Salón de belleza [first edition]

Una peste extrana fulmina paulatinamente a los habitantes de una gran ciudad. Rechazados por sus semejantes, algunos enfermos no tienen siquiera un lugar donde terminar sus dias. Un peluquero, que hasta entonces ha regentado con grandes esfuerzos un celebre salon de belleza, decide dar refugio a los moribundos. Aficionado a los peces exoticos que en sus acuarios decoran el salon, el peluquero acaba convirtiendo su salon en un moridero medieval. Que mal diezma a los huespedes del improvisado enfermero, carente al parecer de motivos filantropicos? Con el tiempo ya solo los peces multicolores seran testigos indiferentes de su dedicacion, cercana a la santidad verdadera. / Formerly a stylist in a beauty salon in an unnamed city, the narrator, a transvestite, has now transformed the salon into the Terminal, where people who have nowhere to die end their days. The Terminal has become a kind of hospice for dying gay men, the hair dryers and armchairs sold to buy cots and a cooker, the mirrors removed to avoid multiplying the suffering. The manager keeps exotic fish in aquariums, which he keenly observes as an allegory of what's happening in the larger world: as symptoms of the sickness become apparent on his own body, he notices a fungus growing on the angelfish that fatally infects the others. The narrator's brutal reasoning renders Bellatin's tale an unflinching allegory on death.