Through her eyes

She looked at herself in the mirror; she saw her face, sad and dimmed, the weight of age marked into her pale features. In her eyes, light-coloured and small, one could make out all the years of loneliness and suffering she dragged along behind them, while a long, white, neglected mane covered part of her face.

She did not have much time left. It was a little past midnight and she knew her hour had come; all she had to do was wait for cold death to knock at the gate of her house. Three heavy blows echoed through the whole room — thud, thud, thud — along with the shouts of men and women calling out to her between insults and threats.

She opened the door and, quick as lightning, two hooded figures burst in. They struck her brutally on the head, pulled a burlap sack over her, tied a rope around her neck and hauled her, almost dragging her, out of her own property.

I could feel all of it: the sharp pain in the head, the hot blood running down the face, the damp, sickening smell of the sack that covered me. And that horrible rope, tightening harder and harder around my neck until it almost stopped me breathing. As they tied the woman to a stake driven into the ground, the crowd could be heard cursing.

"Witch! Child-killer! Satan's whore! You will burn at the stake and go back to the hell you came from. Your soul will burn for all eternity and you will pay for the young lives you snuffed out with your own hands!"

They heaped firewood around the old woman and began to soak her in oil from head to foot. She stayed silent before the villagers, but I could hear her thoughts with perfect clarity. I felt her anguish, her ragged breathing and the way the tears slid down her cheeks as she repeated to herself, over and over:

"Dear God, please, let this suffering end!".

Everything fell silent. All I could hear was the sound of her breathing, until a dry, cutting voice asked:

"Witch, for the last time: where are the bodies of our children?"

The old woman kept silent; I could feel that they would never get that answer. I tried to speak, to tell them that they were making a terrible mistake, that this woman was innocent, but the words would not come out of her lips. All I could do was see, feel, hear, and let the fire burn a poor innocent woman to ashes.

A searing heat began to touch the soles of my feet. The smell of burning wood blocked my nostrils; I could barely breathe. Screams, laughter and insults were the only things I could hear around me. The fire was burning my skin. I could not push it away; my hands and feet were tied, I could not bear the pain. "God, I want to die, end this now!".

I heard the old woman scream. The sound that came out of her throat drilled into my mind; it was pure agony. I saw everything blurred, distorted, until I began to hear a voice growing clearer and clearer.

"Shut up, shut up! Quiet! Stop screaming! You'll wake the other patients, don't make me inject you with this," a man was shouting from behind the bars of the door, holding up a syringe full of a thick yellow liquid.

I drew in air as though I had not breathed for an eternity. I looked around me searching for the hooded people, waving my hands wildly to put out a fire that was no longer on me. Disoriented, but getting my sanity back, I began to make out my surroundings. I looked from side to side and saw white walls lit by a faint light. There was my bed, and I was in one of the corners of the room, with its padded walls. In front of me, a man dressed in blue was saying:

"Hey, Marcos! Have you calmed down yet, or do I have to come in?" the nurse asked.

His face was familiar to me; he was the night nurse. He was pale, frightened, and his voice shook a little, probably because of what he had just witnessed.

"No, no, it's fine. It was one of my episodes, I'm all right now, it'll pass."

After a few minutes adjusting to reality, I managed to calm my nerves. My breathing was steadier and my heart no longer seemed like a runaway horse. I got to my feet and, swaying slightly, made my way to the bed. I felt exhausted, as if I were an eighty-year-old man. I closed my eyes trying to forget what had happened with the white-haired woman, but that face was still etched in my mind: that empty stare, through which I understood how destructive, cruel and merciless a human being can be.