PROLOGUE: 03:00 AM
The digital clock on the nightstand reads 03:00 AM. Its numbers cast a freezing green glow, cutting through the darkness of the room like a hospital monitor. I haven't moved a single millimeter, but inside my skull, the noise is unbearable.
The voices don't speak; they accuse, they defend, they tear each other apart in a clandestine courtroom while I try to breathe without altering the rhythm of the room.
-You left her alone, -the first voice hammers, the guilt that never sleeps-. You broke your promise... You're a coward.
-But you were real there, -the second whispers from the depths of the basement-. You miss the complicity, the darkness of the dialect of the eyes. Out here, you are dead.
-Both of you shut up, -the third orders, the voice of principles-. Go to sleep. You have debts to pay; tomorrow you have to look for a job. Sustain the simulacrum. Fulfill your...
A small jolt, a physical spasm in my legs, restores control over my muscles. I break out of the paralysis with a racing chest and a bitter wrench in my throat. I turn my head slowly.
Beside me, the woman's breathing is a monotonous, flat rhythm. I reach out and rest my palm on her hip. I love her...
It is a strange, dense affection, a sick bond built upon the ashes of a time when someone humiliated me and destroyed me in ways no man should ever have to endure.
I love her with the panic of someone who fears being left alone, glued to the body of the person who knows the exact measure of my ruin. I feel her warmth and, at the same time, the weight of the theft. They hid the truth from me; they stripped me of the right to choose with all the facts in hand before I became shackled to my own morality.
Our past is a minefield; there are imposed silences, there has never been a real apology, and I accept the pact just to maintain the peace of the Facade. In the eyes of the world, I am an excellent man, an exemplary guy; inside, I know perfectly well that I am walking garbage.
It seems the jolt has passed, but my brain does not forget; it only accumulates pressure. Suddenly, a nameless melody begins to distort the silence of the room. With the first dissonant notes, my broken sleep turns into an avalanche. My chest tightens all at once; the air becomes thick, impossible to swallow. A wave of acid nausea wraps around me, and my hands begin to shake beneath the sheets with a fine, uncontrollable tremor.
The abuses of the past come to mind-the raw humiliation of having been betrayed, the crunch of my dignity being trampled by someone to whom I gave everything. I cannot stop the tape.
I know this crisis will take more days to heal than the last one. I feel the dam breaking, but I clench my fists, dig my nails into the sheets, hold back the tremor, and decide to keep enduring.
