He stumbled and fell flat on his chair, barely felt the temperate bud of blood that surrounded his cheek, outlined the base of his rough flat nose. The screams ceased when he sat up, held for a second that eternal beat that preceded the silence. Without turning on the light, he moved closer to the window, opening with two fingers a crack in the blind, the street appeared gray and blue, empty, different ...

---

A scruffy woman wandered over the median, I could almost hear her choked lament, instantly recognized by her graying white hair, it was the old baker.

With the torso of his hand he rubbed his forehead, now soaked in cold sweat, pale, warm as the thread of blood that penetrated the right corner of his lips.

Tension flooded his veins as he contemplated how the front of that car broke the hip of the old woman with a dry impact. He crouched down, trapping his guts to prevent an arcade from giving him away, he endured coughing, vomiting and crying that blinded his reddened eyes. His hands trembled to the rhythm of the breath that gripped his eardrums. Frightened, he was unable to react until he heard again the alarmed voices that awakened him, infant cries, hollow knocks, disorder ...

He could not let himself be overcome by fear, not now that his life made sense, he was prepared and had calculated each step. He thought about Marta, he had to find her, put her to safety, protect her, if he still stayed alive ...

He armed himself, armed himself with courage and armed himself to the teeth before opening the door of his house. The door to hell ...

For a long time he had intuited in the depths of his mind that this could happen ... and everything, everything that would happen, would happen unexpectedly, on a day like today, suddenly, on any Friday ...

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