Chapter 2 Book

The corridor in front of her was long, the floor, walls, and ceiling were white with small golden inscriptions covering them. Sara tried to read what they said, but she couldn't, they seemed to fade with every effort she made to understand them.

The place was well-lit, and there were huge books on each side, all with enormous numbers in the middle and her name, Sara Almeida, in shining golden letters. Feeling tiny next to the large bound volumes, Sara walked slowly.

As she stopped in front of a book, it opened. Pages turned slowly, letters formed words, sentences, and merged until, as if by magic, Sara was transported into a scene related to the book's number.

In volume seven, she saw herself as a child, looking at her mother talking on the phone. Her miniature version admired the immaculately white uniform - a work uniform from the general hospital of Cezário - as well as the light brown hair tied in a bun.

Minerva Almeida's face was red, her eyes furious, and her voice was growing irritable with each second of the call. Worried, young Sara walked up to her mother, who repelled her without even looking, failing to notice that the rejection filled her daughter's green eyes with tears.

Young Sara ran, passing by the observing Sara, entering the room, throwing herself on the bed, and giving in to tears. Minerva ended the call minutes later and called for her daughter. Her younger version swallowed her tears and went to her mother, hoping for a hug, a show of affection. However, in her usual hurry, Minerva took her to the neighbor, asking her to watch over the daughter while she worked.

Bearing the memory of her mother's consistent lack of affection, the observing Sara continued walking, seeing other sad, happy, idle, and silent moments of her life in each volume.

In number twelve, she watched her teenage version walk hand in hand with her first boyfriend. They smiled, the sun illuminating their faces, their bodies drawing closer. She could feel, as if overshadowing the memory's reactions, the ache in her face from smiling so much.

In fifteen, she was in the bedroom of her second boyfriend. Eager hands, clothes being thrown aside, an afternoon of discoveries at his house after, recklessly, skipping class.

In sixteen, she cried copiously. Her mother reproved her, saying she was weak, emotional, that she should value herself.

The next one, number seventeen, didn't open, didn't flip, nor did it show any scenes to the observing Sara. Curious, she walked over to it and opened it with her own hands, having to exert all her strength due to the enormous size of the cover and the pages. On the first page, instead of being golden, the letters were gray, fixed, but even so, Sara couldn't read them. She turned more and more pages, but they were all the same. There were no memories, she couldn't read what was written, and when she strained her eyes and mind to comprehend something, the letters vanished, leaving only blank pages.

She moved on to the other volumes, feeling a crushing sensation in her chest, a feeling of mistake, of lack, and, just like sixteen, the ones after it were the same. Gray letters that disappeared when she tried to read them. She noticed that the numbers and the name on the cover also had a different color from the previous ones, they were gray, almost faded.

Distressed, turning more and more pages of volume twenty, where the words vanished as she looked at them, she was startled when the lights flickered, and a terrifying echo reverberated through the corridor.

"Within these pages, there are only words that hurt and bleed."

That's when she saw her, standing in front of the last volume in the corridor, her hand resting on the middle of the large number twenty-seven. Unlike the other volumes, this one had red numbering, and the surname was erased. She couldn't see the woman's face, both due to the distance and because she was facing the number. But she could tell she wore a knee-length red dress, bare feet, her hair a mass of unruly copper strands.

"The book of love is like a cruel game. You win it only to lose. I waste my time watching the days go by, feeling insignificant, hoping that you'll think of me, that you'll say you love me."

The woman fell to her knees on the ground, her hands on her face, tears dropping onto her dress.

The sobbing intensified, disturbing Sara. She wanted to approach, but felt her legs heavy and her feet rooted to the ground. She opened her mouth, wanting to console, to ask what weighed on the woman in red, but no words came out of her throat.

The woman lifted her eyes, two bright green circles, focused on Sara, her face twisted with pain and fiery hatred.

"If I could, I'd erase the past few years and wipe you from my heart forever."

Those words struck Sara like punches all over her body, pushing her backward with tremendous force, violently pounding her head. Her vision darkened, and everything around her disappeared, yet she could still hear the painful sobbing of the woman in red mixed with a high-pitched noise.

~*~

An annoying and persistent noise infiltrated her ears, spreading throbbing and painfully from the roots of her hair to her eyebrows. She forced her eyelids to open. A crack was enough to make her groan, the light intensifying the pain in every inch of her head, causing her to close her eyes with a trembling moan.

Confused, with a pasty sensation on her tongue, and her arms and legs weighing heavily like lead, Sara persisted and, blinking to adapt to the brightness, managed to see her surroundings. And she didn't recognize anything.

She tried to move, but not only were her arms heavy, they were connected to wires, needles, gauze, and so much apparatus that she feared what would happen if she disconnected them without help.

"Where am I...?" she asked, her voice coming out shrill, her throat dry and scratchy.

The lack of a response filled her with despair, as did the pains all over her body. She couldn't comprehend how she ended up in that situation.