Waltz no. 7

Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-eight... She was counting the drops falling from the poorly closed tap. Thirty-six, thirty-eight, thirty-nine... She would always skip the number seven, she had decided. There was something about that number that creeped her out. Why seven days, why seven deadly sins? Her numerologist told her she was born in a year seven. The ropes were too tight.

The plan was so well thought out, how could it possibly go wrong? There must be a traitor in the group, she was certain of it. Would anyone feed her cat? Why worry about it, they say cats have seven... Damn it! Now she had to start it all over: one, two, three... She could only catch a glimpse of it in the middle of that suffocating darkness, but there it was right on the counter. If she could only disentangle her hands. But, of course, her fingers were too short. When she was a child, she could never reach an octave. Her piano teacher would slap her in the hand. "You are not putting enough effort", he would say. Done!

She did it, even though she had short fingers and no fingernails left. Those bastards! When the revolution hatched, she would have them pay for it. What if Rodrigo was the traitor? Would she have the guts to do it? It was not the moment to think about that. "You have to be strong now", she thought. Then, she heard the sound of footsteps approaching outside. This time, she would not be the one to scream. She had a dagger in her hand.

André Farias dos Santos

(FLASH FICTION: a workshop on creative writing, III SEFLORA, UFAC, 2019)