The Boy’s Deliverance Room (Short Story) by Hanner Goenaga

 

Mattiuw was a six-year-old boy who got sick very often. At that age, he didn’t count the episodes, but his mother told him it happened weekly. A friend of hers, without knowing exactly why, recommended she take him to a private "doctor" she knew. The place wasn’t very close, but it was within walking distance, so Mattiuw, thinking he was going to see a "normal" doctor, went along with them.

​Upon arriving at the medical center, it looked like any other. It had a waiting room and consultation offices. The boy looked pale and had a vacant stare, so when the "doctor" saw him from a distance, he told his mother, —He has something— but it wasn't natural.

​The "doctor" guided them toward a small room at the end of the hallway. Unlike the rest of the building, this room was completely empty, and the noise of the cars passing along the boulevard could not be heard. Mattiuw didn’t know what they were going to do, but he simply let himself be guided. Following the man's instructions, the four of them —the doctor, his mother, the friend, and the boy— held hands, forming a circle.

​—Close your eyes —the man ordered in a deep voice.

​The doctor began to recite a prayer; the words seemed to vibrate in the air. Suddenly, a strange sensation ran through the boy's body. It wasn't pain, but a stretching feeling, as if something that didn't belong to him was trying to cling to his bones one last time.

​Suddenly, Mattiuw felt a violent detachment. Something shot out from his shoulder, right on the side where his mother was holding him. Opening his eyes for a split second, he saw the impossible: a streak of transparent smoke, dense and fast, which dissipated into the air before touching the ceiling.

​The silence that followed was absolute. Mattiuw blinked and, for the first time in months, the world regained its color. The paleness vanished from his face, and the heaviness in his eyelids faded away.

​The most curious thing about that encounter wasn't the smoke or the mysterious office, but what happened afterward: from that precise moment, that boy who used to get sick every week didn't catch a single cold for years. Something had left that room, and Mattiuw was finally free.

Why did that deity attack him? How did the friend know that this was the treatment he needed? These are questions that only the future will reveal.