Crawling, she managed to reach out and grab her phone. Davi's last voicemail was still there. Did it make sense? Maybe not, but she listened again.
"Sis... Where are you?" The voice came out trembling, failing, the sound of fire in the background. "It hurts so much... We called you so many times... Where are you? Where were you?"
She gnashed her teeth in agony, anger, regret. She knew that if she had gone, she would have died. But at least with dignity.
"I remembered what you told me. I pr-promise I'll never fo-forget you... And do this for me, okay? Don't forget me."
She screamed aloud, tasting the metallic burn in her gut from the drug overdose.
"My plush hamster is in my roo-room. Take care of him for me."
The call's beep came, too loud, too melancholic, along with Davi's last living, recorded breath—the only remnant of the courage Ketlen never had.
It was then that the space around her changed. The walls ceased to exist. The city too. Now it was just darkness. A darkness that breathed.
A presence formed in the middle of nowhere. Tall, silent. Strong as a living statue. The contours of its hair moved as if floating in still water.
"Da... Dad?" she whispered, her voice broken by crying and saliva.
She could hear him there, as on the day she made the biggest mistake of her life, on a forced call with her father. When she stammered "Da... Dad," he heard "Daddy."
But no. Nothing answered. He was dead, and he would remain so.
The shadow merely watched.
"Daddy... please, talk to me..." She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling a sharp pain in her chest. "Please... Daddy... Now I'll call you Daddy... Forever... Please, Daddy..."
She saw his outline. The width of his shoulders. The way he stood still. But there was no scent of cologne, no warmth of an embrace. Only the presence. And that hurt more than absence.
A hiss cut the silence. An electronic sound, like the end of a cassette tape swallowed by an old recorder. Mixed with the hiss, a slow, deep, rhythmic beat—the sound of an enormous heart beating outside a body.
"You... you're not my father..."
It was then that the shadow spoke.
"Hey!"
The voice was masculine. But it came out too loud. Too accusing. And strangely... comforting. Familiar. Like a childhood memory that never existed.
"Why did you kill me?" In contrast, this time, the voice came out in a whisper, almost childlike.
Ketlen trembled. But she could no longer react.
But suddenly, the shadow changed. Like a living delirium, it began to turn red. Not the red of blood, but the red of alarm. Of imminent end. Of collapse.
The hiss intensified. The heart beat stronger. Like fists pounding at the door of reality.
She tried to close her eyes. Turn her face away. Flee. But it was too late. The shadow enveloped her. Or perhaps it had always been inside her.
"Why did you kill me..." The voice repeated, now softer, closer, almost a whisper "...If all I wanted was to save you?"
She didn't understand. Or understood too much. The world spun. Her body no longer obeyed. She vomited. Cried without tears. Drooled, anesthetized over the cold puddle of vomit.
She sank into the last meal shared with the three she loved most... And that food, still seasoned with laughter, with confessions, with their presence—refused to die with her, as if it were holding a grudge.
It was a cruel contrast, almost poetic: They, now corpses, still alive in the flavor. She, still alive, already a remnant.
And in the back of her mind...
Pedro.
The torturer with whom she spent her last words, her last ounce of strength.
Rodolfo.
The doctor who witnessed her fall. With him she spent her last energies, the last batteries of humanity.
While the true loves of her life fell silent—in the dirt, in the blood, in the end.
It was then she heard the voice again. Now, clearer. More human. Sadder.
"You saw me as an enemy, Ketlen..."
She heard something close to a laugh, but it sounded distant, as if from another plane, another dimension.
"But sometimes, what saves you... is precisely what you fear most..."
A silence. Then, almost like an echo from another life:
"You tortured me for him, didn't you?" The voice paused, whispering so low in Ketlen's ear that she frowned to hear. "Because we are made of the same shadow."
The cell phone light died. And in the end, even the last light decided to leave.
A scream. A single feminine scream, tearing the world outside like a nail in the flesh of God.
Ketlen heard it. Even submerged in the pasty blackness of her mind, even trapped between erratic heartbeats and the ghostly hiss that seemed to come from inside her own skull... she heard it.
And something opened. Not in her ears. But in a deeper place. A nameless place.
Her eyes rolled beneath heavy, trembling eyelids.
"Mom..."
The word came out like air defeated by an ulcer. A broken prayer. A sob trying to pass as language.
"MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM?!"
And then came another. And another. Each one less alive than the last. Each one more spectral, more decayed. It was like calling out to a corpse she herself helped bury—or burn?