Malson Per Entregues

That Monday he woke up anxious and at breakfast he told his wife he had dreamt that he was being chased by a fascinating-looking man armed with a .38, hunting him down all over the city, on rooftops and under the sewers, running and running with that man behind him, relentless and determined like an angel of death. Terrified and blind, he stumbled, but before the executioner could finish the job, he pulled out a gun and with half a dozen shots left him lying in a pool of blood. And from behind a tree came Pau, a fellow office misery, to stab the wounded man in the neck with a kitchen knife as if he were slaughtering a bull. And the next day, sitting at the foot of the bed, he tearfully, with a grim face, told her that the damn nightmare continued with him in the middle of the street with a smoking gun in hand. People were screaming, crying, and running. She wanted to move her feet and couldn't. What was happening? Who the hell was that dead man? Pau couldn't escape either. Surrounded by police, cars, and sirens, hands handcuffed behind their backs, they were taken away in a van with punches and shoves. Then a dark cell and a light in their eyes and men asking questions and making threats about a dead mobster in the square by two fanatics faithful to diabolic rituals. He woke up wet and trembling the next night around quarter to four. 'Tomorrow we'll definitely go to the psychiatrist...', she said to herself while he tearfully told her that the judge, without listening to them, sentenced them to eighteen years and a day. He thought he would never look into her eyes or break bread on her plate again. Luckily, Pau, on his way to prison, using the well-known trick of 'I need to pee and my bladder is weak', jumped off the moving train and fled into the darkness, and he found himself in a cold cell with a hanged drug dealer who just laughed and a bearded transvestite who told him: 'You'll get used to it and see it's not so bad.' When they returned from the doctor, he fell into a deep sleep like a baby on the couch and could have kept snoring until the next day if his poor wife hadn't woken him up shouting that Pau had called, that the cops were on their trail, that the house wasn't a good hideout, and that a Greek ship was waiting in the port. He fell flat and upon regaining consciousness, he felt the ground moving, he opened his eyes and saw a face very similar to Charles Boyer smiling at him, offering him a cup of coffee and with the voice of an old sea wolf saying: 'Did you sleep well, madam, sir? In half an hour we will arrive in Marseille. Freedom is beautiful, isn't it, sir? Freedom is beautiful.'