A rustling had awakened me from a deranged dream in which three cannibals had spared my life, asking me instead to hum a ballad I used to sing to them when I was younger. My eyes stung from so much darkness. Sleep had left me for good, but I could still smell the heavy smell of burnt flesh. When I managed, with difficulty, to persuade one leg to venture into the night, the rest of my body followed almost mechanically to the front door. On my nocturnal wanderings, I bumped into two nightstands and tripped over the box of jewelry recently purchased from a cute store downtown.

I knew it was midnight because I had heard the ticking of the pendulum above the bed. I felt the numbness come over me again and I sank limply into the sheet, as if I were swimming in an ocean of semolina with milk.

The cannibals were waiting for me in the same place, but there were more of them this time, maybe six or seven, and their skin pigment was fading. I wave at one, hoping he'll take notice, but he doesn't seem to see me. I step on a strange creature that squeaks. Everyone stares at me. In the distance, I hear a voice telling me to run, and I do. I'm aware that I'm dreaming, which doesn't happen to me unless I drink coffee with cinnamon before bed. I try to remember details, but I can't be perfectly lucid, as I wonder where I put my glasses and end up looking for them in a clearing in the rainforest. The search proves futile, so I continue my run, agitated, panting like in action movies, down a trail that plunges into an Amazonian jungle. Cannibals melt. The scenery changes and a voice in the air calls out to me — it's a shrill voice that reminds me of the French teacher: peach jam, peach jam…

I found myself sweating. Again there was a rustle from outside. I carefully made my way, shaking off the last remnants of my dream, to the front window sill, where a dull thud seemed to caress the pane with glass claws. I opened the window and clearly heard three knocks on the door. I was freezing and I could feel my heart in the pit of my stomach, pounding to jazz rhythms. I can't figure out by which wrist I pulled the trigger. In the doorway stood an individual in a floor-length black overcoat, with a long, pale figure and matted hair. It resembled a shadow humanized by an incantation of Tibetan monks. My gaze locked on the object he was holding in his right hand: a smoking wooden pipe.

"At last we meet, boy."

- I... I don't know you, I stammered, hiding my fear in the pockets of my pajamas.

- Oh yes, you know me very well.

The shadow figure beckoned me to follow him, and for some unknown reason I followed him, chilled, immediately after throwing on a thick robe. Not far from the house was an old cemetery, built the year my great-great-grandmother was born. I went there. I could already sense the sinister alignment of the rotting crosses, and for the first time I found it terrifying, more terrifying than any imagination. My heart was now pounding in my gut, its vibrations running through my mesmerized ankles. On my back gallop herds of angry bulls and herds of all kinds. The stranger took a lamp out of a pocket and guided me through the dozens of crosses to a roundabout, where he stopped. We were on a kind of narrow path.

- Let's sit down.

I looked around puzzled and, after a few good looks, I saw in the semi-darkness a small table and two chairs that I had not noticed before. I sat down and it was as if the herds of beasts ran wild once I straightened my back.

"So you don't know who I am..."

"Then I would ask you to tell me who you are and why you brought me here," I said with a slight frown, at the same time trying to adjust the tone of my voice that had become a thin echo of fear. The individual caught my clumsy effort and grinned. Horrified, I noticed he had no teeth. His mouth resembled a mouth guarded by two bony lips. For a split second I thought I saw a little man clinging desperately to the top lip and then sliding down into the bottomless pit.

- You have always been a young man with many questions.

"Please, it's late and we're in a cemetery!"

"You'll find out in no time." do you drink coffee

— Doar când trebuie să fiu treaz.

- Then there's no need.

He had a warm voice now, like honey dripping on a cake batter.

"You really have no idea who I am?"

His cadaverous fingers produced a cup from his pocket, into which the stranger calmly poured, from the sleeve of his overcoat, an aromatic, black liquid. I had never enjoyed such an aroma before. Is that what the drink of the gods smelled like?…

"Are you sure you don't want to?" I still have enough. Just saying.

The man in the black overcoat placed his painstakingly crafted pipe on the table next to the cup. Suddenly I was enlightened:

"I got it, mate, it was a prank!" You've been wanting to bake it for me for a long time. And what a mask, what makeup, what art... a real art...

As I spoke, however, the dull eyes of the individual in front of me made me small, smaller and smaller...

"You don't have much confidence in yourself, boy, that's your problem." Your friends are fast asleep after vandalizing the little shop next door. It could be said that you too engage in such… how shall I say… games.

- How do you know? Who are you? What do you want from me? I burst out with the pathos of an indignant judge.

"I'm everything you didn't want in your life, all the trouble you caused, all the guilty tears you shed, blah, blah." If you want, it's YOU.

- You kidding me! I don't know who you are, but you are by no means me.

- Don't be under any illusions, you know you're a pitiful liar. In this chapter you betrayed my expectations.

The pale man grabbed the pipe and started puffing smoke, grinning like a sinister wooden doll.

"I'm afraid you're not… real."

- Oh! I'm more real than a wasp sting. And as illusory as a vapor projected into the air.

- But how is it that...?

"You wonder where my horns and flames are?" It has not been worn since Antiquity. Are you sure you don't want to take another shower now that we know each other better?

"I want nothing more from you, creature of darkness!"

In desperation, I drew the sign of the cross in the air (it came out quite crooked).

"It means you got one." Sometimes I go overboard. Maybe you want a smoke.

- I do not smoke.

- My, my, my... You are not very polite to your humble guest. And we should work on the lying thing a little more.

- What do you want from me? I snarled, trying to get up from the table, but a colossal weight, like a cyclops palm, pinned me to the chair.

- What I want? I don't want anything you wouldn't willingly give me. I'm going to ask you to join me for a little game of poker. Je t'en prie, don't refuse me.

A deck of playing cards appeared in the middle of the table and despite my resistance, the hands accepted the invitation.

"And why would I do such a foolish thing?" I laughed hysterically, startled by the mournful resonance of my own voice. Why would I willingly give you anything?

— Because with me you find unsuspected advantages...

- You want me to give you my soul!

The cards had strange designs and incomprehensible symbols, but I soon understood the mystery of the game. Unfortunately, my partner was looking lucky.

— A fresh and daring soul like yours... Delicious!

"S…I'm sure someone wouldn't let you do that!"

"My dear, you speak without thinking." Naive boys return to their fragile faith and yet they are so disoriented… (His voice was laced with seraphic sarcasm). You recently won an argument in which you arrogantly proved that God does not exist, and now you join the pack of cowards. Tell me, where do you think evil came from?

I froze like a Greek statue. I had never been a religious person. The only time I prayed to the "High One" was when I thought I was going to die of measles at the age of five. I was gripped by the fear of hell, of the tar cauldron. I was on the verge of losing my soul, and my mother's advice from childhood came to mind. Is there any harm in coffee with cinnamon? And in seagulls? WHAT is evil? How can a good seed bear bad fruit? I had let everyone down, from my parents to my third cousins. Maybe I deserved to sell my soul... And I wasn't lucky at cards either... However, where did the evil come from? I was getting colder and colder in my thick robe, which was thinning and beginning to drip onto the graveyard dirt like pigment from cannibals' skin.

- I don't know... I hummed resignedly.

- It's nothing, you'll find out in due time. Boy, remember, a hole once made can't be plugged. You, my dear, are as stupid as can be. You are about to be judged before the Righteous One. (Adding as if to himself): Nothing sadder than to be betrayed by your own creation... I don't judge, I don't discriminate. The white-bearded old man in the clouds gives you the choice: deceitful and deceitful as we know it. But I give you absolute control: wealth, tobacco, houses, beautiful women, plenty of food, vandalizing all the kiosks. So what do you say? Deal?

I remembered a childhood dream in which my smiling grandmother appeared, holding a basket of strawberries. As soon as I wanted to speak to her, she disappeared around a corner, but the aroma of the fragile remained behind her, like an eternal promise. The game continued, but the cards moved harder and harder, as if in a fuzzy memory.

- Maybe another time, I murmured, now I have a royal flat.

I smiled politely and in three steps I was home again, in bed, dreaming of the rings and bracelets that glowed in the dark of the hall.