Living with Marcos is living in a fucking war of trenches.

My side of the room is my trench. A bloody joke of two square meters. The bed, made with surgical precision, not a single fucking wrinkle. The books, lined up on the shelf like soldiers waiting for an order that never arrives. It's my small and pathetic attempt at order against the fucking hurricane that lives on the other side.

Because Marcos' side is not a room, it's a declaration. It's an explosion of life and chaos that expands a little more each day, like an oil stain. His dirty clothes form mountain ranges that devour the floor. His fucking trophies shine like pagan idols. And his smell... damn, his smell permeates everything. That fucking cheap Axe perfume mixed with winner's sweat. A toxic gas that slowly suffocates me.

Today, the war has changed. The invasion has stopped being passive.

I was in my trench, trying to draw, trying to make the pencil on paper drown out the sound of his existence. He was rummaging through his closet, getting ready to go out with his monkeys. I was ignoring him. Or trying to.

Suddenly, he pulls out a shirt. The one from yesterday's party. Black, tight, still damp in the armpits. He sniffs it, makes a face, and instead of throwing it into the dirty clothes basket or his own fucking chaos, he turns around and throws it.

It lands with a soft, damp sound right in the middle of my bed. On my white, immaculate duvet.

A fucking black flag in my territory.

I'm paralyzed, with the pencil suspended in the air. "What the fuck are you doing?", I whisper, my voice trembling with pure, contained rage.

Marcos turns around, slow, with a shark's smile on his lips. It's not his usual idiot smile. This one is different. It's conscious.

"What's wrong, dwarf?", he asks, with fake innocence. "Does it bother you?".

"It's my bed, Marcos", I insist, feeling like a fucking idiot.

"Yeah", he says, getting closer. He leans over my bed and picks up the shirt. He stretches it. "But it smells like victory. Maybe you'll catch something if you sleep with it". And with a deliberate gesture, he drops it back onto my pillow. "Think about it. Shock therapy".

And he leaves. He goes out into the fucking street, laughing, leaving me alone with his shit.

And here I am now. Looking at the fucking black shirt on my white pillow. A stain. An offense. A silent order. Part of me wants to pick it up with two fingers, like it's a dead rat, and throw it into the fire.

But the other part... the broken part, the part that hates, the part that responds to poison...

That part is trembling. And my hands are sweating. And my mouth is dry. Because I know what's going to happen next. I know what I'm going to do.

He didn't have to order me to do it. But he did. He left the bait in my trench, knowing that the hungry dog would eventually bite.

In the a...