It was before sunrise, and I was alone with the lights off. I almost always left them on to let the other gangs know I was waiting for them, and also 'cause I''s harder for me to fall asleep that way. But those days I turned them off 'cause, since the police were looking for us, I didn't want to stand out.
I was sitting on the bed, about to fall asleep, when suddenly I felt a tiny aura coming closer and closer until it reached the door. It turned the knob very slowly, and I heard the lock click open. I stood up, crept up silently, and positioned myself to one side of the door, on the hinge side. I prepared a spell and waited. The door opened very, very slowly, and I heard someone enter. When they barely managed to slip inside without making a sound, they closed the door and walked across the room without turning on the light. I was behind them and very slowly approached the light switch. I added more magic to my spell and turned on the light.
And I was about to cast the spell on them, but I quickly dispelled it 'cause that person was Katya, who got scared and turned to look at me.
"What the fuck? You scared me," that cynical piece of shit complained.
"You're in my room," I said.
"I lost my key," she told me. She wanted us to go out almost every night, and sometimes I just didn't wanna and stayed at my room while she went out on her own. "But why were you waiting for me?"
"I wasn't," I told her.
"So who are you waiting for, Miguel? A whore?" She came closer, grabbed my face, and lifted my nose with a finger. "Perv. You're such a perv."
"Shut up, you fucking brat," I said and pushed her away 'cause she was already drunk.
She laid on the floor and stared at me.
"So who are you waiting for?"
"No one," I sat on the couch.
"Tell me, Miguel," she stood up and started poking my chest and face and she grabbed my arms and tried to put me in wrestling holds.
"The fuck. Stop it," I pushed her off me, but she kept coming back.
"Did you hook up with anyone? Who are you waiting for?"
"No one, but I have to always be prepared for anything," I told her. "If you sleep, you die."
She then touched my eyebag.
"But there's no way you never sleep."
"You doze off, but you're always awake. That's just how it is."
She stared at me, then sat on my leg, snuggled on me, and covered my eye with her hand.
"Sleep," she said.
"What?"
"We're not letting your whore in, Miguel. Just sleep." She was pulling my eyelid down to make me fall asleep, but since I wasn't going to sleep, she grabbed my eyepatch and tried to put it over my good eye.
"What the fuck?!" I yelled.
"I'll protect you," she said.
I almost laughed in her face. She protecting me? I was Dark, the leader of Death. If it weren't for that fucking hero, no one could stop me. Without his fucking power of friendship, there was nothing more powerful than me. I'd been in hundreds of shootouts, and seen thousands die. I'd taken down so many gangs I'd lost count. There's no one who knows half the spells I do. And yet she had the nerve to tell me she was gonna protect me, as if all that meant nothing, as if I, despite everything I'd done and been through, was some idiot who fucking couldn't protect anything.
What a fucking joke.
What a sick, disgusting joke.
But I didn't say anything 'cause I was tired, and I was also very comfortable there. I just closed my eye a little 'cause the light was bothering me, and suddenly everything was dark, and Katya was gone.
I stood up from the armchair and looked around, but everything was dark.
If you sleep you die, and that's exactly what happened.
I took out my phone and checked the time. 8:25 pm. I covered my face with my hands and was about to scream.
Katya had gotten in my room around 5 a.m. I slept for more than half a day. How could I not have noticed? I checked for missed calls or texts, but nothing. If someone had come and taken Katya, why hadn't they killed me? It was the perfect time to kill me or take me. But now what? Was I supposed to take down each gang there one by one to find Katya? Although at that hour, she could have been anywhere in the world. Fuck. Fuck. How could I had fuck up like that? All I had to do was not fall asleep.
"Everything okay?" I heard Katya's voice, and I turned around. There she was, looking at me like I was crazy.
"Where the fuck have you been?" I asked 'cause I wasn't crazy.
"In the bathroom," she told me like all this wasn't a big deal.
"With the lights off?" I asked her 'cause, if she had turned them on, I would have seen it come out from under the door.
"I just didn't want to wake you up. And how did you sleep?"
I went back to the couch.
She sat on my leg again.
"You want me to protect you again?"
"From what? I was keeping an eye on everything."
"Oh yeah? You were snoring. You were probably dreaming about your whores, you perv."
"I just dozed off a bit. I'm always awake, waiting if someone comes."
"Yeah, sure. The boogieman's coming for Mr. Important over here," she snuggled on me and covered my eye with her hand.
"He'd better not come," I told her and let her fall asleep. I could feel her breathing on my neck.
At first, I was waiting for any sound, any approaching aura, but as time went on, I grew more and more tired. I tried to think of anything to keep me awake. Sometimes I thought I heard cop cars or footsteps coming closer, but they were very faint and then quickly faded away.
She still had her hand over my eye, so I couldn't see anything. Sometimes I even forgot if my eye was open or closed. Katya's hand was very small and soft. She was warm.
At that moment I thought that if I fell asleep there and the other gangs or the cops found me, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. If they came here without me noticing and shot me in the head, it wouldn't be the worst way to die. I would even be nice for this to be my last memory, the last thing I ever did.
But I knew that criminals like me never die like that. We don't live in peace, and that's why we don't deserve it.