Hi! I’ve just finished writing the first chapter of my sci-fi novel. After years of thinking about this idea, I’ve finally decided to put it down on paper.

I’d love to hear your feedback, especially on the opening, pacing, and character voice. Also, would you be interested in following Sunny on his adventures as he tries to serve the great UEDC (United Earth Defense Coalition)?

Thanks in advance for reading!

STARDUST

Chapter 1

Quick question: What would happen if you could extract enough energy from a rat to make the atom bomb look like a glow stick? I was trying to answer the same question and could see two possible outcomes of my endeavor: I would either revolutionize the field of bioenergetics or turn my little village into a crater. Either way, August 23, 2048, was going to be memorable.

I had barely slept the previous night; the anticipation was too much to endure. If I hadn’t promised Mom that I would get at least six hours of sleep a day, I would have stayed in my lab the whole night. As soon as the alarm went off, I jumped out of bed and walked to the balcony to breathe in some fresh air. My skin tingled as the tender morning sunlight hit it, and a sweet, loamy scent filled the heavy air. As far as the eye could see lay vast, waterlogged rice fields—a sea of aggressively growing green paddy. But then I caught the slight blue-green sheen on the water’s edge.

Algal bloom. I could have bet that the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio and the pH were both off from their optimal values.

That idiot Ramu had overdone the top-dressing fertilizer again. I honestly don’t understand why Dad insists on employing these good-for-nothing fools. I’ve told him a dozen times to buy those automated AI drones—heck, they’re heavily subsidized by the UEDC and would skyrocket our yield overnight. But no. He just keeps nagging me about “human intelligence,” “tradition,” “community,” and blah, blah, blah.

I decided not to let these trifles mess up this beautiful morning and immediately made my way toward my lab.

As I passed by the kitchen on the ground floor, I could almost taste the tangy aroma filling the air. Mom was making her signature upma, humming a tune from an old Bollywood song.

“Sunny, is that you?!” she cried just as I was trying to sneak out the front door.

Tchk! I couldn’t let her ruin this morning, so I ignored her and kept walking. The door was close—so close. Just a few steps and I would have been free, if only she hadn’t called out again.

“Sunny-beta?” Her voice was shriller this time.

“Yes, Mom, it’s me!” I shouted, letting out a heavy sigh.

“Come here, beta,” she called back.

I turned back toward the kitchen. Mom was standing right at the doorway in eager anticipation, her eyes practically glowing, wearing that big, silly smile of hers that I was so used to seeing. I entered the room but stopped a few feet short, foolishly hoping she might forget the routine today.

I was instantly proven wrong. She beelined straight for me. I braced for impact. She pulled me into a smothering hug that lasted a beat too long, then patted my head, cupped my cheeks, kissed my forehead, and popped a soaked almond into my mouth. It was a compulsory morning ritual that she had practiced every single day.

Wiping my forehead, I finally escaped the house with an almond still in my mouth. Ahh! She had managed to slip some into my pockets too.

I’d turned sixteen a few months ago and would soon be heading to the UEDC military institute. I was meant to be on the front lines, putting down rogue factions and making a name for myself, not getting coddled by Mom.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow for sure, I’d tell her to stop.

Nursing my bruised dignity and munching on the almonds all the way down the gravel path, I finally stopped in front of the heavy steel door of my lab.

The lab used to be a cattle shed filled with Dad’s favorite cows, buffaloes, and whatever else, but I’d had him clear it out and refit it just for me. I felt a tiny sting of remorse when he had to guard the animals in the open at night until the new barn was ready, but I was ecstatic the second my equipment and chemicals moved in.

The lights hummed to life as I pushed the door open, and a hologram of Chen Xin, the Savior of Humanity, flickered into view, reciting his victory speech.

I stood at attention, as I did every morning. When the recording reached its climax, I raised my hand in a salute and chimed in on the final words.

“The Earth endures because we stand guard. We are the guardians of the green. We are the UEDC.”

Hyped up by his words of unwavering devotion, I made my way to my workbench to continue my revolutionary work.

Resting on the bench was the Mona Lisa of modern civilization: a carbon energy core. This beauty could consume anything with even the slightest trace of carbon and power an entire town. Hell, if you bypassed UEDC regulations, it could light up an entire city like it was Diwali—or create a micro black hole and collapse the planet.

I had finished building my custom core last night, and of course, I was entirely responsible and careful about it. Which was why I had carefully bypassed all regulatory kill switches and boosted its output.

For my fun little experiments. I mean, for science, of course.

I switched on my recorder drone to log the day’s baseline conditions before getting to work.

It lifted off the bench, scanned the room, and chimed in its synthetic voice, “Dear Commander, scan complete.” A crisp hologram flared above it, showing the exact atmospheric and energy readings for the experiment.

God, I loved this drone. It was compact, sturdy, and customizable down to the last line of code, like everything the UEDC made. It would stay on for the whole session, logging data and every brilliant insight I shouted at it mid-experiment.

I began by dictating the day’s baseline.

“August 23, 2048. 8:47 AM. Today is Day 73 of my Somatic Carbon Resonance for Bioenergetics experiment. As of yesterday, my open-chambered resonator maintained a perfectly stable output in its equilibrium state; empirical results matched my simulations down to the decimal. Today, we proceed with observing the effect of hyper-dense carbon resonance on living systems.

“The specimen is Rattus norvegicus, the common Indian brown rat. Total mass: 457 grams. It contains precisely 43 grams of carbon actively incorporated into its biological systems. Assuming this organic carbon behaves as it would in a standard inorganic lattice, we should produce a total of 23 terajoules of energy for every single gram consumed.”

Finishing my log, I stepped up to greet our test subject of the day. The rat had been terrorizing our grain stores for ages. Again, I had told Dad to buy storage containers from UEDC Agritech, and again, he wouldn’t listen.

When I needed a live subject, these little rodents were the obvious choice. After analyzing her feeding patterns, I’d had Ramu place a trap that would temporarily paralyze the culprit. It was a simple motion-activated contraption that would enclose the bastard and blast her with my synthetic conotoxin, which targeted only the somatic motor neurons and completely spared the autonomic nervous system.

It seemed I’d overdone the toxin, because this absolute unit of a rat was still lying motionless in her cage. Good for me. I carefully opened it, and the serene expression on her face as she slowly blinked up at me, shuddering, gave me a moment of hesitation. The toxin was wearing off. Her ears began to flap slowly, and she tried to open her mouth as if to tell me how her children were waiting for their mommy to get home.

I almost felt pity for this brown furball of cuteness, but I got hold of myself. I couldn’t let those big, watery eyes and that cute, quivering nose get in the way of scientific advancement. Sacrifices are necessary for greatness, and to make sure hers wouldn’t be forgotten, I decided to give her a name: Bonnie.

Bonnie would be the pioneer of bioenergetics.

I loaded Bonnie into the transparent chamber and sealed it shut. I switched on the resonator, and the coils came to life with a deep humming sound. I watched the numbers carefully as they approached the resonance threshold. The energy emission would begin any minute now.

I grinned at Bonnie through the chamber.

“Time to find out which outcome we get.”

I am mostly looking for feedback on whether the horror and scare elements are hitting.

"If you don't open the door, they can't get in," That was the rule carved above the broken mantle in what could charitably be called a farmhouse. Dry, brittle crops surround the building, wilting in the sun's amber light. "I wonder whose trial and error it was that taught that lesson," Will it be my turn to learn soon?

My shoulder burns as I crank the old iron pump in the middle of the room, sweat coats my body. I purse my lips at the effort of achieving a few more drops before the day's end when the well ceases to produce any more water until the morning. I squint up at where you sit, silhouetted in the window by the last of the sun's light. Empty eyes staring through my attempt at humor, it stings more than I care to admit. Intermittent drops of water accompany the syncopated tapping of my heel. Time for a final pump remains. I flinch at the prospect in the face of my exhaustion.

Lifting the handle is the most difficult step. "I sense your judgement in your posture," I say as you slouch forward at my sad attempt at perseverance and conversation, straining as I lift. "So long as a drop remains so shall I," I declare. With the lever raised I place both hands upon it and allow my weight to force it down towards the Earth in a pitiable triumph undercut by the absence of the anticipated final drop of the day. Bent and sighing I peer at you sitting across the room and try to meet your head's amused tilt with a dignity that scarcely exists.

The final rays of the day drip into the room. Taking the light but leaving the heat, the horizon swallows the sun. I feel my skin begin to itch in anticipation of what comes next. The darkness is total and undeniable once present, only my memory of the space allows me to navigate it. The scuttling of too many feet scampers outside the walls shorting out my frayed nerves. While the day saps the life from your body, the night does the same to your mind in this place. A rat-tat-tat-tat-tat bounces from the direction of the door.

“Cheers,” I declare to your skeleton as I arduously lift the too light pail to my lips.

It tastes metallic, bitter, and dirty.

Hi I’m very new to this stuff don’t really write. I lowkey have a learning disability involving it so I don’t really do the regular writting so I’ve been doing I guess rap and adjacent writing and just wanted some feedback.

Man in the mirror
Sometimes it feels like I’m staring inna fractured mirror
Warped perspective like I hammered back a thousand beers
Now when I take a peek all I see’s a grown man with a thousand yard stare
We got matching scars yet he seems somehow unfamiliar

I recognize the fear though admittedly he’s better at hiding it than I was
Fear never really disappears though you’ll still flinch
at every hand that comes near you
Only thing you can do is dress up distress till your loving
family and friends can’t no longer detect it
Not so good at hiding fatigue though eye bags from sleepless nights
Hard to hide those especially in bathroom lighting
Fatigues as deep seated as deceit is my minds ripe with these diseases

Trained my whole life to make sure nobody would see em
Built up lead curtains not even Superman’s x-ray vision could peep through em
Now I’m secluded connection has never felt so illusive
I know where the gaps are but this mirror seems to shield them
Maybe that’s why this stranger is so unidentifiable
Maybe my memory is just yet again unreliable
Maybe it’s my anxiety
Maybe just another trial gods getting off too
Why is he so old feels like hardly a day away I was fleeing another ass beating during recess
Never could quite manage to get away always ended the same no matter what I’d say
Kids had no courtesy remember one day I was
Begging the bullies please just not in the face on the counna tomorrows picture day
They hit me anyway came home with a fat lip n a bruise under my left eye

As I reminisce the man in the mirror grows only more familiar
My history is his explanation it’s funny though he almost looks like he wants to say something
I guess we’re both to strained to say it or maybe pain just keeps it at bay
Maybe the years of restraint make the flood gates nearly unbreakable

Sometimes I envy those who can play their tiny violins
While I grew acclimatized to all this violence
My two fists became the instrument
Like I was playing a theremin when I look at him his fists are balled too but knuckles with no bruises
Looks like physical stature caught up used to wish I’d be as big as my old man
That way no man would make me ever feel helpless again
Maybe he’s living proof some wishes come true he’s also proof
the past will always haunt you

seemingly got alot to live for I’ve grown up have the body id always wished for
But eyes don’t lie that tiny spark is gone somewhere in the frenzy
that final bitta hope must’ve up and just left us that’s one thing I can’t envy
Never convince yourself hope is the enemy the end of a rope never gets closer
maybe I really am him
If that’s the case his restraint is in my hands
So maybe it’s just time that I said it

We didn’t deserve the live grenade we were handed at 8
Dad was throwing grown man’s temper tantrums that doesn’t excuse his child abuse
However mom deserved a lot better
And it’s okay to still ache cause of it
They say you can’t fix a broken mirror but I just put my reflection back together

Dr. Elias Voss

“There exists a peculiar cruelty in the conscience of man: it demands repentance long after it has forgotten the crime”

Dr. Elias Voss had never considered himself an innocent man. Innocence, he believed, was merely the privilege of those who had not yet been made to remember. There were, of course, certain inconsistencies in this conviction. He could recall no crime sufficiently monstrous to warrant the peculiar anguish that accompanied his every waking hour, nor could he identify the precise moment at which his existence had become an exercise in perpetual atonement. Nevertheless, the absence of evidence had never persuaded him of his innocence. On the contrary, he regarded it as perhaps the most damning evidence of all.

For what was forgetfulness, if not the final refuge of the guilty?

He had often contemplated whether remorse preceded wrongdoing or whether wrongdoing merely furnished remorse with an object upon which to fasten itself. The distinction, though apparently trivial, had come to occupy him with an almost pathological intensity. If a man suffered for a crime he could not remember, was his suffering proof of guilt? And if the crime had never occurred, what, precisely, had he been punished for?

Such questions ordinarily visited him in the hours preceding dawn, when the distinction between memory and imagination became sufficiently tenuous that he could no longer determine which of the two had first betrayed him.

Dr. Elias Voss had long regarded affection as a peculiar form of human negligence. To love another was, in his estimation, to overlook the innumerable deficiencies of their character, to forgive what ought not to be forgiven, and to place one's happiness in the custody of another's inevitable failures.

It was for this reason that he had never understood his parents.

They were good people. This, Elias knew with a certainty that bordered on resentment. They had taken him into their modest Chicago home when he had been little more than a stranger, and had offered him a tenderness so unconditional that he came, in time, to regard it as an injustice. For what had he done to deserve such devotion? What conceivable virtue could he have possessed that warranted the affection of two people whose goodness so plainly exceeded his own?

He had spent much of his adult life attempting to answer these questions. Eventually, he arrived at the conclusion that there was no answer, and that their love was consequently a mistake.

His visits became infrequent. His telephone calls are shorter. He excused his absences with the demands of his profession, although he privately considered this explanation another small addition to the vast catalogue of his dishonesty.

He did not avoid his parents because he disliked their company. On the contrary, their presence was among the few things in the world capable of momentarily quieting the incessant accusations of his conscience. It was precisely this comfort that frightened him. He had come to believe that anything which afforded him happiness must eventually suffer for having done so.

And he could not bear the thought of making them suffer.

There was, of course, a considerable irony in the profession he had chosen.

Elias was a neurologist of considerable distinction, a man whose competence had earned him the admiration of colleagues and the gratitude of patients. He possessed an almost unnatural capacity for remaining composed in the presence of catastrophe. His diagnoses were precise, his judgment rarely questioned, and his professional reputation such that strangers occasionally traveled considerable distances merely to obtain his opinion.

He despised every aspect of it.

Medicine, to Elias, had never been a vocation in the ordinary sense. It was neither a passion nor an expression of some benevolent impulse toward mankind. Rather, it was a sentence he had imposed upon himself, an indefinite obligation to preserve lives in compensation for those he believed himself responsible for destroying.

He did not count the people he saved.

He counted the ones he could not.

And although the latter were comparatively few, they occupied a disproportionate portion of his existence.

It was shortly after seven in the morning when the telephone rang.

Elias regarded the instrument with an expression of mild apprehension. He had developed an instinctive aversion to telephone calls, having discovered that they seldom delivered anything which could not be postponed and frequently demanded emotional responses he felt incapable of providing.

Nevertheless, he answered.

"Dr. Voss speaking."

"Elias?"

He closed his eyes.

"Hello, Mother."

"Have you been eating properly?"

There was no greeting, no preliminary inquiry into the condition of his day. His mother had long since abandoned such formalities, having apparently concluded that her son's continued existence required more immediate verification.

"Yes, Mother."

"And sleeping?"

"When I can."

"That isn't an answer."

A silence followed.

He imagined her seated beside the kitchen window, one hand wrapped around the telephone cord, her expression arranged into that familiar mixture of tenderness and suspicion which he had come to recognize as maternal concern.

"Elias, are you all right?"

He glanced toward the window of his office. Chicago lay beneath a colorless morning sky, its buildings appearing almost indistinguishable through the pale October mist.

"I'm all right, Mom. I swear."

The lie emerged with such practiced ease that he scarcely recognized it as one.

For several years, Elias had entertained recurring thoughts of ending his life. He regarded death neither as a terror nor as a particularly unfortunate conclusion to his existence. On the contrary, he had sometimes imagined it as the only conceivable interruption to the relentless prosecution occurring within his own mind.

Yet whenever the thought approached something resembling a decision, he recoiled. Not from fear.

From the belief that death would constitute an undeserved acquittal.

A man who had committed an unforgivable offense, he reasoned, ought not to be permitted the luxury of escaping its consequences. To cease suffering would be to abandon the very punishment that made his continued existence tolerable.

And so he lived.

Not because he believed himself worthy of life, but because he believed himself unworthy of release.

"Elias?"

"Yes, Mother?"

"How has your memory been? Have you been taking your medicine? They told you consistency was important."

His fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around the receiver.

"My memory is perfectly fine."

"You said that last time."

"And I was correct last time."

"Your doctor said—"

"I am a doctor, Mother."

There was a brief pause.

"I know what you are, Elias."

Something in her voice troubled him.

It was not anger. Nor disappointment. It was the quiet exhaustion of someone who had spent years attempting to reach a person determined to remain inaccessible.

"Just promise me you're taking care of yourself."

"I promise."

He wondered whether his mother recognized the ease with which he manufactured these assurances, and whether she accepted them because she believed him or because she had grown weary of questioning him.

They exchanged a few more words, none of particular significance, and eventually said goodbye.

Elias hung the phone.

For some time, he remained motionless.

His life was strangely cruel, he thought, he was loved by those whose affection he could neither comprehend nor adequately return. Their goodness did not diminish his guilt. It magnified it. Every expression of concern became another obligation he was certain to disappoint.

On the morning of October seventeenth, however, such considerations were interrupted by the death of a child.

A hurried knock sounded against his office door.

"Dr. Voss?"

He turned.

A young nurse stood in the doorway, her face pale, her breathing uneven.

"It's the boy. Benjamin."

Elias rose.

"What about him?"

"Dr. Clariss tried everything. There were complications, and—"

"What complications?"

"The malformation ruptured. Dr. Clariss took him into surgery, but the hemorrhage was extensive. They couldn't control the bleeding."

For several seconds Elias said nothing. 

"No."

The word escaped him with a strange, almost childish disbelief.

"No, I told Clariss to call me if his condition deteriorated. I specifically told him—"

"I'm sorry, Doctor."

"Why wasn't I informed?"

The nurse lowered her eyes.

Elias was already moving toward the door. Then he stopped, took a knee and covered his eyes. 

The boy was eight years old.

His name was Benjamin.

And Elias, who had never met him before that morning, would spend the remainder of his life believing he had murdered him. Along with many others.

Does anybody have any idea about where to publish my poems and how??

CHAPTER ONE

Strangers

Nobody notices strangers.

Adrian Cole had spent years believing that. Every morning, the plaza outside the subway entrance in downtown Westbridge filled with people rushing to work, most too busy to pay attention to anyone around them. Adrian sat on a metal bench near the intersection, watching the crowd move past while a small black notebook rested on his knee. He had been there for fifty-three minutes, and the only person who had looked at him for more than a second was a child being pulled along by his mother.

He opened the notebook and turned to a fresh line.

Observation #217

People remember what catches their attention, not necessarily what happens in front of them.

He read the sentence again. It wasn’t a new idea. He had spent years watching people in places like this, noticing how little they seemed to remember about the strangers they passed. But lately, he had started wondering whether being overlooked was as useful as he had always believed. There was a difference between going unnoticed and knowing what people had failed to notice, and Adrian wasn’t sure he understood that difference as well as he thought.

Across the intersection, a security camera turned toward the subway entrance. Adrian followed its movement until it reached the end of its sweep, then watched as it slowly returned. He had seen the same pattern many times before. The camera covered the crossing, the pavement outside a row of shops, and part of the road, but a narrow section beside a building remained outside its view for several seconds at a time.

He looked down at his notebook and added another line beneath the observation.

People trust what they can see. They rarely question what they can’t.

A bus passed between him and the camera, blocking his view for a moment. When it moved on, a man in a dark coat was standing near the building, looking toward the intersection. Adrian hadn’t noticed him arrive. The man checked his watch, glanced at the camera, then walked away without crossing the road.

Adrian watched him disappear around the corner. Perhaps he was waiting for someone. Perhaps he had simply changed his mind about where he was going. There was no way to know from a few seconds of watching, and Adrian knew better than to mistake a guess for a fact.

He wrote nothing about the man.

Instead, he closed the notebook and stood. The crowd carried him across the intersection, past a woman hurrying to catch a train and a cyclist arguing with a driver who had stopped too far into the crossing. Adrian moved around them and continued toward a newspaper stand at the corner.

A television behind the glass was showing the morning news. He might have walked past without paying attention, but the reporter’s words made him stop.

“…Westbridge police are investigating after a body was discovered late last night near Riverside District.”

The screen showed a stretch of road beside the river, with police lights flashing behind yellow tape. The reporter stood near the edge of the walking path, speaking over the sound of passing traffic.

“The body was discovered shortly after midnight, just two blocks from Central Plaza. Police have not yet released the victim’s identity, and investigators are asking anyone who was in the area last night to come forward.”

Adrian stared at the screen. He knew Riverside District. He had walked along the river the night before, past the streetlights and the metal railing that separated the path from the water. He could remember the cold air against his face and the sound of cars moving along the road behind him.

What he couldn’t remember was leaving.

He tried to picture the journey home, but his thoughts stopped somewhere between the river and his apartment. He couldn’t recall unlocking his front door, turning on the lights, or getting ready for bed. At first, he told himself he had simply been tired. People forgot ordinary details all the time, and a missing part of an evening didn’t automatically mean something was wrong.

Then he checked the time on his phone and realised he had been awake for hours without once questioning how he had got home.

Adrian had always trusted his memory. He kept his notebook because he liked having a record of things he might otherwise forget, not because he struggled to remember his own life. The small details usually stayed with him long after other people had moved on. Yet when he tried to fill in the missing hours, the harder he concentrated, the less certain he became.

The television changed to a shot of a police car parked beside the river.

“…investigators are reviewing security footage from nearby streets as they work to establish the victim’s final movements.”

Adrian looked toward the camera above the intersection. He had no reason to believe he had anything to do with the death. He hadn’t even seen the victim, and being near Riverside the night before didn’t make him a suspect. Still, the mention of security footage made him think about every camera along the route he had taken.

If he had walked past one, there might be a record of him being there. If he had gone somewhere else afterward, there might be a record of that too. For the first time, Adrian found himself hoping the cameras had captured something useful, even if he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it was.

He turned away from the television and started toward the subway entrance. As he walked, he pushed back his sleeve to check the time again, and noticed a thin scratch just below his wrist. The skin around it was red, and the mark looked recent. He turned his hand beneath the light, trying to remember catching it on the railing beside the river, but nothing came to him.

He might have scratched himself without noticing. That was possible. What bothered him was that he couldn’t remember enough about the night to decide whether that explanation made sense.

By the time he reached the subway stairs, he had taken out his phone and opened his recent calls. There was nothing unusual. He checked his messages, then his calendar, looking for anything that might help him piece the evening together. Most of it was ordinary, the kind of information he could have checked on any morning, but there was no sign of where he had been after Riverside.

He was about to put the phone away when it vibrated in his hand.

An unknown number had sent him a message.

Did you sleep well?

Adrian read it twice. The words were ordinary enough, but the timing made them feel different. He looked at the number, hoping he might recognise it, then opened the sender’s details. There was no name or profile picture, and nothing to suggest who might be contacting him.

He typed a reply.

Who is this?

The message was delivered, but no answer came.

A train rumbled beneath the pavement as people began descending the stairs around him. Adrian stepped aside to let them pass, still staring at the screen. It could have been a wrong number or a prank. Someone might have sent the message without knowing anything about his night, and he was already looking for connections because the news had unsettled him.

He knew that was possible. He also knew that the message had arrived just after he discovered he couldn’t account for several hours of his life.

He looked at the scratch on his wrist, then back at the phone. Something about the words bothered him more than it should have. The sender hadn’t asked where he had been or what he was doing. They had asked whether he had slept well, as though they already knew he had gone to bed.

Adrian opened the message again and began typing another reply, but stopped before he could finish. He wasn’t sure what to ask. If the sender was a stranger, demanding an explanation might tell him nothing. If it was someone he knew, he didn’t want to reveal how little he remembered.

He locked the screen and slipped the phone into his pocket.

For years, Adrian had believed that paying attention gave him an advantage. He could notice a change in someone’s behaviour, remember a face from a crowd, or spot a detail that others had overlooked. But he had never considered what would happen if he missed something important himself.

The missing hours were no longer just an inconvenience. Someone might know where he had been, what he had done, and why he couldn’t remember it. Until he found out who had sent the message, he had no way of knowing whether he was being warned, threatened, or simply frightened by a coincidence.

Adrian descended the subway stairs, joining the crowd on its way underground. Above him, the security cameras continued their slow sweep across the plaza, recording the people who passed beneath them.

He had spent years studying what people failed to notice.

Now he had to find out what he had missed.

¡Hola a todos! Les comparto un extracto del primer capítulo de mi novela de ficción/drama psicológico. Explora las consecuencias emocionales y financieras de las decisiones impulsivas tomadas en la juventud. Me serviría mucho saber qué les transmite el tono y si el ritmo los engancha para seguir leyendo:

Se levantó y caminó hasta el ventanal, mirando las luces dormidas de la ciudad. Desde que tenía memoria, había crecido bajo la firme creencia de que Dios guiaba cada uno de sus pasos. En su hogar, una familia humilde de clase media baja donde cada plato de comida se agradecía y cada sacrificio valía la pena, le habían enseñado que las buenas acciones traían bendiciones.

¿Y las malas?

Esa era la pregunta que lo atormentaba cada noche mientras miraba el techo. ¿Seguía pagando la factura? ¿Era esta asfixia constante el vuelto de aquel pecado? La religión de su infancia no le hablaba de karma, pero a sus treinta y dos años, el concepto le pesaba en los hombros como una losa de cemento.

Pensó en ella. No en su prometida, la mujer que dormía a unos metros de distancia en la habitación principal, ajena a la tormenta financiera que los devoraba. Pensó en la primera. La mujer que, estaba seguro, Dios mismo había puesto en su camino. La que lo amó con una pureza que él no supo valorar y a la que destrozó sin piedad por perseguir un espejismo envuelto en fuego y adrenalina.

Diez años atrás, a sus veintitantos, creyó que podía engañar al sistema. Creyó que las decisiones tomadas en la oscuridad de los pasillos de una oficina no tendrían eco en la luz de su futuro. Creyó que pedir perdón en silencio borraba las huellas del daño infligido.

Qué ingenuidad tan arrogante la de los veinteañeros.

Hoy, atrapado en una jaula de oro que él mismo había construido, atado a deudas por intentar salvar a alguien cuando el que se estaba ahogando era él, entendía la lección más cruel de la adultez. El castigo divino rara vez viene en forma de rayos y truenos. A veces, Dios simplemente da un paso atrás, cruza los brazos y te deja vivir las consecuencias exactas de lo que tú mismo elegiste.

Agradezco cualquier crítica constructiva comunidad !