I'm still on the stairs, bewildered that I've escaped the danger. But where the hell am I now? I descend the steps and realize I'm inside a building. The lack of windows prevents me from figuring out if it's a small, large building, or perhaps a skyscraper. A sense of oppression washes over me, reminding me of my apathetic childhood.
I enter the floor's doorway and find myself facing a seemingly endless corridor, typical of a hotel. However, this place is distinctly strange. The corridor is interminable, and I've never seen such an immense structure. Of course, I don't have much experience with hotels, seeing as they usually ask for your name, and it's not easy to sneak away the morning after without paying. I've frequented a few motels, but never anything like this.
As a Marquis, when I traveled with my family, I slept alone in the most luxurious suites, but they were places I didn't like being in. In fact, I hated the combed hair, not having my piercing, and my arm without tattoos. You might think I sound like a rebel, but in reality, I'm not that much of one. Actually, when I get attached to someone, I become the sweetest person in the world. Being a rebel doesn't mean you can't love, but that sometimes, for fear of being disappointed, I keep everything inside. Solitude taught me to defend myself, but not to connect with others. So, I abandoned the golden rule to create my own: don't get killed by Tito.
I enter this hotel floor. There are rooms on both sides, but there's nothing special to report. It's a normal hotel. Suddenly, a door opens, and I think: finally, I can ask for information. Maybe they have a phone, they'll let me make a call, and I can finally save myself. Then, I reflect: Who do I call? Not home—they haven't seen me in years. Tito? Maybe he's not as much of a friend as I thought. And the police? Let's wait a moment, because I still don't know what I did yesterday or why I'm here. To clear up my doubts, I start approaching the person who opened the door.
I get a better look and realize it's certainly not one of the best opportunities that has ever happened to me: a two-meter-tall behemoth with shoulders three times wider than mine. He definitely hit the gym a lot when he was younger, but looking closer at his face, a certain maturity shines through: he has the typical wrinkles of someone who has spent a lot of time outdoors and smoked too much. Skin so marked it looks like something out of a horror movie. However, the skin is the least of my problems: his two meters of height and the mass of muscles sculpting his arms and shoulders are a bit more intimidating. Despite everything, I approach; a large person isn't necessarily a bad one. I've seen good movies with a gentle giant, so why be afraid a priori?
But the real problem emerges when I try to open my mouth. This guy stares at me, I smile, he smiles, but I couldn't tell you if it's a smile or a grin. It's a strange expression, and overall, the person is not at all reassuring. Maybe it's a friendly gesture, a grimace that means "come here," but immediately after this smile, I see him touch his belt and pull out a gun.
Ah, well, I have to tell you, I don't like guns. I've never owned one, even though for the work I do, it might even be part of the kit I should acquire. A respectable merchant like me, perhaps with a gun, could avoid having a backpack with 100,000 euros worth of goods stolen. However, I've never had a passion for guns; I've never looked into whether I can use them without a gun license or where these mysterious shops that give them to you without documents might be. Personally, I've never seen storefronts like that.
I must say that when I was little, my grandfather used to take me hunting for boars and deer. For some, it was fun; for me, it was terrifying. Holding a rifle with which I could kill someone if I missed my aim terrified me—me, a decent person. You'd fire the shot while making the sign of the cross, hoping there was no one behind a bush: if you were lucky, you didn't kill anyone, and you found a poor animal agonizing with a bullet lodged God knows where.
Do you want to know how my first hunt as a Marquis degli Ancinolfi went? I was 12. Before that, fortunately, my mother had always refused to let me participate in the hunting parties, but upon reaching that age, you're considered old enough to hold a gun: you're neither too small nor too big, you understand what you're doing, and, apparently, if you're a Marquis, you're also considered fit to decide whether to risk shooting someone.
So, my grandfather and father took me to a nice woods, telling me it was full of animals. Some were dangerous, so I had to be very careful not to get anxious, point the rifle straight, and, even if an animal was charging me, keep calm and manage to shoot. All this told to a 12-year-old boy who had been in school that morning and had to finish his homework that evening. A bit absurd, right? Let's take things in order.
I entered this woods, or forest—I never understood the difference between the two—and it's something I'm still pondering.
My father tells me: "Stay close to me and nothing will happen to you." But as he does, he sees a large deer with magnificent antlers in the distance and, like an insane hunting enthusiast, starts running after this deer, perhaps because he considered it much more important than the child he had forgotten there, at the mercy of any kind of animal.
So I found myself with my grandfather, who didn't have a great sense of attention. He had lived as a noble, accustomed to well-being, and hunting wasn't really hunting for him; it was a place you go, others catch something, and you feast in the evening. I suspect he never shot anything. In fact, I don't even know if his rifle is a real rifle or a toy. He only cares about appearances: he's the one who lights the fire in the evening, and then someone cooks; he's the one who puts on the music, and then someone dances. The only thing he actually does personally is eat.
Suddenly, we see a bush move and imagine there's a possible prey behind it. The animals that can be found in a woods near a village are of many types: they told me there are many boars, but also roe deer and sometimes foxes. I saw my father running after a deer, but who's to say there isn't a cute little dog back there or a family's cat? They could have arrived here, and it would certainly be crueler to kill a little dog, like a poodle a little girl is waiting for at home, rather than a boar, which, unfortunately, no one seems to care about. I'd feel very sorry, especially for the little dog. Although it saddens me to think about the boar, I know it's the circle of life: either I shoot, or someone else will.
Meanwhile, my grandfather encourages me and says: "Aim the rifle. Aim the rifle, come on, so we can feast again tonight."
I do as he says, but I have a thousand thoughts. What if it's a person, or even a couple of lovers who went into the woods for... and hid behind that bush? You want to bet I shoot and find a naked man and woman, or a man with a man, or a woman with a woman? And what if maybe it's one of those children from the stories, like Tarzan, a child from the village who was abandoned in the woods and was raised by boars, and now walks on all fours and grunts like them?
There are so many possibilities, but my grandfather keeps telling me: "Shoot, shoot, shoot." And I, at 12, despite having so many thoughts, at a certain point pull the trigger. The bush stops, but not entirely; there's still a slight movement. It's time to go see what I've done. Will there be a weeping widow? A little girl I'll have to bring a bloody poodle to? Or will they write another sad story about a Tarzan killed with a rifle by a twelve-year-old boy who thinks he's a Marquis?
I move the bush and find myself facing a heart-wrenching scene, but in line with expectations, because it's a boar. And now everyone will breathe a sigh of relief, but the chilling scene is this: remember when I told you that when someone shoots, they might hit an animal anywhere? Well, I hit it in the buttock. Now, in some ways, I'm happy, because dying from a gunshot to the butt is less likely than dying from a shot to the forehead or the heart, but now I'm facing a beast lying on the ground, alive, but unable to get up, with a bullet in its rear, and I have no idea what to do.
At that point, my grandfather intervenes: "Good, you hit it, but now you have to deliver the coup de grâce."
Well, the executioner's shot is not exactly my specialty. I shot at a bush with a thousand doubts, but now I have the little face of a boar in front of me that, even though it resembles a pig and certainly can't be called cute, at this moment, however, seems to be looking at me and crying. I even think I heard it say, "Please, no." Maybe I'm only 12, I'm a bit impressionable, and I start to feel my head spin. I look at my grandfather who urges me on: "Come on, give it the shot, this is your animal, you caught it, it will help you grow up." Meanwhile, he moves my arms, pointing the rifle towards the boar's head, but you know, this time, I have no intention of listening to my grandfather.
So I drop the rifle and tell him: "You do it, Grandpa, I can't."
Perhaps it was right then that I understood I didn't want to become a Marquis, because the one in charge, disappointed, takes the rifle and says: "Then we'll leave it here. I certainly won't do this dirty work."
There I understood that my grandfather wasn't a bad person, just profoundly selfish: all his life he had enjoyed a title that gave him the illusion that everything was owed to him. When a person was down, in deep difficulty, or an animal was agonizing, he didn't have the altruism to help them, nor to finish them off in such a way as to end their pain.
My father, on the other hand, was very different: a raving lunatic passionate about hunting, he would have killed even a little mouse with his rifle. He felt no compassion in the face of an animal's suffering. If he had been there, we would probably already be at dinner and feasting on the boar. But I didn't want to be like that, and that's why I ran away from home when I was 16.
If it happened today, I would have carried the boar on my shoulder. It would have kicked me, complained, and tried to bite me, but I would have taken it to a veterinarian. Back then, I was only 12, with a Marquis grandfather only interested in warming himself by the fireplace, and a father who had ended up God knows where trying to shoot a deer. So, in front of the eyes of an animal that looked at me trustingly, an animal I had harmed, but that was looking at me with the eyes of one who trusts that, somehow, I would solve that problem, I left it there agonizing. And in that moment, I became a traitor.
But let's go back to the two-meter giant: he pulls out the gun and points it at me. I try to ask what's happening, but he doesn't answer. Maybe he doesn't speak my language. But he has a gun pointed at me, so I decide to run. Fortunately, I'm trained, because every morning, as I told you, after coffee I always go for a good run... and now I run, run, run until I see a door on the right side, ajar. I dart inside. Maybe the guy didn't see me because he had lagged a bit behind.