Sudden Fiction By A Mexican Master

Mexican writer Juan Rulfo penned the novel Pedro Páramo, (1955) a chilling ghost story that was one of the main inspirations for the Latin American literary boom that became known as Magic Realism. I recently came across this cool (and rare) piece of short-short fiction by Rulfo and, since our Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition is currently open for submissions, I thought it was appropriate to reproduce Rulfo’s story here as an example of how it’s done. Enjoy:

“It was already late in the night when I arrived at that little, lost town in the mountains. To my surprise, the peasants were waiting for me. In silence, without any explanation, they took me to the plaza. They tied me up to the tree in the center of that plaza, and again in silence, they left.

At dawn they came back, looked at me, and decided to untie me. Finally, one of them spoke. He said, ‘We saw you coming from far away. But we realized you were coming without your soul. Your soul was looking for you. That’s why we had to tie you up. Now your soul has found you.'” (as narrated to Julio Ortega)