The Horror of Ordinary Life

"Yes, hurrah, I could write a book about zombies! I'd plunder thousands of pages of literature and cinema, so much cinema. You know, the first zombie movie dates back to nineteen hundred... Wait, let me check Google..."
"Save your fingertips! You'd only be plundering material that others have already plundered. You'd just be serving the same reheated soup."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure!"
"So zombies are a no."
"Let them rot in peace."
"How do you feel about a detective story with an inspector?"
"You mean the usual inspector who's despised by the entire precinct, smokes without restraint, clings to the bottle like it's his mother's breast, has a wife and kids who refuse to see him, and when the case stalls, decides to take justice into his own hands?"
"An inspector like that, but without the mother's breast part. You know, it might make the whole thing slip into incest."
"Leave it alone..."
"Why?"
"Because it's a cliché – one that sells, God knows, but still a cliché."
"A pathologist then! A forensic pathologist who solves cases. I actually know a pathologist. I'm not saying he'd take me on a honeymoon to the morgue, but he could give me some tips about his profession and some gruesome details. Maybe I'll invite him to dinner..."
"But there are thousands of those!"
"Of pathologists who solve cases?"
"Who else?"
"But I'll give him a vice..."
"After Bukowski's books, there's no vice left that holds up."
"A birth defect then. I'll make him dyslexic!"
"That already exists..."
"A dyslexic pathologist?"
"Not exactly. It's a detective, but what's the difference!"
"Can I say a bad word?"
"No!"
"Shit!"
"You said it!"
"After the dyslexic inspector, I had the right. What if I switched to a serial killer?"
"Hmm, a bit overused but always interesting..."
"I'll make him special... Ah, listen to this idea... He's a serial killer who doesn't know he's one. I mean, he dissociates. He replaces his persona by imagining himself as a brute crossing the desolate countryside in an old van..."
"Already done..."
"Really?"
"Oh yes!"
"A homeless serial killer. One who hides in other people's homes and..."
"You're late to that party, my dear!"
"One who goes around unarmed and when he has to kill his victim, improvises..."
"Already done."
"And who would this genius be?"
"I'd tell you but I can't. It's the same author as this story and he'd end up being disqualified."
"I'll read something of his."
"You should, he's good."
"A serial killer who kills virgins!"
"Oh God!"
"He goes around wearing a mask!"
"Ugh!"
"He's a religious fanatic."
"Come on! Are you giving up?"
"No, damn it! I'll write a story with femmes fatales, criminals, vampires, and demons cheerfully chasing each other among city skyscrapers!"
"You forgot the werewolves..."
"It wouldn't work, would it?"
"Maybe it would, if we were in 1948, a bit before the advent of television."
"Infernal machines, lethal epidemics, interplanetary coups... A xenomorphic organism - an extraterrestrial parasite that single-handedly exterminates the entire crew of a large space cargo..."
"Who are you trying to fool?"
"Doesn't work?"
"No way, beautiful!"
"Let me think. An idea must come to me, sooner or later... I've got it. An enormous library, full of books with the names of all people who have lived and are living on this earth written in them..."
"And with their birth and death dates, perhaps..."
"Yeah, perhaps! Why are you laughing? Ah, I get it, already done. Let's try then with the story of a child who talks to the dead, an Indian cemetery that brings corpses back to life, a frustrated girl with telekinetic powers, an epidemic where everyone's dead but the people at the Arctic base don't know anything. A story with a corpse preserved in a fridge, an Amazon expedition that discovers the tree of life at the center of the ecosystem, a society where they burn books, an abandoned hotel in the mountains, someone who has a car accident and is cared for by a strange nurse... Some young fellows who venture out in search of a corpse?"
"Come on, don't let yourself go. You need to stay calm and you'll see, an idea will come. Right now you're stressed and you won't get anything out of that little head of yours. It's late now. I need to throw something together to eat and then I'm going out. I have yoga class, you know?"
"And I'm sad..."
"About this inspiration thing? Don't think about it and you'll see it'll get better. Now don't be offended, but I really have to go..."

Today my friend has been cynical, more than usual.
I leave her when she's already focused on finding something in the back of her pantry that can be ready in less than ten minutes, and in just five stirs of a spoon.
On the landing, with the door now closed behind me, I sink into the confused sounds of a couple of televisions, unwitting messengers of the same lie. I choose not to take the elevator and face the eight floors stepping on pristine steps. They seem not to have aged at all, and to have preserved in them a bit of the smell of those years, when apartment buildings replaced meadows with the same speed with which night alternated with day. I form an idea of which reheated dishes were preferred for that evening and am surprised that the tenant on the third floor is singing a song against the fragrant backdrop of sautéing.
Outside, the usual street, which seems to have not yet digested the afternoon traffic.
A procession of pedestrians defies death, heads bowed and faces barely lit by the opaque reflection of the sidewalk.
A couple of cyclists faces the green light with an underlying tension that can be felt from a distance. He, with square pedaling and curved shoulders, heads straight for the service road on the opposite side. She follows him, nervously huddled in her gray leotard.
The beggar at the corner hasn't left yet, and the homeless woman under the lamppost seems to have found company.
The businessman arrives menacingly, maintaining the exact center of the sidewalk. He brandishes his briefcase like a battering ram, and his secretary follows him with breath scraping in her throat. She's tired and walks fighting with the constraints of a too-tight skirt. She has X-shaped knees that converge inelegantly toward the center, heels dangerously seeking a manhole to slip into, and in her eyes the desire to go home, and to do it as soon as possible.
The mother struggles to keep the capricious child in check. Five years old, maybe six, and a cascade of decibels to vent into the ears of the unfortunate around them. The woman apologizes with a forced smile, placed on her face as if it were fake.
The street vendor with roasted chestnuts could still package a few more bags, but has been systematically ignored by all passersby. I move on, clearly perceiving the watershed between disappointment and anger. The girl behind me, twenty years worn poorly and an organic chemistry formula bouncing confusedly in her brain, stops in front of the roasted chestnuts, hesitates, and leaves without buying any.
I pass the newsstand with a mummy inside, the window of a stationery store that has lost faith in itself, and the dusty collection of an antique dealer.
Finally, I reach the metro stairs and catapult myself into rush hour hell.
The train has already pierced the station's saturated air with a roar and welcomes me into an atmosphere of unreal heat and brake stench.
In the car, an amorphous regiment of human beings is attracted to their phone screens. They sway, synchronized with every movement, and sometimes feel the need for support. A forest of hands projects everywhere, searching for the right hold. The man with tortoiseshell glasses misses his mark and messes up the snow-white hair of the little old lady with the dog in her arms. The exchange of apologies and pleasantries is seasoned with a nauseating blend of hypocrisy and good manners.
The girl on the other side of the car is metaphorically naked.
She's devoid of a phone or a companion to converse with. The dirty window doesn't reflect the image of her beautiful face.
We look at each other, across the few meters that divide us and the thousand life stories enclosed by zippers.
I imagine her under a straw umbrella, set in the hot white sand of a tropical beach, with the light breeze that precedes sunset, the sun's reflection on the shoreline, and a spread of red clouds on the horizon. For a moment, I perceive a breath passing through her black hair.
She hints at a smile, shy, drawn with a light stroke behind the evaporated memory of lip gloss. We seem made for each other, but we can't find the courage to speak.
When my stop arrives, too soon and suddenly, I get off with two solid certainties.
The first is that I will never see the metro girl again.
The second is that I've had an idea for a book.
It will be set in the streets of my city and it will be a horror story.

Screens - Where Beauty Never Dies

 

If only I could find a flaw in her. Something to give me courage, something to bring her closer to planet earth, to being human...

The perfection of her face embarrasses me. The smooth skin, the broad forehead, the large, widely-set eyes, grey like the sky at daybreak.

The curve of her chin beneath her heart-shaped lips, slightly parted over rows of white teeth, harmonizes with her firm breasts, and her costume jewelry pendant points the way to paradise. Her dark hair cascades in wide waves over her shoulders. I'm sure it smells of shampoo.

If only I could find a flaw in her.

Now playful, now fatal, cheerful, pensive.

A pair of large tortoiseshell glasses projects her into the world of intellectuals. A couple of unbuttoned buttons and suddenly a mighty sea of foam and wind materializes behind her, at the end of the white beach of a distant island. The lights conspire with her. She would look good under the warm beams of halogen lights just as well as in the livid sadness of a police station's fluorescent lighting.

I place my phone on the small table, next to the beer glass I've drunk in three gulps to overcome my fear. The screen dims the colors and then goes dark.

Six or seven steps separate us: the run-up for a penalty kick. When I take the first step, awkward, heavy, final as a gravestone, my thoughts are the same as those of someone about to kick that ball that will move more money than a million factory workers on the assembly line.

Anxiety, fear of failure, of losing that chance that won't come again.

She's tall, with a sweep of legs that mortifies the bar stool. Her pleated skirt, ending a few inches above her knees, is in a discreet blue that matches well with her slightly lighter blouse. Summer is in the air, and now I'm close enough to smell her sweet scent.

"Hi. I'm Francesco, and you... You must be Lisa."

Her lips curl for an instant, and yes, I think I've found the flaw, the one that gives me courage. Next to her elbow resting on the counter, I see a red aperitif, garnished with an orange slice stuck on the sugar-rimmed glass. The bartender, with his suspicious tan and sleeves rolled up over strong arms, grasps the importance of the moment and moves away under the pretext of reaching for the hanging towel.

"And how do you know my name? Have we met somewhere before?"

The question is legitimate, and the price to pay is the weakness in my knees that I hope doesn't translate into the face of someone who urgently needs to run to the bathroom. The approach was pathetic, but I recover quickly.

"Ah, no. We've never met. You're... you're among my Instagram contacts and Facebook too, you see, and I recognized you." I point to my smartphone, with a third of its base awkwardly jutting out from the low table next to the couch. The muscular bartender rubs the inside of a glass with his fingers wrapped in the cloth and dispenses a conspiratorial smile. Lisa steps back to size me up better. She squints her eyes, points her finger, and hints at a crooked smile. I can tell from her mischievous look that she's placed me in the right box of social media contacts.

"Francesco Nine Three?"

I'm about to burst with pride. I beat my chest like Tarzan. "That's me. Ninety-three is my birth year."

"And tell me: is Francesco your name, or were you inspired by some saint?"

"No, what saint? Francesco Maria..."

She laughs. "Maria like the Virgin?"

I'm losing steam like an engine at the end of its life. The bartender has taken his ninety kilos of muscle to the back, and beyond the glass, the photos of a fading afternoon scroll by. Jackets open over loosened ties, slipping shoulder straps, heavy handbags, and freshly renewed lipstick. Selfies with colored glasses are mandatory, and not all cameras show mercy after a long day behind the desk.

"Like my grandmother..."

"Who was called Maria?"

I'm obvious, predictable. I remember the flush at the end of a piss, but despite this, the embodiment of beauty before me doesn't discard me. Maybe I amuse her, fill those five minutes before the really cool guy comes to pick her up. Maybe she has a soft spot for losers and I move her like the sunset after a hellish day.

"Are you paying?" The answer is implied. The bartender with the perfect pectorals plays the part of cashier, stylishly dons a pair of thin-framed glasses, and confidently punches the keys of the cash register. "That's twenty-three."

While I pay, Lisa rubs against me. Her warm breath carries a barely whispered thank you. The weakness in my knees shifts to a swarm of fierce butterflies tickling my belly.

Behind the shuffle wearing down the sidewalk, an Aston Martin DB11 cuts through the wall of the building like a diamond. It's swamp water green, or maybe lake blue contaminated with algae. Depends on how you look at it.

Sitting at the wheel is Lisa, waiting for me.

The first time doesn't last long, but I'm good at climbing stairs and diving back into the warm broth of the most welcoming pool in the world.

This time I have time to dedicate to details: to the turgidity of nipples that incise the chest, to the silk skin that raises the hair on my arms like an electric shock, to the coming and going of the belly, which rises and falls, and rises and falls like a ship with full sails that has gained the open sea.

The two-thousand-euro bottle of Louis Roederer is ready to pop its cork to accompany the canapés with large-grain caviar. The bedroom window embraces the sparkle on the sea's surface that anticipates the setting sun.

It's a dream, one of those to leaf through like a photo album.

Lisa doesn't hold back and breathes. Breathes and seems to want to accumulate all the world's energy to explode like a nuclear bomb. The certain thing is that I will blow up along with her.

The house is a modern building, low, with essential architecture. It appeared at the end of a white dirt road that crosses a pine forest surrendered to the whims of the wind and welcomed me with a studio of polished floors, high tech, and abstract paintings on the walls. The roof with exposed beams, only slightly inclined, is interrupted by the stone fireplace in the center of the space, preceded by a large sofa and a glass table ready for celebration. The door on the wall at the back opens onto a sumptuous bathroom and the bedroom. I already knew I would spend an unforgettable moment there.

When my heart begins to slow down, I notice the screen mounted on the wall. It's a twenty-six-inch LCD, mounted on an adjustable support. It shows from above a child of maybe two years. He sleeps in his crib with one arm pinched under his face and his long blonde hair spread like a fan on the blue pillow. While Lisa still seeks the natural rhythm of her breathing, the little one shows the serenity of the innocent. I don't have time to ask when she anticipates me.

"His name is Martino. He'll turn two in September. I had him with Valerio, my first husband..."

I wonder who the second husband is, and once again she reads my mind. "The second doesn't exist. Oh God, he'll come, also because the little angel needs a father, but for now nothing. Let's say I'm searching for the ideal candidate..."

The child is stunning.

Toxic, destructive thoughts chase each other. Lisa must have had a husband as beautiful as a god. I expect a merciless comparison, between muscles, intelligence, personality, and less apparent virtues. Come to think of it, I'm also quite broke, and my wallet is still bleeding after paying for the aperitif, and instead, apparently, Lisa has a standard of living that doesn't belong to me. I can still feel the vibrations of the Aston Martin propagating in my backside. I give voice to my mouth without thinking too much.

"Could it be me?"

The look is one of those that sucks all your blood and stores it in ice at the bottom of the freezer. I feel like the fish in the aquarium, like the insect caught by the heartless child and left to consume with fatigue at the bottom of the jar. "What?"

"The ideal candidate..."

Lisa pulls her knees up. They brush against my bare legs, and I feel the crank starting to turn again. I receive the kiss and turn to see the child on TV. Like his mother, he has changed position. Now he sleeps on his back, with his mouth seeming to devour the pillow.

"You could be, why not! The first interview, I'd say, went well and the second..."

I can still speak before being suffocated by a kiss. It ends after an eternity while her hand shifts into gear. "Interview? It doesn't seem like we talked..."

She sighs. "It was the practical test. After eating, we'll start with the interrogations. Does the program work for you?"

I like the program and I like how she kisses. My animalistic side likes it as it starts to stamp like a horse in the storm.

Lisa's phone vibrates on the marble surface of the small table, and all contacts short-circuit. I stop what I've started and dismount from the horse. She, struck by sudden modesty, pulls the sheet to her chin and answers.

It's a video call.

The screen frames an alpha male face: important jaw, salt-and-pepper beard neglected with wisdom, black and severe eyes like those of a commander. Lisa apologizes with a bit of embarrassment.

"It's Valerio, my ex-husband."

I wonder how long it takes him to mess up his hair so well and why the clavicle framed at the bottom of the display reminds me of the wrought iron of gates. His voice worthy of dubbing movie stars meets expectations.

"Did I disturb? Do you have guests?"

The answer is lapidary. "No, actually yes. To what do I owe your appearance?"

"Tomorrow will be windy. Strong. With Gigi and Sabri we had decided to go sailing. If it works out right, even Micky and Beppe are with us. You?"

I hope Lisa consults me but all in all it's better she doesn't. As a sailor I'm worth nothing and I think I would fall overboard at the first tack. To tell the truth, I'm scared of any liquid that stirs much more than gargling with salt or aspirin rolling in half a glass of water. I would have said no in front of the Greek god to disintegrate immediately after behind that macho smile.

"Good for you. And what do I do with Martino?"

This time the alpha male's voice doesn't mask the emotion. "How's the little one doing. Is he managing?"

"He runs like a train, plays, eats and shits but I'd say it's still too early to leave him alone with something to heat in the microwave and porn to watch on the web..."

Indeed, the child is special. He yawns and rubs his eyes, still sleepy in the middle of that serious face. I wouldn't be surprised if he were thinking about a business meeting. Lisa, instead, talks to the screen with the same transport she would have before a person in flesh and blood. Valerio doesn't give up:

"Don't leave him alone. Call the babysitter and put her to work changing diapers..."

When finally Lisa turns in search of my consent, I've abandoned the mattress and crossed the large room barefoot. I look outside covering my privates with my hand and while a halo of condensation forms around my nose pressed against the glass. There's no way to go out onto the blue-slippered terrace that overlooks the waves. The crystal, which occupies the entire wall, is mortised into the walls and floor like a dam in granite. The sea is becoming contaminated with some drops of black and the sky begins to get heavy. Lisa puts her ex-husband on hold. With the sheet around her, she wiggles to the computer in standby on the desk and calls the babysitter.

She answers after a series of chirps that remind of a love-struck pigeon.

She's as dry as a winter branch and invaded by extraterrestrial-sized blue eyes. Her hair appears dark due to the wetness but is blonde and stuck to her face. I don't see the towel around her neck but it's certain she just got out of the shower. The piercing on her nose gleams in the webcam frame as if catching the rhythmic light of a flasher. I discover after a moment that her name is Claudia.

Lisa sits on the edge of the chair, blocks the sheet on her chest with her hand and asks the babysitter if she has time and means to take charge of little Martino when she, ex-husband Valerio and the series of sporty friends ready for anything will delight themselves among the salty breakers in the scorching sun. Meanwhile, the child has engaged in a fight with the sheets and seems to be climbing the wall in the Dolomites of Cadore.

The negotiation doesn't last long. "Of course, Lisa, I'll keep him with me as long as necessary," she says, and Lisa repays her with that smile I've learned to know.

I decide to get dressed.

The window to the terrace is hostile, sealed like a coffin and my nudity embarrasses me. Valerio, the ex-husband, is still framed on the cell phone screen. He fiddles with his beard, makes faces and pushes his lips with his tongue until the tip peeks out. I pass, avoiding ending up in the frame and go beyond. There are things after sex that need to be done right away, like smoking and changing the fish's water. I remember having left my cigarettes in the Aston Martin.

The conversation between the two has become thick.

They talk about the weather, the sea, the thirteen-meter catamaran that rocks placidly in the waters of the small port, their respective love adventures. Claudia mentions a guy who reminds her of the god of the sea, Lisa laughs but delays in telling her about me. Little Martino, on video, has fought with the sheets to the point that they wrap him like a shroud.

The bathroom doesn't disappoint, just a bit, so to speak, solemn. Above the double sink, the mirror is carved inside a deep niche. No cabinet or rug. The shower box with the wooden base is completely transparent, the large whirlpool tub dominates the center of the floor in severe gray marble with bone-white striations. The same coating is used for the walls.

While Lisa and Claudia laugh in their video conference, I empty my bladder, open the shower water and dive into a wall of steam.

That pampers me, regenerates me.

Dissolves tensions and purifies the skin. I'm inside a parallel universe, I feel like I'm traveling on a flying saucer.

The deep sea blue shower gel smells of salt spray. It drips on my chest, on my legs and forms a bluish film that tickles my feet.

I allow myself a second round and sense through the coming and going of steam that Lisa is filling the whirlpool tub.

She has gathered her hair in a chignon, the bangs are divided unevenly: abundant on her left until covering the eye, reduced to a less consistent tuft of hair on the opposite side of the face. Immersed in the bubbling water that splashes on her face, she's serious enough to worry me.

"Everything okay, Lisa? Did you arrange with Claudia?"

She doesn't answer. She sinks under the bubbles. I fear I've offended her. I've worn the men's bathrobe that was hanging next to her microfiber one and maybe I've exceeded in confidence. She resurfaces after almost a minute.

She's breathless.

Water drips from her nostrils and the chignon has come undone in a series of uneven braids stuck to her shoulders and breasts. Without being asked, I remove the bathrobe and put it back in its place. Naked as a worm I'm not authoritative but I try anyway:

"Lisa, it was beautiful. Now... now I'll go back there, get dressed and then leave. So, good luck with the catamaran trip..."

She spits out the water she had swallowed. She has reddened eyes like after a long swim in the sea.

"But no! There's champagne and caviar canapés. You're not leaving without having drunk something first. Don't you think?"

"It would be a sin to say no to Louis Roederer..."

She lingers. With a cough she expels more water, from her nose and mouth. The smile is barely hinted at, should be interpreted between the lines of that beautiful face. "We'll drink it here. Go get it..."

And I return to the room. The skin warm from the steam clashes with the mild air of the environment. Still the sea slowly sinking into darkness, the unmade bed, the sheets abandoned on the ground on the way to the bathroom. Claudia's face, Lisa's friend babysitter, has remained impressed on the computer screen.

I'm struck by the fixity of her gaze, by her diaphanous skin, by the blue tracery of veins visible beneath the edematous bags under her eyes. The mild air in the room turns to ice.

I move closer.

Claudia appears dead but surprises me by vomiting a stream of water mixed with dark, soft matter.

Seaweed.

The second retch is even worse and splatters the video camera. The deep, guttural sound resembles an infernal moan.

I'm naked, my sex reduced to nothing, legs trembling. Fear.

Valerio, framed in Lisa's still-active phone, is dead. His hair is plastered to his skull, eyelids half-closed over fixed pupils, lips swollen and purplish. I move close enough to understand that the black background behind his head is a body bag, and I nearly faint when, with a single clean gesture, decisive as a guillotine blade, an anonymous hand pulls the zipper, closing the curtain on the scene.

The sixteen-inch screen hanging on the wall looks like an aquarium glass. There are bubbles, large and small, stuck to the surface, bubbles rising and a cloud of dirt floating formlessly in the center of the scene.

Water.

I want to scream but the cry gets caught between my tonsils and what I get is a convulsive cough and I feel cold. The darkness behind the window has conquered the sea and a sky poor in stars weighs like a manhole cover.

I want to go back to Lisa, warn her about what's happening but my feet are practically glued to the floor.

When I see the lifeless body of the child floating on the screen with arms spread wide, I fall to my knees as if I'd been shot.

Somehow, I return to the bathroom.

The whirlpool tub bubbles like a volcano and Lisa's hand has broken its nails in the attempt to get out. Now it's motionless, facing downward with the wrist bent over the edge.

My phone still works.

I no longer feel cold, or pain.

Naked, without the strength or ability to piece together the fragments of my soul, I connect to the social network and I see her there, wonderful. Now with intellectual glasses, now with beach sand mischievously stuck to her firm buttocks. Now dressed up for little Martino's christening. In the group photo everyone appears: Lisa, Valerio, the little one, Claudia, and all the other friends.

I understand only afterward that they drowned in the sea, dead, overwhelmed a year earlier by a sudden rogue wave. For social networks, however, and for my infinite naivety, Lisa continued to exist.

With time I found the spirit to get dressed but the screens haven't finished torturing me. The scenes perpetuate, the deaths repeat.

It's impossible to leave the house.

If I look out the window toward the sea, where days and nights alternate, if I approach the other windows scattered throughout the house, I see curious eyes converging on my desperation and enormous thumbs scrolling on the outside of the glass, scrolling, scrolling.

Scrolling.

I am dead but not deleted.

I continue to exist, sealed inside a social network like a little fish between the walls of its glass bowl.

Three days late - Memories, Monsters, and the Last Train

 My sister moves like a ballerina. She paces back and forth along the bare platform of the station. Careful not to trip over the weeds that have found their way to the light between the cobblestones, she takes a few steps en pointe and then returns with an arrière that, as far as I know, is executed with unforgivable sloppiness. She learned it when she was little, I recall, when Mom used to force her to attend three dance lessons a week. To do it, to bring a bit of healthy countryside vigor into the dusty, dismal dance halls buried nine floors below old buildings, she was willing to drive her into town in Dad’s battered hunter’s pickup truck. The train came only twice a day, with a smell of brakes that clung to your throat, and it was often late. Now Dad is gone, and so is Mom, but the pickup truck has survived a head-on collision with a manure tractor, ten mandatory inspections, an engine transplant, and a couple of paint jobs as rough as the anti-rust coating on a ship headed for decommissioning. It and its bald tires are parked under the sun at the entrance to the abandoned station, in front of a wall covered in spray-painted phalluses, profanities, and mold creeping up from the underworld. The only plane tree providing shade over the parking lot consumed its prefab block planter long before the national soccer team won its penultimate World Cup.

My sister stops with a bras bas, imperfect in the curvature of the wrists but harmonious otherwise. When she looks at me like that, instinct tells me to blow a raspberry. I hold back, mindful of my twenty years and her nineteen. I hold back at the thought of Mom, who would have slapped me, and Dad, always ready to send me out to the fields to cool my hot temper, with a hoe on my shoulder, an axe for chopping wood, and a flask of water meant to last all day.

“Today’s the last day. If the train doesn’t come, it means we’ll have to make do without our friends.”

The thought makes me sick. I haven’t seen Mirko since summer, when he came to stay at his country house to escape the scorching city nights. I remember Chiara and Gigi from the autumn party, with chestnuts roasting over the fire, new wine to accompany them, and an unseasonable warmth that dragged along July’s sticky sweat. Eliana showed up at the start of the season to show off her new convertible Mercedes E-Class, and then nothing. I don’t know what to say to my sister. Ever since she broke up with Gualtiero, she’s been more dangerous than an unexploded bomb with a faulty fuse.

Me? You’re really asking about me?

I’d better stay away from Valeria. My girlfriend has turned bitter, nasty, and always ready to bite my head off. If it were up to me, she could stay at my place, but only if tied hand and foot.

Paola insists. When my sister is in a bad mood, the blue of her eyes shifts to a pale azure, and her features transform her into the commander of a firing squad, ready to shoot on orders barked in German.

“What did Mirko say?”

I repeat like a broken record. “Two days ago, he told me they managed to catch the train and would arrive on time...”

“And yesterday?”

I nod like the little spring-figure man stuck to the pickup’s dashboard for the last ten years. “That they’d make it, come hell or high water, but they’d make it.”

She shifts from poised ballerina to blacksmith ready for a brawl. It’s that typical attitude of a country girl unaccustomed to rhetoric. “And instead, I think they stayed in the city, stepping on each other’s toes.”

I lean against the electric pole, stick my hands in my pockets, and think. “You’re right, Paola. If the train doesn’t come,” I check my wristwatch, “within, let’s say… let’s say half an hour, we’ll give up and call it a night. We’ll head back to the farmhouse and cobble something together for dinner.”

“What about Lidia?”

I think about the neighbor, as gossipy and intrusive as pellitory-of-the-wall in summer. “And Lidia will leave us alone, and if she doesn’t, we’ll just shoot her.”

Paola looks into the dark of the tunnel and stifles a laugh. Still, what a jerk Gigi is! He dumped Chiara to shack up with that one, the writer. The shouting writer, whose screams during their lovemaking would bring Gilberto out with a pitchfork, thinking the werewolves had come.

Gilberto is Lidia’s bachelor cousin, and Paola, when she wants to, knows how to make me laugh. These are the moments when her personality wedges itself between SS officer and hard-to-handle troublemaker. “Yeah, poor Gilberto. In the end, Gigi got back with Chiara, and they all lived happily ever after.”

“Who, apparently, is as silent as a pharaoh’s mummy. You do her, on top, underneath, sideways, and she’s still silent. Not a word.”

“And how do you know?”

“Confidences among women…”

I look at her with watery eyes, but there’s still a trace of venom in her tone. “Because, you men? Did Mirko ever tell you that without...”

“No, listen, Paola, really. I don’t care about Mirko, the shouting writer, or that mute one!”

The danger is that she might blow up. I risk the worst every time I interrupt my sister when she’s talking. This time, I get away with it.

The tunnel is silent. We’ve been used to the sound of the train approaching since we were kids, the hole of old stones with the region’s emblem decorating the keystone. It starts to simmer like a pot of beans, amplifying creaks, groans, incomprehensible echoes that rebound horribly distorted off the blackened walls. It can go on for minutes, until the headlights of the locomotive appear in the dark. Each of those times has scared me.

I think of Eliana, her convertible flooding ten hectares of land around the tree-lined avenue leading to town with its new car smell. I think of her green, teardrop-shaped eyes. They match perfectly with her slender nose and lips painted like a watercolor. With her straight black hair that, when the wind from the mountains blows, loves to dance against her cheeks.

“I bet you’re thinking about Eliana...”

Again, my watery gaze, this time spiced with a row of wolf’s teeth. “How do you know?”

Her position is fifth. I don’t tell her, but her feet have grown too much to hold it properly. “Oh, I don’t know. Since things with Valeria went south, I think you’d do well playing the poodle on a leash for the city hottie. Plus, let’s be honest, she’d light a fire under you that you’d use entirely for chopping wood. After all, winter is coming...”

And so is the train. I hear it groan.

It advances with a heavy breath, and time seems to stop. Paola abandons the fifth position in favor of a gunslinger stance, and I wait. She chews on nothing and ends up spitting on the ground. She’s laconic. “What did Mirko say?”

“Yesterday? That they’d arrive...”

“And then?”

“That he’d call me back...”

The noises are the same as before, only louder. I feel the tension rising up my neck. Paola, apparently, is cold as ice.

“And did he call you back?”

“You know better than me. No...”

The tear shatters on the cobblestone as the train’s noises evoke a daytime shift at the steel mill. My sister has always been good at masking her feelings. She looks at me, and I understand. I glance into the pitch-black tunnel, cross the tracks carefully to avoid tripping, and then to the abandoned station.

I pass the ticket office. Inside the corridor with the terrazzo floor and two-tone paint, someone is furiously banging their head against the patched-up door, fitted with makeshift handles and lacquered gray like the old ones. At this rate, it will soon give way.

I walk into the square, hearing the gravel crunch under my shoes.

What we need is hidden under a blanket in the frosted bed of the pickup truck.

The train bursts through the black wall of darkness and slows down, screeching as it reaches the platform. It wheezes, expelling compressed air from its tanks and kicking up dust, settling heavily on the old tracks. Paola takes the opportunity to try an arabesque, but the weeds between the paving stones coil around the tip of her foot.
The doors of the carriage open with a hiss, as slow as a curtain rising at the start of a scene.
Eliana is the first to step out.
She’s wearing tight jeans that do justice to her straight legs, a white t-shirt with the print of a large red heart at the end of a line resembling an electrocardiogram. As usual, she isn’t wearing a bra. By the time Mirko and Chiara descend the steps, she’s already a few paces ahead. Gigi is still at the window.
Paola looks down at the ground. As agreed, the choice is mine.
I bow and grip the axe my father used to entrust me with for woodcutting expeditions. What we hadn’t discussed was who would deal with Eliana. She’s dangerously close now.
When I see the flash of satisfaction in my sister’s eyes, I realize she will take care of it. She bends down gracefully, lifts Dad’s hunting rifle, rests the stock against her slender shoulder, takes aim, and fires a single shot. The echo from the tunnel mouth amplifies it into a cannon blast.
That’s when Eliana’s skull cap flies off, accompanied by a burst of bone fragments and hair. The red heart on her shirt blends with the fresh blood. She takes another two steps, collapses to her knees, struggles for a couple of seconds, and then slams face-first onto the platform. The sound of her nose breaking is like a snail shell being crushed underfoot.
“What did I tell you?”
While Paola reloads the rifle, I grip the axe handle so tightly I can feel the bones in my fingers creak. My voice is strained with anger. “What did you tell me? Refresh my memory.”
“I told you our friends wouldn’t make it. Too soft, too used to comfort. Too blatantly radical chic.”
She would have gone on, but I don’t have time to listen. I take a running start, raise my arm, and bring down the axe. Years of chopping wood paid off, and Mirko’s zombie career ends shortly after it begins. The bullet that takes down Chiara whistles past my ear. The fleeting red stain that appears above her lifeless eyes stays with me as she rolls under the train. Gigi is still behind the window, drooling on the glass and clawing aimlessly at the mixture of spit and grime.
“End it. Shoot!”
Paola doesn’t comply. She points out another undead. He’s stumbling off the last carriage, limping in our direction. My sister doesn’t worry, and she’s right. The strap of the bag slung over his shoulder gets caught around his legs, causing him to fall. It was the conductor. We watch him flail and try to get up but fail, the situation suggesting he’ll soon roll into the weeds at the base of the platform.
The train is about to leave.
In Mirko’s last desperate phone call—drowned out by the terrified screams of passengers being chased by the dead—he confessed that the driver, locked in his cabin and already dead, was still operating the train, stopping at every station.
It must have been some sort of automatic memory, honed over years of routine. What his lifeless brain failed to register was that at the second stop, he waited two days instead of five minutes. Most likely, in that time, the dead got the upper hand and managed to bite anyone trying in vain to force the locked doors.
We’re tired. We look around. From the other carriages come indistinct noises, but no one disembarks.
If Gigi keeps banging his head against the window like that, he’ll end up breaking it.
We’re tired, and we still haven’t buried Dad and Mom. We need to take care of the neighbor before she bites us, and then there’s Valeria—my girlfriend—who Paola and I tied to the bull hook, waiting to decide her fate. My sister delivered the verdict:
“She’s your problem, big brother. Put a bullet in her head and send her to her maker.”
The train resumes its journey, with Gigi, now toothless, leaving streaks of blood running down the window. Paola hasn’t forgiven her for that fling with the screaming writer. Her vacant gaze doesn’t meet mine, and the train departs, taking its sadness to the next station—assuming the dead driver remembers to stop.
What a shame. With friends to keep us company and lend a hand, we could have faced the apocalypse with a different spirit.
The gritty corridor leading past the grey enamel door of the ticket office is worn down by the footsteps of thousands of people who were once alive.
Now it smells of memories, like everything else around here: the old platform, the parking lot, the lone plane tree still striving to grow.
I don’t know if my sister and I will ever find someone to talk to or share our despair with. We’re alive only because we stayed far from most of the things everyone else loves, had a rifle, and knew how to handle blades.
It feels like this dry, warm spring is mocking us, but what can I say? We’ll get used to it soon enough.
Paola’s eyes are less icy than before. Wet with tears, they seem larger and kinder. To tell the truth, that boar rifle looks taller than she is.
I ask her to do what I can’t, and she obliges.
She loads a bullet, steps back into the corridor, and takes down the ticket clerk by sticking the barrel through the window where he used to hand out change. She returns with a pirouette.
This time, thanks to the worn floor, she executes it perfectly—better than I’ve ever seen her do before.

---

© All rights reserved

Buy Roberto Capocristi's Book on Amazon

Buy Peter Gallo's Books on Amazon

Dark-haired Mara

 

The fogged windshield transforms the yellow streetlight into a circular halo, fading into a sickly luminescence at the edges. The side windows are also covered in condensation, and the passenger's side is decorated with a pair of parallel, thick rivulets that slide down toward the seal until they gather into large drops. It seems to be crying.

Mara smells of deodorant stick, the kind that only makes itself known after exertion. She slides down in the seat, rests her foot against the glass, and admires the result. It's a small and delicate footprint that branches out under the heel into a pattern of drips resembling a spider web. Marcello detests the idea of his new Golf being treated with such disrespect, but the sight of the bare, tanned leg encourages him. A few sprays of glass cleaner and a microfiber cloth will be the remedy.

For the girl with the dark bob cut, blue eyes that border on black in the darkness, and small firm breasts with nipples pointing skyward, it seems there is no remedy at all.

She was beneath him for a brief time, too brief, equal to the duration of the Hollies song that played on the radio plus the commercial that followed. It boasted of a tire shop so quick that the customer wouldn't have time to drink a coffee in the bar next to the garage before the flat was fixed. A few seconds, and for Mara, that half-minute jingle plus the length of an old rock song isn't enough to elevate that ungraceful and clumsy weight, accompanied throughout by the annoying squeak of springs, to a proper act of lovemaking.

"Come on, take me home," she says, struggling with the tight shirt that's difficult to put on because of her sweaty skin. She has the look of someone who wants to gulp down some chamomile tea and throw herself into bed.

Marcello, however, sees existence as a football match, where there's always a second half, a final minute, or extra time to find a remedy.

Mara has an entirely different concept of existence. She sees it as a void to be filled, and those times when there's a bit of space left, it's just wasted time with no possibility of comebacks, overtime, or penalty kicks.

Marcello, like all fans, accepts defeat but trusts in the next match.

"Shall we grab a beer at Tony's?"

"Let's make a dash to my place. Then you can go drink your beer alone."

Marcello remembers a moan and a half-cry at the end that resembled a cough. Instinct tells him he shouldn't appeal to such flimsy evidence, but he's a fan, one of those who remain frozen in the now-empty stands, brooding over the defeat. "Didn't you like it?"

Mara doesn't respond. She adjusts her underwear beneath her miniskirt and looks right toward the highway. "Did you like it?"

"Yes... no, god. Of course, we weren't as comfortable as in a bed, but you're..." he runs his hand over her head and tucks her hair behind her ear. "You're so beautiful you make me lose control..."

"You shouldn't lose control. Drive straight and take the curves properly." She looks at her phone's clock. Midnight is approaching. "I want to be asleep in half an hour."

"Let's talk some more..."

"Please, Marcello, I'm getting sleepy," she says, holding back a yawn.

"Let's go another round, then," he suggests as a condom appears as if by magic. "I've got the tire change ready, quick as in the radio commercial!" he laughs.

"Quick as your trigger-happy dick. Step on the gas and let's leave this parking lot to someone who'll make better use of it."

Marcello swallows but that bitter taste remains spread under his tongue. "Why are you insulting me?"

Mara fiddles with the controls until she finds the window button. She presses it and the glass disappears into the door while the warm night air mingles with the car's odors until they're swept away. The look she gives Marcello is elusive and unreadable like that of a bird of prey. She sighs. "Who even are you? What do we have to share, you and I? Forget about me and I swear, I'll forget about you."

"So you didn't like it?"

"Are you taking me home or not?"

"I don't think it's fair to judge a book by its cover..."

Mara fixes her eyes on him. He notices a cement-like grimace that erases the memory of the smile that had enhanced their only selfie together hours before, and alters the beauty of her lips. It seems to last a century. "And you want to call a brief and insignificant chapter a book?"

"No, beautiful, I just didn't think I'd signed up for the Olympics!"

"Well no, but you're definitely signed up for Formula One, or the 24 Hours of Le Mans if you prefer. Make those tires screech and take me home!"

"You know what? You're just a stupid whore!"

She doesn't flinch. "Well, pay me then."

"I paid for dinner, if I remember correctly."

"Not that the restaurant was the wonder you claimed it to be."

"It still cost me two hundred euros!"

"You choose restaurants like you manage your tool. You'll have to come to terms with it, sooner or later."

"You're... you're..."

And anger drowns his thoughts in a deep, stormy sea.

At this hour, the highway is practically unused: just a few motorcyclists challenging death, some drunk claiming the whole road for himself, and a few couples of lovers with their cars still warm. None of them care about Marcello's defeat, who's been shown a red card, or about Mara, who will have to work to fill that void that echoes like a shout in a cathedral. No one has noticed the car parked in the remote corner of the lot, and Marcello knows this well. He knows the place where he lives, is sure of people's disinterest in their neighbors, of the cold detachment with which they participate in others' lives, and so...

"Get out!"

"What?"

"Get out and walk home!"

Marcello sees. He understands that the hand on her knee opens because it's about to transform into a slap, but he does nothing to avoid it. To him, Mara is still a good girl, loving and patient, capable of nurturing a passion until it transforms into the most genuine of loves, of dispensing a smile so warm and soft you could take it to bed to keep your dreams company.

And instead the slap arrives, and with it a flash that forms directly in the center of his brain and then crumbles into a myriad of razor blades that fall down his neck and cut everything, right to the heart. The humiliation burns like that famous core sealed inside the sarcophagus.

He only understands the second half of the phrase because his ear is whistling like a train in the middle of the steppes.

"... and then you'll drop me off at my door and never show your face again, not even in a postcard, you dickhead!"

When he regains control of himself, when his heart stops punching like a speed bag, when the two roads he thinks he sees reunite into the single, unique and real ribbon of asphalt, he's driving toward home, maintaining moderate speed and riding with the right wheels on the edge line.

Before convincing himself, he looks at the passenger seat at least three times.

Finally, he's alone.

One step after another, but the shoes are uncomfortable.

After less than five hundred meters, Mara surrenders to her aching feet and sits on the guard rail that slowly releases its heat to the night, creaking. Only three cars have passed since Marcello pushed her out and drove away with the door still open, and none of them stopped. Too many stories about pretty girls hitchhiking for gangs of robbers, too many stupid urban legends.

Her phone's battery is at three-quarters. Mara crosses her legs to catch the attention of even the sleepiest driver, bows her head over the screen, and opens the selfie taken that afternoon.

Marcello had picked her up around six, and the blooming oleander in the garden, in the flattering light of the low sun, had seemed like a perfect backdrop to immortalize the moment. He had tried to make his smile appear irresistible and had asked to widen the frame to show off his pectorals straining under the tight t-shirt. His robust collarbone was also eye-catching, and everything suggested something truly powerful.

The social media app opens and reminds her there are eighty-six notifications to check. Nothing unusual when you have more than a hundred thousand followers. Dark Mara, even when posting utter nonsense, receives likes by the cartload and comments by the dozen. Many of these are invitations to go out or lewd proposals.

Her profile picture, showing her in a tiny carnival-colored swimsuit, with beach sand sticking to her skin and the elastic of her bikini bottom at the lowest latitudes, certainly doesn't invite philosophical discussion.

The post leaves no room for interpretation:

"Time wasted. All dynamite, no bang..."

One second

Two seconds

Three.

The first response is from Gigi Shock. "You bring the explosives, I'll bring the detonator." 💣😆

Madame Hawk follows up. "Are you saying appearances are deceiving?"

Mirko Mirk. "I'm sending you a photo in DM."

Lady Bondage. "Show us the face of this... time waster." 😜

Private Raian. "I'll rip that swimsuit off you!" 😈😈

Baby Boom. "Did you send him crying back to mommy?" 😭

Ale XXX ia. "Put up wanted posters on the streetlights." 🤣😂

The fourth car only slows down to check if she's a hooker. It speeds up again in a suffocating cloud of diesel fumes from a car ready for the scrapyard.

Gengiv Kan. "Come visit me and when I'm done you'll walk crooked for three days." 😵‍💫

Olivia Oli. "You got played, #Dark haired Mara. Didn't think you had it in you..." 👎

Muscle Works. "Let us meet this steam train, maybe he's just running low on water to boil..." 💪💪

Mara lingers on the selfie. Marcello is so pompous, tanning bed bronzed and inflated like a chicken on estrogen that he deserves public shame. She laughs out loud without realizing it, clicks on the photo which enlarges, and in moments the menu offers sharing options. She feels heat rising from down below, a genuine sexual excitement. You don't leave Dark Mara in the middle of the road, and if she slaps you, it means you deserved it. You should just bow your head and apologize. The comments are in the hundreds and likes keep growing, and it doesn't matter if it's bedtime because the web people never sleep.

Want to share?

Mara hasn't heard the car. It stopped right in front of her.

Truth be told, she isn't suffering at all from the sharp metal against her bare legs. Her dimension, past, present, and future, is all contained within those pixels casting a morgue-like light on her face. The notification chime, repeating with each new alert, is the soundtrack to her personal ballroom, the rhythm of her life where there's never time to waste.

"Everything okay? Need a ride?"

It's a woman in her fifties, blonde, that washed-out blonde, almost ashen. She's pathologically thin, as if work and years had consumed her. Her facial features are drawn and she has grayish dark circles that no makeup attempts to hide. She wears a white shirt unbuttoned at the neck and smells of hospital. She hasn't been to the hairdresser for at least a month, that's certain. Mara, incredulous, postpones sharing the photo with Marcello and asks:

"You'll really give me a ride?"

"I believe in not leaving young girls alone on the road, especially at night. Get in."

Mara doesn't need to be told twice, and before sitting down she has to wait for the woman to move a heavy leather bag to the back seats.

"I'm Mara. Are you a doctor?"

"Yes, night shift, and tonight everyone's sick. I've been driving this road for years, back and forth, always in the dark."

Mara is pleased to have guessed correctly. "I don't envy you."

She thinks about the terminal patient she visited just ten minutes ago: a papier-mâché mask smelling of wilted flowers with a heart as weak as a broken radio. Indeed, there's nothing to envy.

"Let's look at the bright side. I've become friends with every curve, know all the dangerous spots, and I know, before others do, when I need to avoid a pothole." she laughs.

"You're right, this highway is really a trap!" says Mara, and it seems the dimple that accompanies her smile appears on command.

"Where can I take you?"

"Are you heading back to the hospital?"

"Yes." She joins her hands to simulate a pillow. "And I hope to catch a few minutes of sleep."

Her facial expression is perfunctory. Mara can't be sincere unless she's looking into a camera. "Perfect, then. I live right in that area."

The car regains the road.

It's an old white Panda worn out by miles. The driver's seat is collapsed, the steering wheel corroded by sweat, and the engine is annoying. It makes a huge racket while the speedometer needle struggles to rise. To be honest, it also smells of burnt iron.

You can see the doctor struggling to maintain trajectory: the tendons in her arms surface under her skin and her gaze is concentrated on the road. Mara wonders if the lady is quiet because she's naturally silent or because she has to tame a kind of ship with drunk rudders.

"Well, thanks anyway."

The glance is fleeting. After all, there's the Panda to keep in check. "Rather, why were you alone in the middle of nowhere?"

Mara returns to social media. The comments on her new post are over a hundred and the likes at least double that. Her satisfaction surfaces in a grin that seems stuck on with fish glue. She answers distractedly while scrolling the screen.

"The guy I was with kicked me out of the car."

"What a bastard! And... what did you do to deserve such treatment?"

Mara shrugs. "He couldn't fuck me properly, that's what, and I told him so."

The right curve is challenging and a noise from what sounds like squared ball bearings adds to the tension. "Boys have their pride, though, and they should always be, shall we say, handled with care." On the straight stretch, the doctor examines Mara once more with a quick glance. "He didn't hit you, did he?"

Meanwhile, another thirty users have commented and almost all want to see the loser's face. Par de balle stands out above all:

"If you introduce me to Mr. Speed I can recommend him a Tantra Yoga teacher. But from what I understand, he'd need more of a miracle." 😭

Mara thinks it's magnificent. Counting quickly, the new followers are more than thirty, all for a terrible fuck. The doctor seems impatient.

"Won't you answer me?"

She shakes her head. "What, sorry?"

"I asked if he raised his hands to you..."

"Who, that loser? No, don't worry, I was the one who hit him."

They pass over an old bridge where the road narrows. Every time, the doctor wonders how many drivers are capable of interpreting that right-of-way sign with the red arrow paired with the inverted white one.

"You hit him?"

Mara finishes typing a comment and then responds. "But that's nothing."

"Using violence is always wrong. Leaving a girl alone in the middle of the night is equally wrong. To hell with pride! Talk to each other and make peace."

Mara rotates the phone toward the doctor. You don't need to be an expert to understand that she's online with a very popular social network, and not just by good people. "What peace. I've humiliated him and soon I'll put his face up there too."

"They'll stop you!"

"Probably, but not before tomorrow morning."

"They will because someone will report your post."

Mara scrolls through the page while a concert of notification chimes confirms that the discussion she launched has gone into orbit. She looks at the doctor showing commiseration. "Everyone adores me on here, they hang on my fingertips. Nobody reports shit to me. Want to see for yourself?"

There's a traffic light, one of the few that stays on at night. It's a good opportunity to rest her arms, curse that steering wheel without power steering and without grease in the gears, and try to reason with the girl. "Come on, show me what this terrible lover looks like, but I'll tell you right now: don't embarrass him too much because at some point you might regret it..."

The grin has something that makes it go sideways. "No, I'll never regret it but look, look yourself what a pretty face..."

And the glance at the photo is quick, because meanwhile the traffic light has turned green and the pager allows no respite. Somewhere there must be someone who isn't sleeping as they had hoped.

The Panda starts up with effort.

"Don't do it!"

"And why shouldn't I?"

"Because you shouldn't take advantage of your social media success. What's the word - that you're an influencer?"

Mara wants to buy time. She doesn't want to get thrown out of a car for the second time. She sees the doctor even more engaged in driving than before. The roadway, bordered here and there by old sheet metal guard rails, has decreased in width and that stretch of road is even darker. "But I can't disappoint my followers, you understand? It's just a moment from glory to anonymity."

"You mustn't do it!"

"But of course I will! I'll share my selfie with the loser and tomorrow I'll post one full of compliments for you, doctor. You'll thank me for this because it could get you a promotion, you know?"

The doctor is nervous. She pushes on the accelerator and this time it seems the car gains speed. Mara notices the hands tight on the wheel and the rapid, precise gear changes. In fifth gear they're approaching a hundred.

"Instead you need to learn to show respect for others!"

Mara reloads the photo: her, him, and the oleanders in bloom. She raises the phone and touches the share button. "How many followers do you have, doctor?"

They're less than sixty and she doesn't remember when she last logged in. "Leave that boy in peace! It was a bad evening for both of you and you'd better forget..."

Her eyes shine with malice and the dimples, those that hypnotize everyone, have disappeared. A row of straight white teeth shows behind barely parted lips.

She looks like a hyena.

Mara screams. She yells with her mouth open, spits, and to be honest, her breath smells of wine too. "Instead I will and who the fuck are you to stop me!"

The doctor calms down. She must have understood.

She is nothing, after all. She just has to obey a stupid pager and learn to like her filthy existence.

She slows down.

The right wheels step on the white line. The steering wheel seems less hostile than usual and her tired back finally rests against the seat.

"Look ahead, Mara..."

"What the fuck are you saying?"

"Ahead, you must look ahead!"

And Mara does.

She can't share the photograph because in front of her, maybe fifty meters away, a new guard rail begins but this one is really special. It doesn't have the curved protection to prevent it from behaving like a knife blade and the meters now are only ten.

The phone falls to the floor mat and while the worn tires eat up the grass, the scream comes out with the force of a million terrified voices and her eyes could shoot out of their sockets and it's not elegant to say but she still has time to empty her bowels.

The blade shatters the grille, wedges into the frame, penetrates the old engine like a hot knife through butter, tears through the hood metal, crosses the dashboard with the violence of a sword and slices through both the passenger seat and the passenger. In a hell of noise, smoke, sparks, and the smell of burnt flesh, the guard rail exits the Panda's trunk a few tenths of a second later and it's a shame, because in passing it destroys the medical bag which explodes with the sound of a crushed bladder.

The doctor, dazed, gets out of the car.

The first steps are a challenge to gravity, her legs shake, her head aches, and her stomach wants to turn but then it gets better. Through the broken window she witnesses that disaster of blood, ground bones, viscera, and metal. The impact made Mara's jaws clench so violently that her teeth crumbled.

No trace remains of the hypnotic dimples.

She retrieves the phone from the floor mat. It still works and isn't even bloody. She puts it in her pocket, revives her ash-colored hair with some remnants of blonde, and uses her phone to call the hospital.

"I had an accident, a terrible accident..."

"Oh God, are you hurt?"

The smell of blood is strong but she doesn't have even a scratch. "No, but I had picked up a hitchhiker, a girl..."

"You don't mean..."

"Yes, unfortunately..."

"Oh shit! Stay calm, we'll send an ambulance right away."

"Thanks."

"Is it because of that damn steering?"

"And the fucking bald tires. Hurry up, I feel faint..."

Now the Panda's cabin resembles the inside of a blender.

It won't be easy for her colleagues, but she had reported the malfunction of that car on numerous occasions and what can you say, failure to provide assistance is a serious crime and you don't commit a serious crime, even more serious if the girl is confused, tired and abandoned at night on the side of a road.

It's easy to access the smartphone.

The M for Mara, which appears by connecting the dots, is rather predictable.

Before deleting the selfie, the doctor hides her face with her thumb and with her fingertips caresses Marcello's face. She finds time for a few words, hurried and whispered because in the distance she can hear the ambulance arriving.

"Marcello, my love, my child. Nobody can dare to offend you or even hit you, and from now on, please, choose more carefully the girls you invite."

Want to delete this photo?

Click.

© Diritti riservati

On cover "Allo specchio" di Piera Vi

Buy Roberto Capocristi's Book on Amazon

Buy Peter Gallo's Books on Amazon