La Voz continues to receive new short stories that will compete in the XII edition of this literary contest. On this occasion, participants must tell a micro-story, real or fictional, in which the radio is the protagonist. As in previous editions, the maximum length of the stories must be 100 words, including the title if any.
Once again, the Tourist Centers will collaborate with the contest, whose participation period will extend until August 31.
Each author may submit a maximum of five stories, which may be signed with a pseudonym, although they must always indicate a name and contact telephone number. All those who wish to participate can send their stories to concursorelatos@lanzarotemedia.net.
The stories will be read in the "Reading on the Radio" section of Radio Lanzarote (90.7), and published in La Voz de Lanzarote. Both publication and reading will be subject to the availability of space and time of both media.
The decision of the contest, which will be made public in the second half of September, will be made by a jury made up of journalists from Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero and La Voz de Lanzarote, who will choose three winning stories and seven finalists.
The winner of the first prize will get a dinner for two at the Castillo de San José restaurant, while the second prize is one of the unusual experiences for two people from the Art, Culture and Tourism Centers of the Cabildo de Lanzarote. Finally, the third prize is a meal for two at the Monumento al Campesino restaurant. All prizes are for adults.
Anxiety
Cold morning that resonated throughout my body. With my cup of tea I stare at the drops that fall through my window without any concern. My head doesn't stop navigating from thought to thought. Fear and uncertainty invade my body. In the background, the music from the radio helps me escape my mind. Damn it! you have become my mess. My heart is beating at three thousand miles per hour and there are my tears falling like the drops that soak my window. I understand that sadness, after so much, became my ally.
The signals
The signals through waves that reach our ears, in the house, in the car, in bars and restaurants...
The waves that brighten the day with good music or stun the moment with news that no one wants to hear.
The radio of daring waves that pierce our conscious and fall asleep in our subconscious. Dare to resist!
The news
From the radio a hoarse and sad voice is heard - Dear listeners, today is my last day. After more than a decade I say goodbye to all of you. -Silence filled the places where the station was usually playing music and the announcer's enigmatic voice was heard.
The end of a known voice, and the beginning of a new one entering the places, spreading in waves.
Eva
His breath embedded in her neck, his hands rested on the white flesh accelerating Eva's heart.
Dishes for two, cutlery for two,...table for two. Presiding over it, a crystal vase, not elegant, not fine, not sophisticated,... with a sad yellow flower.
The mauve dress revealed the cleavage formed by her round, apple-like breasts. Soft makeup, hair gathered at the nape of her neck.
The stale music came from the oldest station on the oldest radio ever seen.
-Wearing "that"... and nothing is the same.
CRACK!!!
The neck broke...
-...And my fork is dirty.
Mist
I have been wandering aimlessly for some time.
The mist covers everything, not letting me see beyond. Thick. Immaculate. It envelops my body, sketching strange shadows. It expands with each step. I think it's part of me.
And there they are. Two figures appear in the middle of the road.
—Hello, do you need help? —I ask.
But they don't answer. They don't notice my presence. They are stunned looking at a strange radio that has a small microphone attached.
In the middle of the silence, a voice sounds. It's my voice. It comes out of the radio. Distorted.
Their faces show uncertainty. Then one of them speaks.
—We have captured a psychophony!
Free
I was born in Cape Verde and, at just seven years old, I was sold. Since then, I have always
been a slave. Well, not always. Last night I wasn't.
The radio in the living room was playing in the solitude of dusk. That dull melody, slow and
paused, seemed to stop time. Then I turned the tuner and the music came to life.
He caressed my body. He untied my hair. He seduced me with sinuous movements.
The boss saw me. The repercussions were not long in coming.
Since then, I dream of being free.
Free, to get lost in my body.
Free, to inhabit my being.
Free, to dance again until I grow old.
Mayday
Mayday. No answer.
I take the controls again. The ship spins like a whirlwind, out of control. The colors
intermingle through the window. We float in space, adrift. In silence. Like a forgotten echo. What can I do?
Then the door opened slightly. There she was, under the sheets, with her grandfather's old radio.
Mayday, she whispered into the intercom.
—Shouldn't we tell her it's time to sleep?
His father smiled.
—Let's leave her for a while longer. The best stories come from the smallest minds. I think tonight's chapter will be interesting.
Resist
Hidden from death among the tangle of iron that my car had become, I wondered who would be, who lives or who dies? There was no certainty, only instinct.
I had trouble breathing. My vision was beginning to blur.
There was silence. A lot of silence. But suddenly the radio started working. It was a woman. I don't remember what she said, but I do remember her broken voice. It was warm. Tender. Encouraging.
—Hold on, resist! —she seemed to say, like a timid heartbeat clinging to life.
And so it was, because her voice brought me back to my body.
Her voice saved my life.
Hostile
Time stopped with the last shot. The mist floated, inert, over the mud and blood. Thus came the docile silence of the night.
Under the trench, sheltered, the soldier remained motionless. Sleep had abandoned him, the nightmare had not.
Then he heard it. It was Jazz.
Disoriented and stunned, he walked through the mud, guided by the wind of metal and percussion.
There it was.
Half-buried in the mud, a radio resonated in no man's land. The soldier observed the words engraved on the crossbar:
When the music hits you, unlike bullets, you don't feel pain.
Bad news
I ran from the living room to the kitchen and turned on the radio:
-The autopsy revealed that the victim is Ana Montilla, she was returning home at night and...
I felt like everything was spinning and the announcer's voice was fading in my head. Time stopped and with it, my breathing.
I thought it was a joke, the world was playing a joke on me.
How? Who?, in less than a second my head became a washing machine of unanswered questions. I took my cell phone out of my pocket and a lightning bolt struck my whole body.
Forgetfulness
My mother is eighty-six years old today. But she no longer remembers who she is.
She remains absorbed in her world when I turn on the radio while I prepare a bouquet for her. The announcer's voice is talking about the unjust death of Federico García Lorca, and I remember that my mother used to read us his poems and had always told us that he was born on the same day as his execution.
When she hears the announcer recite La tarara, her voice, lost for so long, sounds again and recites the entire poem in unison.
And then, again, that silence.
The last frequency
I sent him an envelope with photos and a message written in my handwriting: See you soon!. I was not aware that the end had arrived. He waited for me to go to the hospital to say goodbye, I could feel his last frequency.
On the way home, I turned on the radio, put on a random station, and, at that precise moment, my heart broke into a thousand pieces. A part of me went with her.
Every time we meet I can hear her tune in the eyes of my mother, my uncles, my cousins, her grandchildren and her friends.
Coffee for two?
No one hurts forever, they say. But I, every morning when I prepare that coffee with two level tablespoons of cinnamon, I remember when I prepared two and with a smile you always said that coffee was the fuel of the mind and then, you turned on the radio shouting with joy that it was a new day, while I, still with the marks of the warm sheets on my face, cursed that contraption and you.
How ironic, isn't it?
No one hurts forever, they said, but damn the cinnamon, damn the coffee, damn the radio and damn you because you will always hurt me.
The old radio
From one of the shelves in the living room, forgotten in the upper part, watchtower from which he observed the evolution of history, was the old radio.
Its dial had been anchored in that moment of the past when someone decided to silence its voice.
It no longer had energy, its old heart corroded by sulfate had stopped beating a long time ago.
Its vocal cords, worn by the passage of time, full of dust and without magnetism, bring to my memory echoes of an enchanted street where our dreams could come true.
Waves
We shared so many things, room and your program, night of rounds, in the dark, the songs lulled you to sleep as a result of your insomnia, they cradled me like a lullaby, you are no longer among the living, my sister, if in the soul, on this summer night I turn on the radio. Are you there?, I wonder.
Untitled
Sitting on the patio, I notice the shine of the tile. I look up and see the open door. I observe the well curb and the roof of the haystack. If I look up, on the horizon, you can see the town of Tao.
I close my eyes, while she breathes slowly and I remember. Through that door they entered and left, busy and tired, after a long day of work. He is no longer there and she wants to reach him. Suddenly, the time signals are heard, the ones that mark the time of the meal and a tear rolls down my cheek.
Untitled
The last song on the radio was directed to those who were returning home for the summer. I thought the announcer would choose any pop song, but suddenly a song came on that transported me straight to my childhood in Lanzarote...
"If I were born again, if I started again, I would look for you again in my time ship..." Amaral.
I knew that yes, if I were born again, I would choose to be sitting in the garage of my house with my grandmothers, playing cards, while my cousins came for my brother and me to go play at the 'teleclub'.
Patience
They are saying on the local radio that the archaeological work is resuming. That this time it's serious.
How many years has grandma been waiting to see that legacy of our aborigines! She
asks me how many more years it will remain hidden between sheets of rofe and mud. As a child, she would approach the door of the cave, dark as night. She never got to enter. I wish she had had the courage to do so!
I know that she will leave without having known the entrails of Zonzamas. I listen to the experts, who continue talking about the subject and seem very happy. Am I dreaming?
Chill
On the cold night of the mountain, huddled in my hole, the whistling of the wind through the branches of the pines gives me chills. I tremble imagining the moment when a "red" finds my hiding place and everything ends.
I survive waiting for the day when my beloved Teresa, instead of bread and butter, brings me the news that the end of this madness that they call the Civil War, in which I refuse to participate, was announced on the radio.
I will never shoot against my brothers!!! Never!!! If tomorrow I no longer live forgive me my children
Camposancos 13 September 1938.
Valuable
Restless flames arise from a corner of the lot, next to those shreds of blankets. No one to shout for help. He moves barefoot, trembling. Sirens. Screams.
He runs as fast as his heart beats while the strange words of the uniformed men brush his ear. They record what he carries, hugged to his chest because he does not want to lose the only thing he has left of his country, of his parents' house: the radio. They observe it: it is an object without value.
They take him to the reception center. When he wakes up, his radio is still there, broadcasting.
The radio in the basement
Every night my grandfather went down to that neglected and gloomy basement. On each and every one of those nights he listened on the radio to the same station channel that always broadcast the same hoarse and sinister voice. A voice that ended up giving me nightmares and becoming one of them. I was never able to understand a single one of the words he uttered but my grandfather did. He continually went down those worn stairs and listened attentively in complete silence. When I finally dared and managed to go down I realized that there was no radio.
Voices
Voices that I hear when I wake up. Voices that accompany me throughout the day. Voices that could take me to another world if only I could close my eyes. I have never felt alone because they have always been there. But after all they are just voices. They, behind this filthy radio about to break completely, cannot get me out of this sealed room. Exhausted and afflicted I wait desperately for the moment when the device stops working because I know that then I will have no more strength to endure this hell without voices.
Home
He was alone but accompanied. He wandered freely through the world but without getting up from that ground rocking chair. He knew an infinity of celebrities without even having left that small dwelling gnawed by mice. Perhaps they never understood it or never wanted to understand it, but that obsolete radio was all he needed. It filled a space that no one else could and although it could not return his wife or return him to the energetic person he was, it was his home. A home full of words and melodies.
