“Cut off my arm!” The boy begged through tears, and his father thought he was crazy –

PART 1

“If you don’t shut up this instant, I swear I’ll sign the papers to have you committed to a mental health clinic first thing tomorrow morning.”

Alejandro’s words were harsh, laden with the extreme exhaustion of a man who hadn’t slept for four nights. He stood in the doorway of his son’s room, watching the 10-year-old frantically bang the cast on his right arm against the mahogany headboard. The muffled sound of the impact echoed through the vast hallways of the residence in San Pedro Garza García like a war drum. Diego’s face was drenched in cold sweat, his dark eyes looked as if they were about to pop out of their sockets, and his lips were chapped from so much pleading.

“Take it off, Dad!” “Please, cut it off!” the boy screamed, writhing in the sheets. “They’re getting in! They’re eating me alive, they’re biting me!”

Alejandro advanced with heavy steps. There was no compassion in his eyes, only the furious desperation of a father on the verge of losing his mind. He grabbed the boy by the shoulders and pinned him down against the mattress.

“That’s enough, Diego! You’re going to break your bone again!” he shouted, breathing heavily.

The boy didn’t hear him. With his left hand, he desperately tried to push a pencil under the top edge of the cast, scratching himself with a chilling violence. The skin visible around the bandage was reddened, with dark patches and a sickly appearance, but Alejandro refused to look closely. He was blinded by the narrative that had been planted in his head.

At that moment, Valeria appeared in the doorway. She wore an impeccable silk robe, her chestnut hair fell perfectly over her shoulders, and her face maintained a calculating, almost rehearsed coldness.

“I warned you, my love,” Valeria murmured, crossing her arms with feigned pity. “This isn’t just pain from the fracture anymore. It’s pure manipulation. Ever since we got married six months ago, Diego has done everything to separate us. He can’t stand you paying attention to me.”

“You’re a witch! You know perfectly well what you did!” Diego howled, pointing a trembling finger at her.

Valeria sighed and looked at her husband with the eyes of a victim.

“Do you realize, Alejandro? Now he’s inventing delusions to accuse me. It’s a case of severe paranoia. He needs psychiatric medication urgently before he hurts someone else or himself.”

Alejandro rubbed his face, defeated. Since that incident at school where Diego broke his leg, their home had become a living hell. The orthopedic surgeon was clear: the cast would only cause mild discomfort. However, Diego had stopped eating, was trembling uncontrollably, and swore that hundreds of tiny legs were crawling under his skin.

From the darkness of the hallway, Doña Elvira, the Oaxacan nanny who had raised Diego since his mother’s death, watched the scene with a lump in her throat. She knew something sinister was afoot. Approaching the bed under the pretext of picking up a fallen pillow, Elvira caught a whiff of something that made her stomach churn. It wasn’t the normal smell of a sweaty cast. It was a sweet, thick, and putrid aroma.

Discreetly, the nanny glanced down and saw a small red ant crawling across the sheet. The insect wasn’t looking for food on the floor; it marched straight toward the opening in Diego’s cast and scurried away into the darkness of the bandage.

“Boss…” Elvira whispered, pale as a sheet. Something’s wrong in there.

Alejandro let out a dry, deranged laugh.

“He probably hid candy in the bed to get attention. Clean up this mess, Elvira, and don’t encourage his craziness.”

That same morning, consumed by despair and his wife’s venomous words, Alejandro took a thick leather belt and tied his own son’s good wrist to the bed frame to prevent him from hitting it again. Valeria watched from the doorway, a barely perceptible smile playing on her lips. Everything seemed to be falling into place in his macabre plan, and it was impossible to believe the level of horror that was about tDiego lay there, his chest heaving as he stared at the ceiling, the leather strap biting into his skin. Every creak of the old bedframe echoed like a warning through the room.

He tried to focus on the soft hum of the air conditioner, the only familiar sound that could anchor him, but his mind replayed the image of the red ant disappearing into the cast’s shadows.