1
The events began in a subtle way. It was like a call. Circumstances and a series of forces of my spirit led me to the mysteries that I am about to relate. This, more than a story of black magic, is a story of passion and adoration... and feet.
You could say that I was once a normal person. Eroticism makes you strange, it brings out what is repressed in you and is not accepted by society. Passion is beyond good and evil. Natalia. Her name was Natalia.
I have done so much and I do not want to stop. I do not want redemption nor do I have regrets. I possess the power to continue with what my appetites dictate to me. And I feel voracious. As I write these words, I have in my hands the grimoire that allowed me total enjoyment over the objects of my adoration.
I feel a shudder throughout my body every time I remember the events. The twists of fate sometimes lead us to metaphysical events that are above all that we believe to be moral and possible.
2
A long time ago, when I was twenty, I studied literature at a prestigious university in Lima. I was an intellectual boy. Many people labeled me as shy. They were wrong. I spoke little with others because I found them boring, not intimidating.
I spent several hours in the library. My readings were varied. I always reviewed wild content such as Bataille's philosophy, the stories of the Marquis de Sade or the biography of Caligula. Reading can be a very special experience.
The reader is always seen as a calm person. Someone at rest passing his eyes over printed words as a sad consolation. But, in his spirit brutal forces can be brewing. A piece of literature can transform people. Many classmates saw me as meek, but they did not know what was brewing in my heart. Frogs seem calm and self-absorbed, until they open their mouths and catch the insect.
For me, reading was entertainment. The conversations and fashions around me were soporific. Everyone was a child of their space and time, while my heart was somewhere else. And so slowly my days passed until finally the object of my delirium appeared, and made me descend into a spiral of eroticism and supernatural events.
3
I developed a certain fondness for esoteric books. I didn't believe in them... I just liked to look at them. They talked about spells. Curiosity is an interesting phenomenon. I have come to believe that where there is a strong curiosity, there is a destiny. Being curious about something means that we have found an element for which our spirit feels a calling. Delving into what interests us strengthens us.
After a series of accidents I ended up in the center of Lima, in an old book store that was about to close on Jirón Quilca. It was selling everything at auction. There were several very old books. It was a dirty, smelly place, where a feeling of oblivion permeated the walls. I bought a few books. One that was in a corner and didn't seem to be for sale caught my eye, and I stole it. I don't know why I did it. I didn't have those habits, but an unusual impulse made me take it and quickly put it in my backpack.
An hour later I arrived at my apartment. My parents had gone to live in Miami and had rented me a place for myself. After taking a shower and eating something, I took out the stolen book. When something is done outside the laws of society it has a special power, an extra vitality obtained from that which is beyond the limits.
The text had a clear and direct style. It was not dated, but it was undoubtedly old. I easily immersed myself in reading. I had the feeling that I was predestined to read those pages.
That night I had strange dreams. Dreams that I prefer not to talk about, but that changed my mood and my criteria about what I considered possible and real.
In the morning, with the book in my hands, looking out the window at the horizon, I could feel that I was living the prelude to something great. The encounter with a series of events that would transform everything. And at that moment I experienced immense pleasure. A premonitory enjoyment of what was to come. The next day I met Natalia.
4
The relativity of events overwhelms me. The philosophical question of whether I am the one who makes things or if things make me. Free will versus determinism are the two sides of the glass of consciousness.
I was walking through the university campus. I was thinking about my strange book and then I saw her. She was at the end of the garden, next to a tree. It was a place that students used to rest. There they had picnics or sat on the grass to chat or take a nap. But this time, as if it were a stage made for me, she was there alone. She was lying face down, with her head raised looking at the cell phone, which she held in her hands, and with her feet up.
She had big, feline eyes, straight brown hair, dressed casually and wearing a skirt. Beautiful. Although it wasn't the beauty of her face, her good figure or her sexy nature that caught my attention. What attracted me were her feet. Her feet were like those of a goddess. Delicate, noticeably soft to the touch, thin and proportioned toes, white without falling into excessive paleness. Her nails were painted black.
I walked several times, surreptitiously, just to see those beautiful feet. I secretly took photos with my cell phone, to use them at night for my solitary pleasures. Then I left, thinking that this episode would only be a momentary aesthetic experience. I was wrong. Natalia and I were going to have a long and close bond in which her feet would be the protagonists.
5
I researched my book on the internet. Thanks to the graphics and some excerpts you can find out what it was about. It was even older than it seemed. It had passed through the hands of various sorcerers throughout Europe. It was brought to Peru by the Spanish during the time of the conquest. Afterwards, nothing was known about it.
Something happened to me when I had the text in my hands. I had always considered that books, as objects in themselves, have a special spiritual power. Collectors know what I'm talking about. Having a first edition of Don Quixote or Dracula nearby affects the nervous system.
Sometimes I didn't even open the text. I just held it for several minutes with my eyes closed. A series of impossible images came to my mind from other worlds known only to the first religions of humanity and whose main gods came to be called demons by the current era. I could feel in my spirit the same dense power that witches experienced in a coven in the depths of some forest or an occultist in a closed room chanting invocations.
One afternoon, a week after the event where I stood gazing at my beautiful feet in the garden of the university campus, I was in the university cafeteria. I was drinking a hot tea and reflecting on the esoteric mysteries of my book. Then, a few seats away from me, sat the mysterious girl from before.
I was surprised to see her. I didn't know what to do. I hadn't thought of any special phrase to start some kind of conversation. But, unexpectedly, it was she who spoke to me:
- You're Ruíz, right?
- Do you know me?
- We're in the Epistemology class. You always sit in the back. Sometimes you participate by correcting the professor - she said sarcastically - Do you know what the homework from the last class is about?
The truth is I had never seen her in the classroom, which wasn't surprising because I would barely recognize a couple of my classmates' faces. I only focused on myself and my learning. Sometimes, without intending to, I would get noticed for my participation.
- Just summarizing the readings. What is your name?
- Natalia.
