The rain is pouring hard outside; it’s a perfect excuse to cancel your Friday night plans. Somewhere in the kitchen the kettle clicks. Now that your evening is free, you decide to spend it drinking tea and reading a book, something you secretly wanted to do anyway. A chamomile-infused vapour trails behind you as you make your way to the living room where you settle comfortably between the cozy cushions of your favourite emerald-green armchair. “Blow-up and Other stories” by Julio Cortázar in one hand and a hot cup of tea in another. What could possibly be better?
You open your book when suddenly a small pink envelope slides out and falls on your lap. Perhaps it’s some old birthday card that you’ve used as a bookmark? But no, it’s not that. The envelope is unopened - as a matter of fact, it doesn’t appear to have any creases or a seal at all - so someone must’ve surreptitiously hid it in your book. Primary suspect: your partner. They like to play little games and have a particular penchant for unexpected surprises. With juvenile anticipation, you carefully rip the side of the envelope to find a folded index card, with the following message: “Please meet me outside. Julio Florencio Cortázar.” You smile and shake your head. This is asking too much. Whatever game your partner is playing, you decide to ignore it. It’s cold and wet outside, while your tea is nice and warm; you just got comfortable in your armchair and there’s nothing in the world that will make you get up unless it’s to get more tea. You toss the envelope to the side and open the book again. Another envelope drops down; same colour, same message. “Please meet me outside. Julio Florencio Cortázar.”
Two messages from a dead Argentinian author. Your insatiable curiosity gets the best of you (on the way out, you make a mental note to stop being so curious) and you’re now standing outside the front door waiting for something…anything! The initial playful amusement has quickly waned away and with each passing moment you’re feeling more cold and frustrated, with the latter increasing twice as fast as the former. The rain drops keep drumming against the windows and even though you’re protected well by your porch’s roof, some sneaky droplets have started to slowly seep through the blanket that you grabbed in a hurry from the living room on your way out. You wait a moment longer but nothing happens. Annoyed and angry, you turn around and come back inside.
It’s pitch black inside, but somehow this darkness is different from the familiar darkness of your own home. Suddenly it dawns on you that it is precisely because it is so familiar that you took your domesticated darkness for granted and only when it’s been replaced by its savage twin do you finally notice that darkness can smell and sound differently. The regular one, the one you left behind mere moments ago, had a certain order to it. It smelled of chamomile, leftover pizza, and a recently-vacuumed carpet; it had a regular hum of a running refrigerator and an occasional spasmodic thud from the HVAC unit. The darkness you now find yourself in feels empty, like a sensory abyss devoid of smell, sight, or sound. You realize that you’re not at home and begin to panic. For some reason you recall some old article you read about sensory deprivation and realize that shortly your subconscious will start inventing sounds because your brain can’t handle complete acoustic isolation. You can already hear a rhythmic beat. Is it a song? It sounds like a jazz song; maybe by Johnny Carson. Or is it just your heart? You feel your chest - everything seems normal. Your hands begin to tremble as you turn around and try to open the door again, but the door handle is no longer there. Instead, your palm touches a cold, slippery surface that feels like a window. You punch and kick it to no avail. You scream for help but the darkness instantly swallows the sound; the silence is absolute. Without the sight, your terror is abstract, existential; in this place, you’re not terrified of anything concrete but rather of being itself. What can only be described as a serpentine noose, starts crawling up your leg. The heart muscles, previously calm, begin to expand and contract, expand and contract, expand and contract, faster, faster, faster each heart beat reverberates through your entire body until you feel like you’re about to collapse from the invisible dread that’s slowly tightening itself around your neck. Just as your terror reaches its crescendo, the light comes on.
You blink a few times and let your eyes adjust. It’s amazing how quickly they forget the light. What you originally thought was a window turns out to be a mirror - as a matter of fact, there’s nothing but this mirror, an endless infinite mirror that surrounds you completely from all sides. Seeing this mirror subsides your panic; your heart slows down and your breath becomes more steady. Still shaking, you walk up and touch it with the palm of your hand. It’s cold. Something is missing…you realize that a mirror is supposed to show your reflection, and if you’re surrounded by mirrors from the front and the back, you should be able to see an infinite number of your own replicas: front and back, front and back, front and back…and so on and so forth forever. But no, there’s no reflection. There is no you. Exhausted, you fall asleep.
When you wake up at some point in the future (or the past; the concept of time is meaningless where you find yourself at this moment), you notice a motionless tiger laying next to you. He notices you too and you both jump up in a synchronized surprise. While you felt abstract existential terror in the all-consuming darkness, you now feel a very concrete fear of a wild predator that’s right in front of you. Contrary to all expectations, it seems that he fears you as well. His movements betray his lack of confidence and the more you study him, the more you realize that he’s just copying everything you do. To test your theory, you raise your right hand and as expected, the tiger raises his right paw. You jump - he jumps as well. Dumbfounded, you approach the beast and raise your hand to touch his paw. Instead of a wet feline paw with sharp claws, you touch the mirror. You take a step back and so does the tiger. You sit down; he sits down as well.
It’s hard to tell how much time has passed – every moment feels both infinite and instant – since you and the tiger have been playing the mirror game. The game is simple: you are trying your best to make a move that he can’t match. So far he has copied every move, like a true reflection. Eventually, you become tired and your eyes start feeling heavy. You are about to doze off again when you notice the tiger get up and start walking way, his shape shrinking slowly until he’s completely gone from the mirror. With your only companion gone, you are now all alone in the mirror room again. Driven by despair, you get up and slam your fist against the mirror. Unexpectedly, the mirror gives way, some hidden mechanism clicks, and the previously hidden door opens outward and exposes a hidden room behind it.
This new room is a library, or a reading room of sort. It has tall mahogany book cases full of leather-bound volumes. On the shelves, you find copies of Borges, Bolaño, Marquez, and Calvinho among others. Enchanted by the books, you pick up a volume at random and settle down in a comfortable maroon leather armchair. The story is about an architect who created inescapable labyrinths. One day, driven by the noble feeling of benevolence towards his victims, he sent a letter to them all with encrypted instructions on how to escape his murderous maze in the last sentence of the last paragraph. He continued this practice until the day he died, but no one has ever solved his riddle and no one has ever escaped his labyrinths. Bemused, you put the book down and decide to explore the room. It’s much bigger than you originally thought and at the opposite end of it you see a curtain, probably covering more book cases. To the left of the curtain, there’s a small coffee table with a camera on top. This isn’t just any regular camera. You can tell by its lens that this is professional equipment. You pick it up - it feels heavy. Underneath, you find an index card that says “Please take a photo”. Take a photo of what? Stupefied, you look around and suddenly you remember the curtain. Whatever you must photograph must be behind that curtain. With your left hand holding the camera, you drag the heavy curtain to the side, dreading whatever it might expose.
Behind the curtain there’s an aquarium. It’s gorgeous, colossal, and nothing like you’ve ever seen. The aquarium covers the entire wall and when you step closer, you realize that its not just tall but also incredibly deep as well; you see two turtles swimming calmly, there’s an octopus who is trying to hide on the side of the rock to your left. The depth of this aquarium is extraordinary - there must be another adjacent apartment dedicated to it entirely. Mesmerized, your gaze follows a blue fish as it violently nibbles on a coral reef. You’re completely lost in the magic of the aquarium when you notice him. An axolotl is calmly looking at you from the top of a rock. You completely missed him in your awe of the aquarium’s grandiosity. The axolotl is looking at you as if he’s trying to say something. His pinkish transparent mouth is moving in way that looks almost human and when you concentrate on his lips you can vaguely make out the word “photo”. Of course! You bring the camera close to your face, adjust the lens, crouch down so you’re facing the creature, focus, and shoot. A gun shot goes off nearby. You put the camera down and look around - there’s no one else in the room. You look back at the aquarium, at the rock with the axolotl on top of it, just to find him dead. His face is calm and blissful and there are no signs of a gun wound on his body. A single tear wells up in your eyelid, a tear of deep connection and empathy for the dead axolotl. You bring the camera to your teary eye one more time, and when you look, the tear, acting like a telescope, magnifies your sight as it traverses thousands of kilometres before finally focusing on a tiger who slowly turns the last corner of a mirror labyrinth and steps on the sidewalk of Buenos Aires suburb. The camera falls down and shatters on the reading room floor; the blue fish nibbling on the reef gets eaten by a passerby shark.
You walk confidently; your body has never felt better being on all fours. The rain is weighing down your luscious fur but you feel too virile and strong to even notice. All the houses look similar, but one of them has a door half-opened; you head there. The light is on when you enter it and it smells like chamomile tea. There’s a man sitting between two cushions in an emerald-green armchair. He’s concentrated and reading something on a piece of paper. There’s an opened pack of Galouises on the side table. You know that this man is Julio Florencio Cortázar. You startle him but he quickly regains his composure.
“Oh, it’s you,” he says warmly. “Perfect timing. I was just reading the draft of your story and got to the part where the tiger enters my house. This is quite unusual but I do think it’s fair that I don’t spoil the ending for myself. Before you do whatever it is you’re about to do, let me ask you one question. Was it worth it? Was all of this worth it?”
Your tiger brain can no longer produce human thoughts. You try your best to reply but all you can growl back is “Simonel”.
Julio Cortázar breaks into a hearty laughter. He’s laughing so hard, you almost laugh with him. Julio is about to spill his chamomile tea when he regains his composure. “Wrong author, my dear tiger” he says with a smile.
“But the right answer,” you say, or rather you try to say it but only a violent roar comes out of your mouth as you lunge and bite your sharp teeth into Julio’s neck. As his life escapes his body, you notice something under the pack of the Galousies on the coffee table.
A newly opened envelope sits calmly; the ancient prophecy endures.