Child abuse

She huddles behind a door, hides in a cupboard, crawls under the bed. No place is safe when there is no safety, when danger dwells in the same place. She doesn't know whether to move or stay where she is. She looks at her stuffed toy and squeezes it tightly with both hands, so tightly that her little fingernails could break it. She doesn't mean to, but the panic is overpowering her strength, blocking her thinking. 

The screams are heard throughout the house. She knows what's there and they drill into her head like a drill, like a broken record that no one stops. She tries not to let them come out of her throat so as not to frighten, so that her child doesn't know what he knows all too well, to avoid pouring more horror on top of the existing horror. And she doesn't succeed, because the pain is too intense. She holds his gaze with one intention. She pleads in whispers to be heard only by him, a trickle of a voice that fades away like the strength to stand up. There is no clean water running in the stream she remembers from her childhood. There are no women with their white sheets singing on the shore as they wash and spread them on the bushes for the sun to dry them. She remembers at the same time that darkness is coming as a drop of blood has slipped between her lips. And it falls. 

There is no more screaming. 

He is afraid and too small to know what the word means. A while ago he covered his ears so as not to hear what he has heard so many times before. So as not to think about what will surely come next. He covers his face as if this gesture would provide him with a refuge that does not exist. Not to see so as not to be seen. Not to listen so as not to be heard. He doesn't know if it's better the excess of noise that puts him where the scene is or the terrifying silence that chills his blood. 

The ants continually come in and out of the anthill and create rows. He doesn't know the reasons that lead him to this image. Little bugs that suddenly turn into cockroaches that grow. Fear on top of fear. Crying mingles with his own crying. The silence is broken. The sound of footsteps is getting closer and closer. His body shrinks, his head is under his arms, on his knees. Every second that passes brings with it greater danger. The footsteps have become those of a giant, an aggressive gorilla crushing all the ants first, then the cockroaches... which creak as a thin light from the corridor warns of the opening of the door, and that history is about to repeat itself... He has just peed in his trousers. An ambulance siren and a doorbell ring. Then footsteps move away. Luckily the darkness has returned.