Blackmail By Fernando Deira -

A protagonist commits a small, secret transgression—perhaps a married man visits a underground club, or a clerk falsifies a signature. This act is not evil but human. Deira emphasizes ordinariness.

Deira splits the story into seven “boxes”, each titled after a railway compartment (e.g., Box 1 – The Ticket, Box 4 – The Cargo). The compartmentalisation mimics the way archival material is compartmentalised, and also alludes to the way blackmail compartmentalises lives—locking each participant into a sealed space of knowledge. blackmail by fernando deira

Every box alternates between first‑person interiority (Mariana’s journal entries) and objective, almost forensic description (the archivist’s report of the folder’s contents). This oscillation destabilises the reader’s alignment, forcing us to be both empathetic and clinical—just as a blackmailer must be both emotionally detached and intimately aware. Deira splits the story into seven “boxes” ,