18

From the outside, everything was diffuse and now the voices, distant, were confused with the howling of the wind as it brushed the two west wings, the roofs and the curves of the great Christ, who welcomed the passage of terror.

Carlos had left the shotgun on the ground but did not take his eyes off it. The same thing happened with the crossbow and the arrows. In the gloom, everything was elongated and scabrous, like them. His breathing was faltering as if he had just walked a marathon. He was panting. The moon shone high in the sky accompanied by the stars that his eyes could not see. For him, everything was very vague, and it seemed as if a dense fog had suddenly come among them. He was lying on the floor, on his back. The palms of the hands were on the ground and the stones. Something in his boot was trying to gnaw it, but it could not. Carlos knew that it was, a disgusting rat. He was thirsty and hungry in equal measure, and his lips ached when he moved them in the grimaces of pain that covered his body, like a blanket full of needles.

Also, he had the feeling that the temperature had dropped substantially, however, he was sweating profusely. All that happened to him very often, especially when he forgot to take the fucking pills. But at home, there was no one left because of them. He had no choice but to go behind the happy elongated shadows, shotgun in hand and armed to the teeth. What he did not know was if those things could be pierced with a cartridge or an arrow.

Now, he had not got it.

Not now, and as he convulsed as if he were delirious, the voices dragged by the wind, reached and reached his deaf ears.