WILD BOAR EYE
A novel in eleven episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

ELEVENTH (and last) EPISODE
(The terrible gush)

Maya hit the gas for the long stretch.
The twilight had invaded the hilly cobblestone and the road sides, and a low fog spread out into the abyss. A figure sprung out running from the somber hedge, looking like a jumbled blob, zigzagging - a single blood-like eye amid the most disconsolate darkness. Maya hit the brakes, shifted gears, and screamed into a tremendous crash. The car leant on its left side against the small wall on the edge of the belvedere. Next to it, snug as a bug in a rug, laid the animal, legs in the air and dead in a pool of blood that ran down the road line.
Like a bolt, as if she had awoken from her sleepwalker’s adventure, from the unforeseen climb and illogical journey, Maya ran out of the car to check, who knows, if the wild boar was dead. Just a couple of seconds later, Rui opened his car door and stood stunned, numb, hanging onto the side mirror. It was then that the wild boar, in a final breath and last grimace, placed the mask of life back on and dashed at Maya who knelt close by.

Rui had no time to react. Blood, the boar’s or Maya’s, etched the car window. A brief, dry moment. The shatter of pain. An instant of light in the darkness. Maybe the photograph of the initiation. The terrible gush. And Rui, frozen solid, lost from himself. From everything.
And the dense smell of costmary celebrating the mountain air. An inexplicable whim. As if fate had awoken with the trip. As if fate had awoken, once and for all, for the only trip.