The story
For twenty-six long years, the steering wheel had been Rodrigo's faithful companion on the dusty, lonely routes of the country. With his hands weathered by the chill of dawn and his gaze fixed on the horizon, he believed he had seen it all through the windshield. Yet, there was a terror that no paved highway could ever erase, one that stalked him both in his waking hours and in the depths of rest.
That nocturnal phenomenon began as a strange exhaustion. Upon closing his eyes, Rodrigo failed to find the peace his body demanded, but rather a labyrinth of recurring nightmares. Often, visions of naked women and elusive silhouettes slipped through the corners of his mind, mocking his fatigue. But the worst happened when paralysis enveloped him: an invisible, heavy, and freezing force would grip his testicles with an inexplicable malice. He would wake at dawn bathed in a cold sweat, feeling completely drained of strength, as if that nocturnal shadow had stripped away his vitality during the early hours of the morning.
The terror was not confined to the realm of dreams. It happened many years ago, while he was passing through the dense and isolated area of Puerto Araújo, in the department of Santander. Night was falling heavily over the thicket of the jungle and the engine of his heavy truck roared rhythmically against the pavement. Suddenly, upon taking a curve where the vegetation seemed to swallow the road, the atmosphere changed abruptly. A sepulchral cold flooded the cab, making his skin crawl. There, standing by the side of the road, waited an imposing and dark figure, an entity whose presence exuded pure evil. That specter stared right at him as he passed, and Rodrigo knew, with a certainty that froze his blood, that he had crossed paths face to face with the devil himself. No stop along the way could calm the trembling in his hands.
Back in his bed, the ordeal continued with another recurring torment. In his most terrifying dreams, Rodrigo would feel his body begin to ascend weightlessly, rising toward a black and barren sky, higher and higher, further and further from the earth. After reaching a limit of unbearable vertigo, gravity would disappear completely and he would plunge into a free fall, endless, through a dark and bottomless abyss. He never found the ground, an impact never came to put an end to the nightmare; it was only the perpetual sensation of crashing against nothingness, an anguish that chased him even after opening his eyes, reminding him that danger lurked not only in the lonely curves of Santander, but also deep within his own soul.
