Red Light

By Gunter Silva

A second incursion in English, for us at least, by someone who has become, with time, a regular collaborator of our publication. This brief tale is about a close-to-the-end state of affairs for a man who in a misguided sense of pride, or as an ultimate demostration of his own cowardice, has decided to isolate himself from his young family with alcohol

Order another beer, you mumble, your voice unsteady, like someone who’d spoken too much with their own ghosts. Death is the only certainty, you reminded yourself, so why fear it? No one goes before or after their time—only when fate decides to turn out the light. And yet, there you were, trembling before a glass that seemed to be both your executioner and your solace.

The hoarse voice that haunted you for years argued in your mind. You knew that extra beer could be a one-way ticket to hell. But thirst—the same one as always, that accompanied your days of euphoria and nights of melancholy—clung to your chest, relentless. Your eyes settled on the glass: the white foam, the golden liquid, the cold sweat of the glass. The long, serpentine bar was an inevitable path to your destruction.

Then a cold hand touched your arm. You turned and saw a stranger, wearing dark glasses despite the dimly lit bar. When you looked down, you found yourself with a new tattoo on your forearm: a traffic light, a red circle glowing like a floating ruby, the skin still reddened, as if it had been done only hours before, though you remembered nothing. A jolt of fear shot through you. How could you not remember something like this?

The stranger held your gaze. There was an understanding that unsettled you, as if he knew the exact storm raging within you.

“A beer, Alejandro?” he asked with a deep voice.

You nodded, unable to find your voice.

“It’s been a while,” he added.

“So it seems,” you said.

You tried to place him in your memory: an old bar, a party, anything. Nothing. And yet, it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the cold beer he was offering you. You remembered the alcoholics who passed through your life: the suicides, the overdoses, the fights, the hospitals. You avoided the survivors; you knew that one bad piece of advice or night was enough to lose yourself completely. “Watch out, they’re looking for you,” the stranger said before disappearing into the bar’s smoke. You didn’t know what he meant. You didn’t want to. 

I’m a lonely man, you thought, as if that were something to be proud of.

Rehab had been a rollercoaster of lies and relapses. You gave up. You’d disappointed Elena and your six-year-old, María. You thought of them only briefly before pushing those memories to the darkest corner of your mind. You looked at the tattoo again. You felt it was a warning, a silent judgment on the tightrope you’d been walking for more than seven years.  

You left the bar. The pink neon light illuminated your back and cast an unfamiliar shadow on the ground. You walked beneath its flickering glow, hearing murmurs that mixed with your thoughts. You headed towards the street where you’d left your car. The night breeze made you zip your jacket up to your neck. When you arrived, your heart sank; the front was dented, the paint scratched, as if you’d hit something—or someone. You didn’t remember anything.

You leaned over to look at the bumper. The twisted metal looked like the body of a wounded animal, a mute witness to an event ripped from your memory. You wondered how it was possible to forget such a crash. How it was possible to forget a tattoo. How it was possible that nothing made sense.

And yet, you smiled. The car window returned a twisted, stretched, almost idiotic smile. “I’m a miracle!” you thought. Surely your old group would’ve given you up for dead. And you would’ve too, seeing the car in that state. “But I’m here,” you slurred. No job, no money, no direction, but alive. That was enough for the smile to lose its ridiculousness.

You opened the door and collapsed into the seat. With the engine off, you reclined and curled up in the seat. Sleep came heavy, almost violently. Sleeping or drinking, your only escapes. That time you chose sleep, as if that could save you.

You woke up with a fever. Your heart pounding in your ears. Terrible, quick, blurry images unfolded in your mind like an unleashed storm. You shifted in the car, felt your eyes moisten, hot tears falling uncontrollably. The tattoo gleamed in the morning light, and its meaning became clear: a pact, a reminder, an urgent warning that you were crossing the final threshold.

You opened the door and fell to your knees on the dusty road. The air seared your lungs. You tried to cover your face, but the pain was too great to hide. María appeared in your mind, in her little purple skirt, holding Elena’s hand. You saw her smile, heard her laughter, felt her tiny arms around your neck as she asked for a bedtime story. All of it was dissolving like smoke, like remembering a dream that no longer belonged to you.

You clung to the asphalt. You needed to hold on to something, anything. But the void kept widening. The sky, now cloudless, turned almost cruel in its clarity. The light enveloped you like a judgment. 

You vomit. Your body trembles. You try to get up, but fall again among the trash, dust, and your vomit. Cold sweat runs down your back. The sunlight turns your skin into an ashen landscape. For a moment, the tattoo, the bar, the dented car: it all seems to fit, as if reality had been waiting for this moment to be revealed.

And then, like lightning, the memories return. Your street. The car. The dull thud. Your wife Elena’s scream, the playful laughter of your daughter, which distorted in the air. A moment before, everything seemed held together in fragile balance, like whiskey in a glass. But memory, treasonous, now shows you what your mind had buried to survive. Then the involuntary pressure on the pedal, a couple of seconds suspended in eternity: a blinding red light. 

Translated by Mikayla Parson

Gunter Silva (Lima, 1977) is the author of the short story collections Crónicas de Londres (Lima, 2012) and Pasos Pesados (Lima, 2016), and, more recently, of El baile de los vencidos (The Dance of the Vanquished, 2022) and Neutrino (Neutrino, 2024). The latter is an intimate personal diary of resistance and survival that was very well received by critics and readers. He studied at the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the Universidad Santa María La Católica. He also earned a BA in Arts and Humanities and an MA in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Westminster. He has appeared in several anthologies of Peruvian short stories and has also contributed to various literary and cultural magazines.

Mikayla Parson is an English–Spanish translator and interpreter. She holds an M.A. in Translation and Interpretation from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. She received an Honorable Mention in the 2025 Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Literary Translation Fellowship.