I Knew it

It was an ordinary day for Joaquín. He was walking calmly down the street when, suddenly, with the screech of brakes, a car stopped beside him. Two men jumped out, grabbed him, and after a brief struggle forced him inside, not before Joaquín—his voice breaking—let out a couple of desperate screams for help.

They roughly covered his eyes and mouth.

No one saw or heard anything.

They pulled him out of the vehicle and dragged him into a place where he noticed the floor was dirt and the air smelled of garbage and dampness. They threw him into a corner and he hit his head, leaving him half-dazed.

After a while, one of them kicked him without saying a word.

“You won’t get away from this,” he said.

A long time passed, filled with the sound of saws and hammer blows. He could smell the dry, earthy scent of sawdust.

Memories from his childhood came to him—when he and his father used to go to the neighborhood carpentry shop to order small jobs for the house: the floor covered in sawdust, the smell of freshly cut wood, of ishpingo, pine, and cedar. He loved accompanying his father on errands—going to the market, or the long walks toward Morro Solar or the beaches of Chorrillos.

The hammering and sawing stopped, and from somewhere deeper inside he heard dull, sharp squeals he did not recognize at first, though he realized they had been there since his arrival.

Guinea pigs? Birds?

He noticed he hadn’t heard a single dog barking at any point, which struck him as strange.

He kept listening, trying to identify the sounds around him. Several hours had passed. There were no voices, no radio, no music—only the squeals and a few slow footsteps that seemed to belong to a single person. Farther back, silence. A hollow, colorless, heavy silence.

Was he in the countryside, or somewhere isolated within the city? Could it be a makeshift house on a hillside settlement?

The silence kept expanding. So did the heat. Joaquín was sweating. His stomach churned. His throat was dry.

Again, the squeals.

He no longer knew whether it was day or night when he heard soft footsteps and the door opened. He felt someone approach him and, without a word, remove the blindfold. The light blinded him. He saw a man wearing a balaclava, holding a large black box, which he placed over Joaquín’s head, plunging him back into darkness.

“What are you going to do to me?” Joaquín asked.

“You’ll see,” the man replied.

He noticed the box had an opening at the top. The man left and returned.

The squeals were getting closer, louder. Joaquín wondered why they were bringing the guinea pigs—this didn’t look like they were going to feed him. He felt the box open from above and something was lowered inside.

He could see it was a rat, reeking of sewage and filth.

Chiiii… skiii… skii… ic, ic.

He tried, unsuccessfully, to turn his face away. Their eyes met—and he saw his mother’s eyes.

Darkness again.

He felt the animal’s icy claws against his eyes. The whiskers brushed his face, tickling and tormenting him. The rat began to bite his nose.

He let out an

“Ayyyyyyyyy!”—

the first of many that would come during his long night.

David de la Riva Aguero Vega

Miraflores, January 2026

Note: This article used AI for style and spelling corrections. The AI ​​translated it into English; the original was written in Spanish.