Chapter 21

Dear Diary,

The darkness of my room is darker than it seems. Always hiding the monsters that scare me at night, although I know that the most dangerous of them is in one part of the room. In the bathroom. Actually, I can hear them now. I can hear their screams. They are calling my name.

—Elena ... Oh, Elena...

—Come on, little girl... We just want to play with you.

—We won't hurt you... It will be our promise.

—Come, Elena...

However, I refuse to get out of the covers and leave my bed; the only safe place there is for me within the darkness of these four pink walls.

I am writing to you because I just woke up for the second time in the night and I can't get to sleep. Lately, these bad dreams have been appearing more and more, night after night. It's killing me and I'm starting to believe it's going to finish me off someday. So I hope —and wish, crossing my fingers— that it is nothing more than a stage from which I will emerge very soon.

[...]

❝The wind hits my face, as I tried to control my heavy breathing. I didn't quite know how I had come to be on that dark street, but the only thing I knew well at that moment was that the men who were chasing me were going to do something very bad to me if I didn't run faster than they did.

«Mom, where are you? Save me», I thought crying, not finding a hiding place from those horrible beings.

Suddenly, I saw someone lighting the street with a flashlight. It was my salvation. It was my mother. When we made eye contact, I knew that I would not die that night I would have —at last— a sweet dream.

I began to smile and regain that innocent glow of an eight-year-old girl, but all that faded when I discovered that my mother would not save me from those monsters. I was screaming her name with all my strength, trying in vain to get her attention or make her see that I was in danger, yet she did nothing.

She stayed there, without moving from her place, as still as a person can be as if her daughter was not escaping from potential rapists as if her daughter were not crying out for her help, as if her beloved daughter did not exist for her.

And my surprise was such that I forgot to run and stopped on that street. A terrible mistake, by the way. The men who were chasing me were getting closer and closer to me. They took me by the arms and dragged me down the lonely track.

A little girl was kicking the air, while she cried and saw how her mother was not able to free her from those arms that held her.

They directed me to the steps of a building where I could clearly see my mother and she could see me. What broke my heart was not the macabre laughter of those monsters or the fact that I could know that my end was very near, but that my mother did not flinch when one of those men pulled out a knife and plunged it into my chest.❞

You don't think Mom could let me get hurt, Do you?

—Elena

[...]

❝When we think we are completely alone, there is someone who watches us from the distance—or not so far—.❞