her voice strangely hoarse and a couple of octaves deeper than her usual tone. “I should have strangled him with the umbilical cord. I should have dropped him and stepped on his head. As soon as he was born.” The trembling of her picture hat intensifies. “I should have thrown him against the wall. 'Til he had no head left.”

The silence that follows Fanny Giraut's testimony is not sporadically interrupted by throat clearing or shuffling in the audience. It is a silence deeper than any Lucas can ever remember hearing.

WONDERFUL WORLD

By Stephen King

CHAPTER 59

The attack by the different factions of the Resistance on Capitol Hill had already been going on for twelve hours, according to Chuck Kimball's calculations. Without any kind of clocks, which would have immediately betrayed his location, Chuck had no way of knowing for sure. The mysterious electrical storm without any rain that had been battering the hill and its immediate surroundings since it got dark had kept him from telling the time by the sun or stars. The swirling mass of intensely black clouds already covered the entire sky. The Captors went in and out of the clouds, regrouping and plummeting down onto vehicles and the columns of the Resistance. It was an incredibly arduous battle, and the attackers had to fight bitterly for every inch of territory. Now Chuck had no doubt that the storm was Their work. It was one of their electromagnetic tricks.

Chuck crawled through the trees, followed by his group, to the mouth of the sewer that the Resistance had marked with a red cross. He used the crowbar he carried in his backpack to lift the round lid and looked around inside with his flashlight. The metal ladder that connected the entrance to the main tunnel disappeared into the dark depths. Chuck turned to look at Paul Clark and the rest of his command. There wasn't one of his men whose features didn't painfully show the effects of hunger and sleepless nights, and yet each of their faces showed a determination and courage that filled Chuck with pride.

Paul seemed to be able to see that in Chuck's look.

“We're ready when you are, Mr. Kimball,” he said. Cocking his gun.

They all carried at least a couple of weapons, plus flashlights and the plastic explosives divided up among their four backpacks.

Chuck nodded and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. He squatted beside the open sewer mouth, stuck one leg into the dark well, then the other, and finally began his descent. The descent that had to be the final episode in the war that began just two months earlier. The incursion that would decide the results of the conflict, one way or the other. The assault on Capitol Hill, with the hundreds of lives that would be lost before the sun came up, was nothing more than a distraction tactic to allow that small commando group to infiltrate the White House and find Doctor Angeli. The success of Chuck's mission would determine if that sacrifice was in vain.

Underground, in the main tunnel that, according to Chuck's map, connected the Hill's sewer system to the tunnel that led to the White House, Chuck moved forward in the middle of the group for what he calculated had to be four hundred yards. They all walked in silence along the elevated platforms that flanked the canal of wastewater. Paul and another young man in the local cell formed the scouting party, carrying flashlights taped to the barrels of their semiautomatic weapons. The beams of light swept the deserted tunnel as they advanced. There didn't seem to be any explosives or booby traps. If the Captors had foreseen an attack on the heart of their command center, their defense mechanisms were invisible to Chuck's group. For the moment.

Half an hour must have passed before Chuck found the tunnel fork. The walls and ceiling shook and resounded with each explosion on the surface, causing sand and rubble to rain down on the attack commando. Chuck pointed on his map to the steep uphill tunnel that split off to the right of the main tunnel.

“Here it is,” he said. “This tunnel has channeled the piss and shit of every president of our nation for two centuries.”

“Should I take off my hat?” Paul raised a hand to the bill of his cap jokily.

Stopped there at the entrance to the uphill tunnel, Chuck felt a knot in his stomach. There was no turning back. And yet, it was as if up until that moment he hadn't really considered the true magnitude and the very idea of what they had set out to do. Six people — five men and one woman — had set out to bring down an entire alien race who, by this point, had control over practically the entire planet Earth.

Paul must have sensed what was going through Chuck's head, because he put a hand on his shoulder and gave his collarbone a friendly pinch.

“We don't have much time,” said Paul. “Our people are dying up there.”

Chuck nodded and swallowed hard. They walked several hundred yards before the tunnel divided again. Now the commando members were splashing through a stream of cloudy water that flowed down with a babbling sound from somewhere high up on the hill. The sounds of the battle were constant and deafening.

After a moment, Chuck came up against Paul's back in the dark of the tunnel and realized that the scouting party had stopped. Paul and the other advance member of the commando were aiming their weapons upward. Pointing with their flashlights at the metal ladder that was the end of their underground expedition.

Chuck checked the map one more time and looked at his men. It was inevitable that he saw fear in their faces. None of the six had the least idea of what exactly they were going to find up there.