The emergency stairs swayed in the wind, creating an uncomfortable sway, followed by the clatter of the metal frame slamming against the building’s wall. Each beat was punctuated by a squeal from Melissa, who was trembling right in front of me. Helena, beside me, looked at her with disapproval, rolling her eyes and landing them on me, trying to identify my opinion on that. I silently agreed with her, chuckling to try to express my disapproval.“Melissa, can’t you shut up?” Ana asked, ahead of her, focused on the steps and squeezing hard on the safety rail.Melissa stay quiet, trying to hold back the next little squeak as the structure we were in shook. As she turned to the next flight of stairs, I could look at her face and saw that two paths of tears stood out on her tanned cheeks. I immediately regretted my mocking laugh, feeling sorry for the terrified girl.“We’re almost to the ground, Melissa,” said Guilherme, beside Carlos, at the head of the entire group.The two boys were the

The soft summer night breeze refreshed my face, sending a shiver down my spine. I was still alone, leaning against the icy balcony railing, staring angrily at my cell phone screen, which again told me the call couldn’t be ended. Everyone had already given up on cell phones by that time, some had also cried about it, starting to get in a constant nervousness for not being able to contact their relatives and friends anymore. I’ve managed my anxiety well so far, but I dreaded seeing it spiral out of control at any moment.Finally I gave up and put my cell phone in my pocket, refusing to look at social media, full of more backlash from cases, endless debates about what the fate of cities would be and texts of mourning that only made my heart ache more. When I looked again at the scene below me, I went back to paying attention to the groans. They hadn’t stopped once since I’d been there, but sometimes I could almost distract myself from them when there was something to hold my attention. B

I was trapped in the bathroom again.This time it was smaller, suffocating. If I tried to move in any way, I felt the uncomfortable cold of the tiled wall. There was no gap between the door and the floor or ceiling, turning this already small cubicle into a closed box. I was sweating, but it wasn’t hot. There were things moving outside, moaning, growling. I could only hear them, but there was something else that told me they were there… Their presence took my breath away, as if they were already beside me, crushing my throat with their bony hands.I heard a scream and the feeling of being suffocated dissipated, at least a little. The voice I had heard was the same one uttered by one of the girls who was trapped on the other side of the door. But this time he didn’t just stay away, he came against the door, punching it hard, creating a deafening noise in the concrete box that held me.“RELIEF!” I heard the scream. “OPEN, OTHERWISE HE WILL CATCH ME!” she pleaded, her voice choked with a

When they finally fell silent, silence fell over the bathroom and we cried together. They were in tears and I was softly. My body was frozen and the shame of having been hiding for all this time punished me. Still, I couldn’t feel the slightest urge to get out of that cabin.One of the girls asked the other if they should go out. I heard a denial, and silence prevailed again. That summed up the hours that followed. Sometimes one of the two would cry and the other would give some kind of comfort. They would try to have a conversation, sketch plans to get out of there, but soon the subject would die on their lips. Like me, they feared the inevitable moment when they would be forced to leave that bathroom. At one point they tried to force open the door of the cabin I was hiding in, which almost led to a heart attack, but they soon gave up.When the monotony finally broke, it was only to start our nightmares.A new sound reached my ears, unlike all the others. A sort of deep, throaty grow

When I finished the crossing, facing with both legs towards the cabin in front of me, I noticed how tense my muscles were and I tried to relax, without much success. Now he was two cabins away from the door. The body of the last girl—the only one, in fact, dead—was just outside the door of the last cabin. I intended to get down and go out the door, but I soon understood that the idea would be flawed: the upper part of his body was leaning against the cabin door, which would make it difficult to open it without making noises. How much time would I have from the moment I attracted the attention of the creature Sarah? Seconds?It needed to be something faster.I risked slowly crawling closer to the edge in order to look at the floor. In front of the partition of the last cabins was the body drowned in a pool of blood, making it impossible to make a jump to the floor without the risk of losing balance. I looked again at the monster that until now seemed not to have noticed my presence, wi