She was walking along the deserted street under the impending rain. The tree branches hissed in the wind with the chorus of a thousand voices. On a curve, Marisa saw a silhouette against a wall. It was a big man dressed in black, with a hat pulled over his face. Marisa traversed the street and, sensing his invisible gaze after her, broke into a run. She then heard footsteps.

The man was much taller and quicker than her. He was almost reaching her. Justkeep going... just a little longer, Marisa repeated to herself. Soon she would reach Marco's building and be safe... The man lunged at her and Marisa fell on her knees. She didn't feel pain, only fear while the iron hands immobilized her and the pavement hurt her back.

They were under a tree that blocked the street light and cracked whips of shadow across the concrete. The man's face was a black screen where sparkles flared as the leaves flailed. Marisa saw the metallic glint of the gun. The barrel found her throat. Then the trigger lock clicked.

"Now you're going to die."

The future froze. Marisa's eyes welled, the tears holographic images of terror. Up above, indifferent, they swinged. They had gathered in the trees and lampposts to weave a gigantic web over the street. A furious gust shook them, casting them into the air. They dropped to the ground like rotten fruit, a black rain before the rain: hundreds and hundreds of spiders. They formed a dark stain that simmered with a multitude of eyes and legs.

The man jumped to his feet and left Marisa exposed. The hairy paws immediately scaled her body and expanded across her face, filling the night with further darkness. She tried to scream and the spiders plunged into her mouth, their sticky paws with a smell of dirt in her throat, nose, eyes...

The shots blasted in her ears. The man was aimlessly discharging his gun to chase the spiders away. Marisa felt a sting in her arm, then on her shoulder, then on her chest. She was wrapped in the shroud of her own blood, with no voice and no air. She thought of everything she would never see again: Marco, her loved ones, the sun, the sea... Inside her, remained only fear, incredulity and sadness. Then the sudden light blinded her.

Marisa struggled, the scream stiffled in her throat, heavy breathing, icy cold sweat. Gradually she recognized the familiar surroundings. Her bedroom. When she realized it had all been a nightmare, relief was followed by an ominous feeling. She glanced around and saw the clock on the nightstand. Twenty to seven. Jumping out of bed, Marisa rushed to get ready. She was running quite late for her college presentation.

Still dazed, Marisa left home and hesitated by the elevator before pressing the call button. Upon touching it, a diffuse coldness tingled in her fingertips, spreading icy tentacles throughout her body. Clanc, clanc, clanc... clanc. The old service elevator stopped on her floor. The door opened revealing steel walls and cold light. A morgue refrigerator. She entered it reluctantly, holding her handbag tightly to her chest.

As the elevator went down, she recalled the physics teacher at school and his lessons about free falling bodies. Marisa closed her eyes with a shiver. She was plummeting towards her grave. She could feel the lift running lose from the cables, sinking into the guts of the earth, fast, fast... faster, faster... CRASH!

Marisa opened her eyes abruptly as the door slid to the side with a moan. Ground floor. She got off with her heart racing and, once on the street, tried to focus on her presentation for the coming class. She reached the bus stop a few blocks away. Soon a man wearing a black jacket materialized by her side. When he asked her the time, it was as if the wings of a monster had eclipsed the sun. The day turned instantly dark, and the stranger's eyes lit up in a flash. She took a step back, while her hands gripped the cell phone.

"Eleven past eleven," Marisa replied without thinking, and then became confused with the numbers on the screen. What had happened to the past hours? She couldn't be that late. She glanced at the man and noticed a scar above his eyebrow, which looked like a centipede crippled by a razorblade. When she turned back to the cell phone, the numbers had changed. Marisa tried to suppress the tremor in her voice: "Sorry, I made a mistake. It's seven forty-five."

Her bus arrived and Marisa hopped onboard, still shaky. She found a corner to lean on, producing a notepad from her handbag to review her presentation. At one point, the driver hit the brakes hard and the notepad fell on the floor. As she bent to collect it, she saw that someone was already handing it back to her.

Marisa raised her eyes and had a startle when she faced the man from the bus stop. He returned her notepad in silence, and Marisa nodded a thank you. The proximity of the stranger, however, gave her sudden disquiet. She eyed him discreetly, watching his every move. On a curve, his jacket half-opened to reveal the grip frame of a handgun in the inner pocket. Marisa's hands tingled with needles of ice while her heart melted inside her chest.

It was him. The man in her dream.

Marisa looked around assessing how many people she would need to dribble in order to reach the back door. Then, the bus stopped and boarded even more passengers without giving her a chance to disembark. In despair, she pushed forward across the tight mass, then pressed the stop button and exited the vehicle before her final destination. As the bus proceeded down the street, Marisa leaned against a wall. Her legs faltered.

The campus of the University of São Paulo was crossed by wide avenues lined with trees and lawns. Fair-faced concrete buildings with glassy façades reflected the blue sky. Marisa took a secondary street, deserted at that hour, and went around the clock tower. Then time stopped when she found herself face to face with the stranger from the bus.

Where did he come from? Marisa could swear she had been the only passenger to get off the bus back there. The man's eyes stole the light of day, and in the bottomless pit of his pupils pried a vulture blacker than the night, ready to open its wings and charge. Marisa quickly dodged the attack, fleeing through a shortcut to the back entrance of the Communications and Arts School. On her trail she sensed the man's footprints. And the fluttering of wings.

The complex occupied an entire block and consisted of a dozen units. Marisa dashed on the cement path, past a row of low buildings, and only slowed down at the next-to-last unit. She entered it and rushed to an ample classroom, with one of the walls taken by large glass panes. Her study group waited for her next to one of the windows: two boys and three girls in jeans and T-shirts, ready to change the world. Marisa approached them, panting, and made a helpless gesture.

"Sorry for my being late... you have no idea of what just happened-"

She couldn't finish the sentence, because right then the teacher entered the classroom. He was a man with gray hair and upfront manners, wearing khaki clothes, who resembled a Doctor Livingstone. He was only missing the hat.

"Good morning, everyone." The teacher leaned against the desk in front of the white board. "Today we're gonna talk about the state ideological apparatuses that perpetuate the dominant ideologies..."

Marisa hardly listened to him. She kept looking at the window and clutching the edge of the board attached to the chair. Her eyes darted back and forth, from the window to her notes; the words on the notepad, however, were now scrambled before her like a clump of barbed wire impossible to disentangle.

The clock on the wall stared at her with a malign eye. The minutes dragged painfully in the stuffy room.

Tic, tac... tic, tac... tic, tac...

It was already the end of March and officialy autumn, but the city had plunged into a hellish heat wave and the thermometer rose to ninety degrees. Nonetheless, Marisa felt like she was freezing and, with a shiver, hugged herself. She dreaded the moment when the class would be over and she'd have to leave the room and take the bus back home. Who was that man? Why was he after her?

"Now I'm gonna give floor to your classmates," the teacher said before taking a seat in the front row.

There were murmurs, coughs, expectation. Marisa's study group pals directed inquisitive looks at her. She stood up and sought shelter behind the solid desk. From there, she spanned the whole room, the curious expression on her classmates' faces, the master's affable countenance-all those pairs of eyes on her, waiting.

Tic, tac... tic, tac... tic, tac...

Silence lingered.

"Marisa, you can start now," urged the teacher, tapping his foot on the floor.

She opened her mouth but was incapable of uttering a sound. Her lips were dried out, her tongue seemed glued to the roof of the mouth. A cold sweat beaded her forehead, and her heart began pounding. She was still in the middle of a nightmare, that must be it... I'm not feeling too well, Marisa thought. She wanted to ask for help; her throat was closing. She averted her gaze to the nearest window, where the view was obstructed by a large bush almost flat with the pane. Horrified, she discerned the man's frame behind the plant. The next moment, he had disappeared.

Marisa remained for a long minute with her eyes fixed on the window, oblivious to her presentation and the astonished looks the classmates now addressed her. The stalker must be hiding somewhere nearby. But where exactly?

Outside, students were strolling between the cafeteria and the main building. She searched for her own reflection on the glass surface and then, with insurmountable perplexity, saw her body dissolving. Next, her face was disintegrating too, until there was nothing left. Poof.

And then everything sank into darkness.

___________________________________________________________

Intrigued? Read on and you will understand.

Hmmm... I don't know what else to say...

... oh, right, please vote, comment, etc., the usual. I feel horrible to keep repeating it, I don't like it a bit... it's just that people tend to forget how important that is to an author.