Emiliano Mancilla

Voices. 

The voice of a child I would hear back when I was 6, every time I was trying to sleep when my parents weren’t home, surrounded my dreams. The exception was that the vibrations causing the cold electroshocks through my dorsal spine back then, just felt like a memory. 

I started feeling my ear getting wet, little by little until reaching the sensation of the classic clogged ear after dipping in the pool. Nevertheless, I kept sleeping until an agonizing pain coming from my jaw, as if someone was pulling the right ramus of my mandible with all their strength, trying to break it, woke me up. 

My pillow was wet, I checked my phone and it was 3:33, I turned on the lantern and when I pointed it to the cushion I could see that it was covered with a mix of scarlet, yellowish colors.

I got up and went out of the room trying not to disturb the guests, and walked through the hallway covered by the faded crimson carpet that covered the whole building, until I reached the bathrooms. 

When I looked at myself in the mirror, I could see the remains of a big blood river from my mouth to my ear painted in my cheek. I washed my face and rinsed my mouth, and my jaw was still hurting like hell. I was trembling, and in desperation, I put not one but two ketorolac pills under my tongue and laid on the floor, holding my legs in a fetal position until the pain started fading. 

When I was on my way to the room, I could notice there was a painting in the middle of the building with a lady from the 1800s posing in a red dress, looking with a suspicious smile. Suddenly I felt someone murmuring, walking close, and I turned my head, but the only thing I could notice was a small shadow moving through the rooms that were on the other side of the floor. 

A door opened, but the lights were off, and no one went in nor went out when it closed. I started feeling numb by the pills and got into my room as fast as I could. Fortunately, the guests were still sleeping.