GEOVANNA COULD NOT SLEEP. Darkness enveloped the room, trapping the air until it was reduced to absolute nothingness. She was breathing with great difficulty. Bathed in sweat, she writhed on the sheets, a victim of her obsessive imagination.
The beginning of the dream turned into a nightmare when she seemed to see, among the shadows of her room, the silhouette of a man slowly approaching the bed. Her first reaction was to remain still, without moving. She didn't even dare to breathe, she was so terrified. A prayer emerged on her lips.
Then she stopped seeing him, or rather, feeling him, but in her mind she could still hear his breathing. He was there. In some corner of her room. Waiting for the opportunity to slit her throat.
In a desperate gesture of survival, Geovanna got up, ready to turn on the light. There was no one there, just a blouse and long pants hanging on the hanger. She felt like an idiot for thinking that there might be someone in that room, although she still had the uncomfortable feeling that she was being watched. She was afraid, there was no need to deny it. There were more than enough reasons for that.
Since she wasn't going to be able to sleep anyway, she got out of bed and went straight to the bathroom. She rummaged through the vanity unit until she finally found what she had come for: her sleeping pills.
She filled a glass with water and put a couple of capsules in her mouth. She looked at herself in the mirror. Grotesque dark circles surrounded her eyelids, already wrinkled due to age. She felt tired, falling apart, but above all, alone.
Losing Jorge, who had offered her the stability and company she needed to establish a meaningful relationship, was a hard blow, from which she had not yet recovered. At forty-six years of age, not without good times and occasional loves, all she wanted was to spend the rest of her life with a calm and intelligent man, capable of filling the spiritual void that had been growing with the passing of time. She put her worries aside and went back to bed. Before going to bed, she remembered the conversation she had had with Gregory Evans that same afternoon.
She admitted that she had made one or two mistakes in going into detail. She knew that Greg was a very perceptive person and that, sooner or later, he would realize that something was missing in her story.
She didn't dare tell him the whole truth out of distrust or simply out of fear of seeming too cold. She didn't want to say that she had gone to Jorge's house shortly after receiving his phone call and that, after entering his apartment, she found him dead in a pool of blood, the same blood that the killers had used to write a very significant warning on the wall.
No, she didn't want to make her presence known at a crime scene. She could become an easy target for the police and even for those who ended Jorge's life and burned the manuscript.
She had already done too much by telling the truth to Colmenares, the only person she could trust completely. How could she tell Gregory that she was afraid? Afraid of the horrible things she saw inside the house...
Afraid of not understanding that something like that had happened to someone as good and honest as Jorge... Afraid of being next...
She went back to bed, but first she put the clothes hanging on the hanger and closed the closet door. She turned off the light. The pills would soon take effect. Gothic letters of blood danced in her head before she succumbed, irremediably, in Morpheus's arms.