Martina had lost track of time, she no longer knew how many days she had gone without sleep, any noise put her on alert. To make matters worse every morning she had to get ready for work, go to the office and pretend nothing was happening to her, laugh when others laughed and ruminate on whatever food she bought at the last minute, only to end up not being able to swallow it.
The only thing that went warmly through her throat was coffee, her vigil companion, a liter every night, maybe two, she had lost count of how many she drank during the day to stay awake. There was nothing more delicious than a cup of coffee as black as the night sky, and with each sip Martina imagined that she was drinking the night that tormented her. That afternoon she saw on the living room cabinet a picture of herself, from a few years ago, her face lit up and her eyes full of life moved her.
"What have I become?"
Since her landlord, a dirty and despicable guy, had been involved in shady business with fuel smuggling, he had started doing everything to kick Martina out of the house, but she didn't have enough money to move out, so she asked him for more time. The answer was negative, the landlord began to insult Martina every morning when she left and every evening when she arrived, he would break into Martina's space while she was at work to steal her things, he constantly interrupted the flow of clean water so she could not bathe or cook, he also interrupted the electric service. These and a few other things were driving Martina crazy, and she feared that one of those nights the evil guy would break into her house and murder her.
The next day she arrived at work and her boss called her into the office.
"I want to tell you Martina that this is a very difficult decision for me, but I can no longer allow you to work here. The last few months your performance has gone down, you are not even a shadow of the woman I hired."
Martina wanted to refute something, but her boss wouldn't let her and continued speaking.
"Besides your appearance is now dirty and disheveled, your colleagues have complained a lot about your bad smell and how distracted you are. Apparently your clumsiness is holding up the work."
Martina began to explain in a desperate way, everything that had happened in the last months, but how to explain in a couple of minutes the anguish of so many days and nights? The boss looked at her with disinterest.
"I am very sorry for whatever you are going through, but my duty is to protect the company and the decision has already been made".
That last sentence broke something inside Martina, she got up from her chair and walked mechanically to her desk, grabbed her purse and left the office with nothing else What could she care about a stapler and a few pencils? Her life was falling apart and she didn't know what to do.
She arrived home early that day, the landlord surprised her with an arsenal of insults. Martina was disgusted to see the man with an unshaven face, holding a cigarette between his chapped lips, with one hand waving a knife in a threatening manner. For the first time Martina didn't care if the man killed her on the spot. When she reached her space, her stupor threw her to the ground. After a few minutes she thought that a cup of coffee would restore her, so she got up as best she could and went to the kitchen, took the jug and turned on the faucet, but not a single drop came out, her heart was pounding. He looked at the thermos and quickly opened it, at the bottom there was enough coffee left for a cup, he poured it and before taking the first sip he heard a hoarse voice:
"Aren't you planning to do anything useless, are you just going to stand there with your arms crossed?".
Martina was surprised, the voice seemed to come from the coffee cup.
"If I were you I would take revenge, that miserable guy you could easily have him created."
"I could report him, what he does with the fuel is illegal," now Martina was terrified to hold a conversation with her coffee cup.
"Don't be ridiculous, the authorities don't care about these kind of criminals, you'll waste your time."
"So what should I do?" as she asked that question Martina felt relieved, as if she was no longer carrying the problem alone, as if an important part of her pain was deposited in the coffee in her cup, her unfailing companion during all those nights.
"If I were you I'd accidentally drop a lit cigarette next to the fuel storage: problem over."
"But it would blow up all over!".
"And that matters to you? You already exploded inside."
Martina stopped and waited for the bitter voice to tell her something else, but she only heard silence. Her face hardened, she quickly drank the whole cup, searched among her things for an old box of cigarettes, there was one left: luck was beginning to smile on her.
The next day the neighborhood was in chaos, ambulances and fire trucks filled the street. On the local news a reporter reported:
This morning a brutal explosion ripped through several houses in the Las Flores neighborhood. It seems that the explosion was caused by an illegal fuel store that one of the owners was hiding in the house. This type of crime is highly dangerous and endangers the entire community. Luckily this time the affected houses were empty, the only lives taken by this disaster were those of the smuggler and his tenant, a poor woman victim of her landlord's decisions.