SÃO PAULO - October 10, 1918
The taste wouldn't go away.
Iron. Salt. Something alive and warm that still pulsed between her teeth even after she spat it out.
Maristela gagged. Doubled her body over itself, hands on her knees, and spat again — but only saliva mixed with red came out. The piece was on the floor. She saw it fall. An irregular fragment of skin and muscle, with torn edges, that landed on the stretched man's chest and slid down the soaked cassock.
Father Dan. The monster that all the novices in the convent feared… no more.
His body still moved. It wasn't life — it was the last spasms, the nervous system giving up slowly, like a cockroach with its head ripped off.
His fingers scratched the floorboards. His glassy eyes stared at the ceiling, at nowhere, at the hell that was perhaps already swallowing him.
He was smiling. Maristela didn't understand why.
'Why was he smiling? Why did he force her to do this? Why her?'
She was panting. Her chest rose and fell too fast, her heart beating in her throat, in her ears, behind her eyes. The world buzzed. The walls of the office seemed to bend inward.
Her hand found the brooch.
It was pinned to her novice clothes — that ridiculous thing they used to cover girls who had nothing, as if cloth could hide that they were orphans, that they were leftovers, that no one wanted them.
The brooch was the only pretty thing she owned. The only thing that was hers.
She drove the pin's tip into her finger.
Deep. Until she felt the skin give way, the flesh open. The pain came hot and sharp, cutting through the buzzing, bringing the world back in shards.
The table was tipped over. Papers scattered. The priest's cassock was stained with blood. The lamp's light flickered, casting dancing shadows on the stone walls. The smell of cheap wine still hung in the air, mixed with the smell of blood and iron.
The coffee was on the table — the agate mug he used to impress visitors. She picked it up. Burned her lips, her tongue, the back of her throat. The scalding pain was supposed to burn away the taste of blood. The taste didn't leave.
Tears flowed. Silent. She didn't even feel them coming.
Crystalline.
'There. It's done.'
'I killed him. I what? How?'
A lapse of memory: his hand on her neck. The brooch piercing his eye. The wine breath. The weight of his body pushing you against the table. The hateful embrace, the lungs without air, the imminent death.
And then — teeth finding skin, the surprise in his eyes, the warm taste exploding in her mouth.
'I'm a monster now.'
She thought of the girls. Mariana, who bled on the bed after the priest's visit. Maria, who disappeared after "confession."
The tears kept coming. Maristela was sitting in a corner, curled up, the blood spreading across the floor and covering one corner of the room, slowly approaching where she was.
'My life is over. God didn't smile at me before, but now… now salvation is gone.'
'I killed. I tore a piece off a man with my teeth. That's not a sin. That's demon stuff.'
And then, a voice.
It wasn't hers. But it was her.
'Years of pretending to end up like this. What a waste of time. Should have abandoned Clara and all the others. Maybe he would have left you alone.'
She knew that voice. It was the same one that whispered in the dark hallways, that said "don't trust" when the nuns smiled, that woke her in the middle of the night with hunches about who would suffer or get beaten the next day.
The voice of survival. The paranoia. The fear that kept her alive. The hatred that made her hate every word of love and affection that came out of the mouths of people who know they deserve the world.
Rich people, happy people, people she would never be.
The Orphan. The only thing that remained with her.
The nickname she herself gave to that thing inside her. The part that wasn't innocent, that didn't trust, that knew the world was a place that wanted to devour the weak. The most she could do was not be the snack of the moment.
'Look at you. Look at this. What a mess.'
Maristela looked. The mess was a dead man, blood spreading and already staining her feet.
'Now you're a criminal. Not poor, not an orphan, not a poor thing — a criminal. Does that change anything? No. You've always been a survivor. Now you just have a more honest label.'
Her hands trembled. She squeezed the mug until her knuckles turned white.
'You'll get caught. Go to jail. Or worse — reform school. Or even worse — they'll hand you over to someone like him, only in uniform. And this time you won't be able to bite.'
"Shut your mouth," she whispered. Her voice came out hoarse, broken.
'Get up, orphan!' The voice was a silent command. Maristela stood up. Her body trembled. Her hands couldn't move. The tears didn't stop. But at least, she stood up.
'Before I abandon you too. Now. While there's still time. Find out why today. Find out why now.'
Her hand moved. Stuck the brooch into her hand again — the same hand, the same hole, deeper. The tip came out the other side. The pain came. Passed. In its place, a clean silence.
The tears kept coming. The tremors kept coming. Her hands moved slowly, returning to normal.
At that moment, that would have to do.
Her clothes were torn. Her blouse open, her skirt lifted, anyone would know what was about to happen to her.
But she resisted. She bit. He fell and wouldn't hurt anyone else.
Never again.
She fixed her clothes. Buttoned her shirt wrong. Straightened her skirt. Smoothed her hair.
'Looking normal is the first step to pretending to be normal. You need to look better' — the Orphan's voice in her ear.
What else? She looked at the body. At the blood. At the piece of flesh on his chest.
'At least we need to find out why. Why us. Why now.'
'No. I want to go back to the room.'
'They all saw him choose you. They all knew what he did. You'll be the first suspect. And if they investigate you, they'll investigate the girls and then they'll find out what he did. And if they do that, you'll be separated and there's no guarantee that everyone will be safe.'
'No. We'll be fine. He died. It wasn't me.'
'Do you care about them or do you just want someone to care about you, orphan?'
She didn't answer. Didn't know the answer. Didn't want to stay there. Wanted to go back to bed and forget the world existed. Wanted to stop being.
She went to the door. Opened it a crack. Listened.
Silence.
The convent slept. It was early morning — she didn't know what time, but the moon had already passed its highest point. The hallways were empty, plunged into dimness, only the weak light of the oil lamps lit in the niches of the saints.
She thought about walking, about moving away, about going back to the room and pretending nothing happened… but her feet wouldn't obey. Something pulled her back. Not his body — what he said before. 'You're special. Your blood…'
Each step echoed on the stone corridor. Not in the real world — in the real world her bare feet were silence. But in her head, each step was a thunder announcing: murderer, murderer, murderer.
The saints in the niches looked at her. Plaster eyes. Painted mouths. Fingers pointing to the sky, to God, to the hell that awaited her.
She didn't need to see to know something was following.
Her conscience. The dead priest. The ghost that didn't yet know it was her haunting.
'What do we do now?' The voice returned. The Orphan. 'Go to jail? Reform school? Get chased out on the street for killing a saint?'
"He wasn't a saint," she murmured, her lips barely moving. "He was going to…"
'We know what he was going to do. But they don't know. And this is first-degree murder with aggravated cruelty. We chewed his neck like gum. Can't claim self-defense. And even if we did, who would believe it?'
'The girls. They can…'
'Say what? That we learned to walk in groups after dark? That we had two unexplained disappearances in the last four months of girls who didn't go with him?'
She was outside the priest's room. Leaning against the door. Couldn't walk. Couldn't move. Wanted to run, but didn't want to walk.
The dark, massive wooden door, with a carved cross. Behind it, the man who ruled over everything. The man everyone knew as Father Dan.
'This isn't going to work.'
She knew.
'Many of the older ones saw you leave. Saw him choose you for "community duties." No matter how much they love you — when they find out the truth, all fingers will point at you. At us.'
"They won't…"
'Won't what? Lie for you? Risk their own skin? They're not your family. They're other rats just like you who've been brainwashed and raised like cattle. Your mask has fallen. You're better than this. Stop acting like a victim before you start believing you deserved to be one.'
She took a deep breath. Finally managed to move. Reached the door. Her hand on the latch.
The Orphan's voice returned. Different. Clearer. Closer.
'Do you remember the first one?'
Maristela froze. Her hand went to the brooch without thinking.
'Before the priest. Before the convent. The man who abandoned you here.'
She didn't remember. Didn't want to remember. She looked at the brooch. The cold metal. 'Why did he give me this?'
'You bit him too. But he didn't die. He gave you the brooch, gave you blood. Said you should try to find him when you killed.'
The silence weighed.
'You killed.'
'Welcome back, orphan. I missed you.'