Chapter 23

Dear Diary,

I'm beginning to believe that this is not going to end well. «What it is?», you may be wondering. The answer is so simple, darling: my life. I have a very bad feeling, so real as well as horrible, although I do not want to think so much about it. I don't want to make nasty scenes about what might happen to me, but I'm —almost— sure I will never be the same again after all this mental chaos.

What was I like before? Well, when Dad was still working in that company —from which he was later fired— the three of us were so happy together: him, Mom, and me. I was a happy girl and in my life, there was no space for worries.

But now everything is totally different.

Now I find myself here —in my room— while uselessly trying to convince myself that this nightmare was not real, that my mind is playing with me again, but I fail to try again.

I would never admit it to Mom —because I know that it would destroy her— but I still miss Dad. The strong arms of him when they made me fly across my room, the penetrating cologne of him that was reassuring when he hugged me, the deep voice of him when he called my name and snuggled next to me until I fell asleep. I am fully aware that he was not a saint —and that he was not exactly loving towards my mother. He was the kind of person you would live hating for all the years you have left in this world. Manipulative, liar, and violent were words that perfectly suited my father. Despite all that, he was and always will be the man who made my very existence possible.

At first, I told you that I had a bad feeling, but I did not tell you about what. If Dad abandoned me with my mother in this house, What would it cost Mom to abandon me too? If you were a person, my diary, and not just paper sheathed in a pink cape with glitter, you would tell me that I am thinking too much, that I am deviating from reality. But it's not like that. Sometimes I think these dreams could come true. And I think —too much for my mental sanity— that this latter one could also be real for my bad luck.

[...]

❝The screams and laughter bounced off the white bathroom walls like tennis balls. Ugh, I really didn't want to be there. Of all the places in the world, Why did I have to be precisely in this one?!

—You are never going to escape my clutches, Elena. Stop crying and relax, we have all night to have fun. It's just the two of us. Ha!

Trying to relax my breathing and wiping my tears with the towel on the sink, I rested my hands on the knob of the brown door and turned. I wanted to escape from that horrible place and look for my mom and snuggle up next to her, inhaling the soft vanilla perfume of her clothes.

But it was closed. I was trapped. What I most feared. Terrifyingly trapped in the place of my nightmares.

—Are you leaving so soon? But if we just started the game.

Oh, no. No. No. It couldn't be. I lost my temper and started throwing things in the air in order to find a way to escape. Oxygen was depleted in the limited space, or so I perceived it, inhaling and exhaling rapidly. I grabbed a shampoo bottle that sat on a not-so-high shelf and tapped it on the glass of the small window above the shower. Maybe if I pushed myself with my arms I could escape...

—No! —The reflection screamed and a great force knocked me to the ground. My knees and elbows ached from the sudden landing. —You are not going anywhere, Elena! I won't allow it. Never!

I didn't want to fight now. You could consider me a total coward, but I did not want to continue feeling that stabbing pain in my body if I alarmed that girl by giving signs of running away. At least not right now.

—Come here, little bitch. You don't know how long I've waited for this moment. Maybe a hundred years, but that doesn't matter now. None of the previous girls had lasted as long as you. You are my chosen one, Elena.

The strength that I had left was too little to understand the words that came out of her mouth. She parted her lips and vomited a thick black scent. The liquid came out of the white frame of the mirror and continued its journey across the floor. Soon, the bathroom began to fill with that scent, staining my pajamas in the process, while I was lying trying to get up with no response from my weak muscles.

Entering my nostrils, the thick liquid covered my eyes, leaving me totally excluded from what was happening around me. I could only hear the laughter of my reflection coming out of the mirror, as I died on the marble floor.

I couldn't see anything, everything was so dark. I couldn't breathe.❞

—Elena

[...]

—911, What is your emergency?

—...

❝And in that small instant, when you didn't realize it, you became her prey and she became your predator❞.