The story
It was the scorching late 1970s in Valledupar, when the dusty streets of a neighborhood that was barely taking shape were starting to fill with dreams and thick silences. Doña Matilde, one of the neighborhood's pioneers, lived distressed by a grotesque toad that dragged itself to her back patio every night. Tired of the intrusion and convinced that the amphibian carried bad luck, the woman would greet it with broom strikes and accurate stone throws. The curious and at the same time unsettling thing was that every time the animal received its punishment, doña Carmen, a sullen neighbor who lived on the corner, would appear the next day with a bruised body and complaining of unexplained aches.
The neighborhood tension seemed to dissipate when Carmen, with a strange smile on her lips, invited Matilde to her house under the excuse of giving her a fat hen so she could prepare a good sancocho, a hearty traditional soup. With the trust typical of the neighborhood, Matilde crossed the threshold that hot afternoon. As soon as she stepped inside, a chill ran down her spine; the house was plunged into a heavy gloom and the bedroom walls had been painted pitch black that devoured the sunlight.
Guided by the echo of her own steps, Matilde made it to the back pen. The scene was bleak and eerie: all the birds wandering around the yard were a uniform black, without a single feather of another color. In the middle of them, a robust animal pretended to be a turkey. However, upon reaching out to catch a hen, the air froze. A hoarse, cavernous, and clearly inhuman cackle echoed between the adobe walls.
The supposed turkey unfolded immense wings bristling with sharp quills. Before Matilde's terrified eyes, the creature revealed its true form: an abomination covered in absolute blackness, equipped with sharp horns on its head and heavy goat hooves instead of feet. A foul screech burst from its throat as the beast took a step forward, ready to tear her apart.
Matilde's desperate screams broke the afternoon's spell. Her husband, who was waiting nearby and sensed that something was wrong, burst into the property by knocking down the gate just in time. With a desperate effort, he managed to drag Matilde out of that cursed slaughterhouse, while behind them the beast's laugh echoed like a death sentence they would never manage to forget.
