Still perched on her back, I curled my arms around her neck, my jagged nails scratching her collarbone like claws. Over Fátima’s shoulder I could see the bright screen scrawling the air as she fluttered her hands in emptiness. She endured the pain as she stepped closer outside. Her body was focused on exposing herself to the alleyway, to sunlight, from where she would be in a better position against me, the stranger in the slum.
Now even my fingers faltered, already fatigued by the strain. My grasp slackened on her skin, my forearm on her throat. Fátima, foreseeing her victory, squealed. Then she tugged at my forearm with one hand, the other one clinging to the phone, and pulled it out.
I didn’t resist her strength.
Seizing her back with only one arm, I acted on impulse, on instinct. When she outstretched her arm for the doorknob, a few inches from opening it wide and shutting off my last hope, I went all in and shifted my weight backward. As my right foot stuck to the ground, the left one wedged itself between her shins, successfully holding back the last step that would lead her to open the door and get outside.
When I pulled her back, and my body twisted, Fátima’s sturdy body faltered. We battled in an ocean of muscle spasms, cramped fibers and pounding hearts. She had the advantage of strength and body weight, but I had the upper hand in terms of position and leverage. Between them, when I was about to give up, our wet skin in contact, her body tilted to the direction of my victory. Backward. She tried to regain her balance, but her legs, now interwoven with mine in a fabric of decay, found no firm ground on which she could sustain herself, and both of us went straight down to the floor.
I hit the ground entangled with Fátima. Even though I had perched on her back, we fell sideways, both of our right shoulders hitting the cement floor at the same time. It was as though I had undergone a brief deafness: during the fall, only the joyless images inside the building got stuck to my memory, but all painted red due to the pain in my arm, crushed after receiving her weight. In this sequence of events—no matter the buzzing of moans, slaps and bumps—no sound, whatsoever, got caught in my memory.
On the ground, I tried to pull my arm out from beneath that limp, unconscious mound of flesh, and failed. I tried to push her sideways, but Fátima didn’t move. The phone had fallen a few feet away from me, which was all but close enough to be reached by my body, now nailed to the ground. Then its screen flickered. A message popping up. It was one face of the medal returning her texts. I ought to reach it, to have it in my hands. Than the freezer hissed again, right beside my head. I could almost feel the chill coming out of it. And before I could take further action, everything went black.
I was exhausted and out again.
Chapter 29
The passage of time changed many aspects of that old freezer. Besides the rust and ugliness, the machine had also acquired the ability—and improved it to the extent of perfection—to loan its awkward old-freezer flavor to all products fated for human guts stored inside it. Not to mention the hysterical noise of the compressor as it entered another working cycle. It was almost like an old chef who stubbornly messed with a meal, already on point, only to add his most time-proven seasonings, even though everyone else regarded them as reeking of armpit.
Time didn’t change the coldness of the freezer’s interior, nor the sharpness of its corners. After I passed out from exhaustion, cold water had been spilled out from it to my cheeks against the floor.
And that old-freezer scent pervaded every drop of it.
I raised my head, half of my face aching as though frostbitten. I saw no movement inside the room. The light shaft squeezing past the hole in the ceiling had barely changed its angle, which meant that only a few minutes had passed since my battle against Fátima.
I was well aware of what had happened. The police were coming up, about to arrive. And that stout woman laid on the ground had been dispatched to guard me.
Her body remained in the same position after we fell. My forearm was beneath her, but I couldn’t feel it. After struggling on the ground and shifting into a crouching position, I was finally able to make her body roll sideways and release my numb limb from beneath her.
The color of my forearm had changed from a light pink to a pale purple. A sharp pain bit into the limb as it throbbed back to life. As though a march of a million ants had stopped by to take tiny bites of my flesh, piercing it down to my bones.
I had no time to suffer. Not anymore. Because the moment Fátima’s phone screen flashed, I knew what I had to do.
I reached it over and thumbed its cracked screen. A drop of water dripped from my face onto the glass. Than a message popped up, and a fingerprint sign appeared.
On the top left corner of it I saw the term “4G” accompanied by a display of bars which informed that the mobile phone signal was excellent.
I only had to rub that woman’s fingerprint over the screen to unlock the window to the world and set my voice free. But at that very moment, when escaping came finally within reach, I froze.
Since the moment I woke up, turned Fátima’s body around and glared at her phone’s screen, I avoided looking at her face. All because of the sharpness of that freezer’s corners.
We had fallen together to the
