The afternoon collapsed over São Paulo like a lament.
The sky, covered in heavy, dense clouds, wept with fury. Rain fell in violent bursts, and lightning lit up the city like daggers of light slicing through the premature darkness. Thunder rumbled like the cries of an unjust god — or perhaps merely a deaf one, indifferent to human suffering.
For many, it was just another Saturday. A time for rest, for the comfort of a random movie, a video game, or the soft sheets of a warm bed.
But not for Rodrigo.
Alone in his room, lying on sheets soaked in sweat, blood, urine, and feces, he tasted the metallic flavor of the end. A bitter, iron taste that scraped his throat and dripped between his teeth. Every breath was an effort. Every heartbeat, a blow.
And on the edge of the abyss, the ghosts came.
Memories, like desperate shadows, invaded his mind. Pain, loss, regret.
It was true, then... What they say about the final moments of life. That the past comes in waves, as if the soul needed to revisit everything it never managed to bury.
Rodrigo felt his body burn with the fresh stab wounds, his blood pulsing outward, as if even his own body wanted to expel him from this world. But no physical pain compared to the wound he had carried for over a decade.
He tried to hold on to good memories, but they were few — fragile as glass.
He remembered the day his mother announced she was pregnant. He was six years old. The world still felt like a place where dreams could be born.
His father, eyes filled with quiet pride, had said:
— Now that you're going to be a big brother, you have to protect your sister.
As if it were a prophecy. As if those words had condemned him.
He believed them. And swore. Swore with a pure heart that he would protect Luciana, that tiny creature not yet born.
And for a while, he did. They played in the backyard of their simple home, laughed, ran around. Poverty never seemed like a curse — not as long as they were together.
They were happy. He felt whole.
But life... life does not forgive the innocent.
Time passed, and Rodrigo watched their home grow silent, empty of smiles.
His father lost his job. Without a contract, he received no benefits.
His mother cleaned factories with calloused hands, bruised knees, an exhausted body.
And still, she smiled.
She tried.
But the world is cruel to those who try to resist misery.
Out of options, his father turned to loan sharks.
And that night, everything was taken from them.
Rodrigo remembered it with painful precision — as if the scene had been burned into his eyes.
The door being kicked open.
Four men entering.
The sound of the gunshot.
His father falling, then being stabbed.
His mother's scream.
Blood on the floor.
A pierced chest.
The smell of death invading everything.
Luciana cried. Her eyes searched for his, begging for protection.
And he… didn't move.
Fear consumed him. His legs wouldn't respond.
He failed.
But in a desperate impulse, he ran.
He tore off the mask of one of the armed men.
He wanted to fight. To do something.
And then he saw.
Lucius.
His father's friend.
The man who used to visit their home. Drink coffee in their living room. Laugh with them.
The betrayal cut deeper than any blade.
"Why? Why did he do this to my father?" — that question lingered for years, gnawing at Rodrigo like a wound that would never close.
But the words that followed cleared every doubt, like a cold wind sweeping away the ashes of hope.
— They saw my face — Lucius said.
And without hesitation:
— We have to kill them both.
That phrase still echoed.
"We have to kill them both."
Rodrigo ran to Luciana.
Tried to shield her.
He wanted to fulfill his promise — even in the final seconds.
A gunshot.
The pain came like a fiery explosion, igniting every nerve, every fiber. It was as if his body had been set ablaze. The world spun. The floor embraced him.
Another shot.
A dry, cruel sound.
Luciana.
Her name screamed inside him before it left his lips.
Her blood — warm, far too red — splattered on the floor.
Silence.
A silence louder than any scream. A silence that crushed him inside.
Rodrigo couldn't feel his body anymore, but his soul…
It screamed.
He crawled to her.
Felt their blood pooling together.
Her eyes fading.
And he... could only cry.
Cry and scream inside.
"Forgive me."
Before losing consciousness from the pain, the last sounds he heard were footsteps... and distant sirens.
When he woke up in the hospital, the face of a stranger — a doctor — greeted him.
But he didn't want comfort.
He didn't want healing.
— Where's my sister? Where is she? Let me see her! Please!
He tried to get up in panic. Pain surged through his body.
Then came the doctor's response — in the form of a sedative.
Forced silence.
Two days later, the police confirmed what his heart already knew.
All three were dead.
Rodrigo broke inside.
He cried like he wanted to vomit his soul.
He blamed himself.
As if a curse had been carved into his bones.
"It was my fault."
"If I hadn't pulled off the mask…"
"If I had protected her…"
Life went on. But for him, it was only survival.
He grew up in an orphanage.
Without affection. Without peace. Without a future.
He drowned in drugs. In rage.
And rage turned to hatred.
Hatred turned to purpose.
When he turned eighteen, he swore — no matter what it took — he would find Lucius.
But he never did.
And in the emptiness of frustration, he killed others. Criminals. Innocents.
Anyone in his way.
It started as revenge.
Then, convenience.
Then… for the taste of blood.
He killed and laughed.
Cried and had sex.
Used drugs to forget.
Lay with women to pretend he felt something.
But at night, in the silence of his room, only guilt remained.
The damned guilt.
"I promised."
And now, lying there again, he felt the end had finally come.
Men had broken into his house.
Tied him up.
And among them...
Lucius.
Older.
Colder.
— Persistent, aren't you, Rodrigo?
Rodrigo spat blood and words:
— I'll kill you... even if it's in hell!
Lucius smiled. A smile that hurt to see.
A soulless smile.
— Time to reunite with your family. Time to rest.
Stabs.
Pain.
Feces and urine.
Muffled screams.
Tears mixed with blood.
Rodrigo drowned in his own body.
As the pain devoured him from the inside, cloudy thoughts began to echo in his mind, distorted whispers at the end of a dark corridor.
"I'll die alone in this room..."
And maybe it was true. Maybe it had always been written.
But he didn't want it. Not like this.
He wanted someone — anyone — to find him.
To at least show up at his funeral, even if just out of pity.
But then a cruel answer came, dry and final, like a sentence carved in iron:
"I have no one left.
No family. No lovers. No friends."
Silence.
That was all that remained.
Nothing but pain.
And the blood warming the sheets like a red farewell shroud.
Rodrigo couldn't trust anyone anymore.
It was a deeply rooted distrust, buried like a blade never pulled out.
He knew it was unfair, even irrational.
But how do you live with a wound that never heals?
How do you move forward when your memories still bleed inside you?
He went to therapy. Tried. Sat before professionals, spoke about his pain, about what he saw, about what he lost.
But words don't heal what's been destroyed.
They only rearrange the shards.
And Rodrigo had been shattered for years.
As darkness finally stretched over him like a quiet blanket, muffling sounds, senses, life...
A final thought emerged.
Fragile. Timid. Selfish.
A whisper lost in the chaos.
"Maybe... just maybe... I wish I could see them again."
And then, before the end.
Before the void swallowed everything he was.
Before the last flicker of consciousness faded...
An owl landed outside the window.
Silent. Solemn.
Its eyes fixed on Rodrigo, as if they could see beyond flesh — beyond pain.
It stared deeply.
As if it knew.
Knew the sins he carried.
The fears that ate at him.
The desires he never had the courage to confess.
Rodrigo stared back, eyes already dull, body at the brink of death, and whispered, his voice barely reaching his own lips:
— Forgive me...
The words floated in the room like a final breath of humanity.
And when his heart finally stopped, the owl took flight, vanishing into the night's darkness.
As if it carried away his soul.
Or his guilt.