The story
When she was three years old, Camila received a plastic doll that looked just like a real newborn baby. That night, with the innocent tenderness typical of childhood, she carefully tucked it into a corner of her bed before drifting off to sleep under the lingering coastal heat of Cartagena. She had no inkling that such an ordinary gesture would tear open an involuntary rift in her reality. The moment she fell asleep, the tropical warmth vanished, and she found herself inside a strange, freezing funeral home nestled in some small town in Boyacá. The room glared under a blinding white light, packed with men and women dressed in deep mourning, their faces completely unfamiliar to her.
Amid that ghostly murmur of prayers and whispers, Camila’s mother emerged from the crowd, took her gently by the hand, and led her silently toward the center of the room. Resting on a platform was a small casket. Driven by a quiet curiosity, the little girl stood on tiptoe to peer inside. Lying there was a pale, naked baby who, in a fraction of a second, snapped its eyes open with savage force and locked a vivid, relentless gaze on her. The shock was so shattering that Camila jolted awake, her heart hammering against her ribs and her skin crawling.
The nightmare took on a macabre reality exactly eight days later. News shook the entire family: Camila’s aunt had just lost her baby. From that painful tragedy on, the little girl's nighttime rest ceased to be a sanctuary. That first vision unleashed an unyielding chain of premonitory dreams in which the deaths and misfortunes of her closest relatives were foretold with chilling certainty.
As the years went by, the simple act of sleeping turned into sheer torture. Camila fought off sleep until she reached utter exhaustion, overwhelmed by the dread that whatever image took shape in her mind would end up materializing in her waking life; she terrified herself thinking she was the conduit drawing misfortune down on her loved ones. That constant anxiety fractured her senses. During certain periods of crisis, the young woman could no longer tell whether she was walking through the real world awake or still trapped in a lucid nightmare, lost in the dense fog between reality and illusion.
The strangeness was not limited to her own family: in her nighttime visions, complete strangers began to parade past, accompanied by specific clothes, voices, and meticulous details. Months or even years later, those very same people would cross her path in real life, saying hello on a street corner or sharing public transit, as though destiny were following a script she had already read.
Alarmed by her daughter’s torment, her mother, taking refuge in strict skepticism, decided to step in firmly: “Mija, my daughter, stop dwelling on that. The more you think about those things, the more power you give them.” Clinging to that warning like a lifeline, Camila forced her mind to drown in work and everyday noise to shut out the crevices of sleep. The strategy worked, and over time, the ferocity of the episodes gradually subsided. Yet now that she has turned twenty-five, she is still seized by the shudder of knowing that, on any careless night, that white coffin could be waiting for her once again in the dark.
