Hello there! As I have previously said, excuse me in case there are any serious grammar fault. Let me know my mistakes.
Really, sorry for my English, although I'm writing this in order to improve it xD

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Chapter One:
Death is not peaceful

«Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome. »

—Isaac Asimov.

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"Sure, I will be very careful. We don't want anything bad to happen to me, right? … No."

Aliena Salazar

Aliena watched thoughtfully the huge wall before her, with that well-known spark of curiosity shining in her eyes and the head lightly tilted to the right, as for obtain a better angle. It was getting dark in the gallery and the wide corridor was awfully quiet, completely empty but for her lonely shadow standing there. She was in front of the glorious painting by Pieter Brueghel, The Triumph of the Death.

The canvas should measured five feet wide and just over one meter high, and was poorly lit by a pair of orangish bulbs which made it even more menacing. Since their last History teacher hung a picture of that painting in their class to remind them that the University Entrance Examination was just around the corner, Aliena had been totally fascinated by it. It was so terrifying that it was simply beautiful – at least before her eyes. As was a customary in the work of the Flemish artist, the scene was full of leaden tones and strong ocher or redishes colors, trying to highlight as possible the fatal message of the painting itself: the inescapable arrival of the Death.

Her brown eyes seemed to shine intently as she studied the painting from side to side. The panorama is devastating, the earth rotten and the dark sky filthy with the smoke from the many piles of corpses. In the background, a fleet of galleons has been sunken in the cold grayish waters of the ocean; towers and fields everywhere are being burned to nothing but ashes. People running, screaming and crying, along with the skinny animals and the already crashed civilization. At the very center of the composition stands the skeleton army with their swords in hand and all those sardonic smiles spread on their skulls – practically laughing at their pathetic preys jumping over their broken bodies without giving them a chance. Every time she saw that painting, the very first thing that drew her attention was always the right side of the picture – full of energy, death and turmoil – and, only then, the other – almost bare in comparison – where she would watch with a weird, amused smile the skeletons' infernal court, wearing their pure white togas and staring unflinchingly all the slaughter. It was something that most people didn't notice, but there they were, demons accompanied by the crosses they all felt as a friendly symbol of the savior – and he was nowhere to be seen. There were a lot of other interesting scenes in the canvas; such as the couple of lovers playing the lute peacefully and the skeleton behind them imitating their smooth moves, the card games disastrously scattered all over the floor, or the king himself lying powerless in a lone corner while an armor skeleton takes greedily his treasures. The despair, the almost palpable screams, the struggle for life… and the hideous shadows, the death. The chaos.

Oh, that unique word! It was something strange – to say the least – the overwhelming charm that those morbid sketches managed to awaken inside of her mind.

She knew that probably those thoughts weren't very sane, talking fervently about all that darkness and pain – the death – that fortunately she hadn't reached to experiment herself in a high grade, but she couldn't help it. The twisted confusion created by the human themselves to their own torture was just amazing. How the most civilized person could become an authentic animalistic being if needed by its survival instincts, and how they would blame each other like carrion birds to save their interests. Maybe those were some – very – gloomy reflections that no one but her would be concerned to think about, but Aliena already knew she was slightly different than most people – whenever she expended her free time in those endless meditations that always led her to verbal fights against the society itself and everyone who wanted to confront her.

Aliena knew she was somewhat a freak. She had always been guided by her infinite curiosity and thirst for knowledge; while she grew, those also seemed to develop into something a bit different: that strong nonconformity with the world, the need to question everything and find her own answers. She knew very well the hypocrisy of the society and confronted it with her own mask of lies. That was the main reason why she was there completely alone in one of the shadowy galleries of the Museo Del Prado – when closing time had passed almost half an hour ago.

Today had been the birthday of her close friend Nerea who was currently studying in Madrid, and the whole group had decided to rise early – it was a three-hour road trip – and go give her a great surprise. It had been, and they had spent all the day laughing around the streets and meeting her many classmates in the university dorm – unsurprisingly, since the beginning neither of them got along with the quiet, sarcastic Aliena. Several hours later, sometime in the afternoon, Aliena had noticed she had been walking all alone for a couple of streets above and wasted no-time in calling Nerea to inform of wherever she was – they should already be accustomed to her odd behavior after seventeen years. Somewhat, all those hectic events made her think about her own eighteenth birthday that would take place within two mere weeks – Oh, how she hated her birthday! That simple but awful date always got to bring unpleasant feelings to her soul, though Aliena couldn't understand the reason behind it, thinking about the passage of time made her feel vulnerable and terribly alone in that frightening world.

Her distracted steps had led Aliena up to the very entrance of the Museo Del Prado, without her noticing. For a long five minutes, she had watched with interest the building and remembered all the crap their French teacher in high school used to say about museums and culture increase, and she decided that was a good way to spend the remainder of the afternoon. It was almost half past seven, closing time, but after a little chatter one of the door guards seemed to liked her and let her enter for a little while – as long as she wouldn't break or touch anything. Aliena realized it probably was a lifetime opportunity, so she had thanked him and spent the last twenty minutes doing a busy tour through the beautifully decorated corridors – looking some specific art works.

She looked at her silvery wristwatch and took one last thoughtful look at The Triumph of Death, just when she heard the guard's footsteps approaching – presumably to tell her it was time to leave. Aliena smiled weakly at the friendly man and let him guide her to the exit of the museum.

"Well then, lass. Be careful with these streets at nightfall, 'kay?" said the guard when they were at the glass door. "Hope to see you soon around here, perhaps at a more convenient time?" He and his female partner joked, saying her goodbye before they closed down the museum.

"Sure, I will be very careful," murmured Aliena to herself – since they couldn't longer hear –, almost as a personal joke. "We don't want anything bad to happen to me, right? … No." Talking to herself was becoming an unhealthy obsession in an already long – long – list, but who cared.

Aliena waved politely goodbye and walked out of place, staring intently at the starry sky which was already dark and threatening. They were in mid-fall and the temperatures were falling at a dizzying pace; the nocturne air sent chills down her spine. She reached into her bag looking for her forgotten mobile phone – which she barely used – and show signs of life once and for all in the whole afternoon. She had nearly seven missed calls from Nerea and other people – including her mother –, but she ignored all of them and directly called the birthday person herself.

"Aliena, where the hell were you?" greeted Nerea from her own phone in a rush. "We've been looking for ya for hours! The guys and I are already in your hotel room dining pizza. Dammit, how do ya always manage to disappear?"

Aliena knew enough her friend to say she was angry and preoccupied because of how she was speaking, but Nerea was always like that, so she couldn't say if she was being totally serious. As a matter of fact, most of Aliena's acquaintances tended to proceed in an exaggerated manner around her and – sadly enough – for some time now she had begun to think about their reactions as poorly achieved performances. Maybe she used to ignore them all for the benefit of both, but she still was aware of them. It was somehow depressing because she had grown up with half of those people and there hadn't been any problems until the adolescence – when each of them had chosen their own mental paths and Aliena realized she was one of the few teenagers in her town with individual ideals. Her former friends began to act weird around her and a lot of them even didn't hide that fact; most of Saint Leonard's neighbors also considered her someone striking at least, mentally and physically – truthfully, her penchant for leather and chains didn't help much –, she knew it and decided to play along with it despite the criticism and disapproving glances. Because she wasn't to be the one acting like a hypocrite.

She shook her head to temporally forget those thoughts and return to the nasty reality.

"Okay, girl, relax… I have only been walking around, that's all," she replied with a sigh. She had just walked through a new darkening avenue, so she tried to find its name on some plaque. "I think I am… on Serrano street. What was the name of the hotel, by the way?"

Nerea snorted – everyone was aware of the null directions' sense of the Lil' Daydreamer Aliena. "Anyway, don't move, I'll call a taxi. Ya know sometimes ya really are a pain in the ass?"

"You know, I really love it when you say those beautiful things to me," Aliena answered with an unseen and sardonic grin while she was walking by the last zebra crossing to a series of benches to sit on the next street. The night roads were so silent that it reminded her to some terror videogames or those American movies about women being raped in some corner of city. She let out a rather idiotic chuckle and her – normally unheard – crystalline laugh reverberated all over the streets. However, the joy disappeared the same way she had felt it and she found herself sighing again. "Okay, I'll wait here, then. But don't make me wait too much or…"

The next words were kept caught in Aliena's mouth, replaced by a pained, surprised shriek that was lost in the cold wind as soon as it was heard. The mobile phone flew out of her hand without notice, and all she could be able to feel at that hazy moment was her own body flying towards the dirty pavement, a few meters away from her last position. She heard a sudden, screeching noise that almost sounded like those abrupt movie-style slowdowns – but, there was a car? Then her body hit the hard ground with explosive force and her brain seemed paralyzed, somehow. The thoughts came into her head in a disorderly manner and she wasn't able to put them in the right place. She heard some noises around her – some door opening, several gasps, and the distant cries of Nerea on the other side of the phone laying several yards away from her.

All of a sudden, everything went black. She could still hear everything going on around her, but it came to her ears as remote, dull echoes – someone was shouting about calling an ambulance, and she sensed how they were moving her languid frame, but she couldn't tell them to stop. Aliena wanted them to stop, the noises and all the spinning movements, the people murmuring about some terrible accident and ignoring her deafening cries for help. Did they not hear her?

Aliena was really trying to raise her voice and talk to them but her words couldn't be heard even by herself – she couldn't speak, she couldn't think, she barely could breath. That overwhelming sensation seemed to lead her crazy, until she found herself crying desperately in nowhere.

What the hell was that place, that unfathomable darkness? Where was she? And, why there was absolutely nothing? For her, that was the most chilling thing about it all. Aliena could tolerate the darkness and the creepy shadows since she was ten, but the anxiety she felt standing alone in that… black infinity, oppressed her chest painfully – especially when the noises left and, instead of relief, she felt even more lost and helpless. Now she wanted those ghostly figures to return, to keep mumbling incoherencies and remind her that she was… alive…, or was she not?

Her mind was suspiciously... cloudless and relaxed, all of this just after momentary panic attack. Soon, that confidence was replaced by more confusion, an amount of questions and something really alike to the indignation. She didn't understand anything.

Maybe, just maybe was that what had just happened without even her noticing? Without further ado, now was she dead…, that simple? Was this really what death was like? Suddenly, Aliena couldn't contain the hysterical laughs that attempt to abandon her mouth without any voice. This crap… this bullshit was death? Where were at this point the unbearable universal debate about the Afterlife, all those religions and their damn gods, the Good and the Evil... if all you could be able to feel was that dense and harrowing darkness extending everywhere? She felt cheated.

Actually, Aliena had always thought that when she would have to die, she would go straight to Hell – she would join Satan's court and would sing along with his Majesty Iron Maiden's lyrics. She knew she'd never been an innocent lamb, especially since she completely stopped believing in no God – although she had been baptized – and began to oppose the poor arguments from the Vatican, and rather listen to all those bands that people defined as "satanic" – and they weren't. She used to talk with everybody about life and death as a coin with two faces, not afraid of the dark or the pain – maybe a little of the solitude – but always wondering what would be after that last breath. She had never found any real answer, and knew no one could give her one, but she somewhat knew that death was the end of everything – she didn't believe there was another life, although she'd have liked that, and she was sure it meant nothing more than the sad denouement of a theatric play. The Omega for everyone.

Perhaps that dreadful place was the much-talked-about Purgatory, but she didn't remember it that way. Dante Alighieri had described it as a great mountain of nine levels, with a flat top – where you could find Paradise –, an ante-purgatory and seven terraces where were various kinds of sinners. Aliena could love the Divina Commedia, but she didn't believe in God, so she didn't believe that was exactly real – anyway, she would have been considered somehow a sinner and couldn't have entered Paradise, just like Virgil. On the other hand, some sources of information said that lost souls who went to Purgatory used to be blessed with another chance to redeem themselves in Earth, but that place was nothing – literally –; there were no one and Aliena began to feel too overwhelmed by her stupid thoughts, worthy of any good philosopher from Athens.

She felt herself seriously uneasy. The darkness seemed so powerful that Aliena immediately thought about herself as something pathetic next to that black infinity, somethingcompletely helpless and useless against some baffling situation like this. In the case she would be still alive – she hadn't decided yet what her current status was – why could she feel, see, touch those shadows? She was even able of hear what they were saying, now that she was listening carefully. Though it could seem overly strange – what seemed not? –, the shadows were actually talking.

Having reached this breaking point, Aliena was unable to distinguish what was some product of her miserable imagination and what she was truly feeling. She didn't know how much time had passed or even what had happened, and certainly she didn't know what would happen to her – whether she was somewhat unconscious, or really everything was over. In that darkness, Aliena was feeling unusually light, also very tired and, above all, sad as ever. "I am dead," she thought.

Then, she realized an insignificant white dot somewhere within the obscurity – she hadn't noticed its presence before and she wasn't sure of when it had exactly appeared in there. The existence of anything beautiful apart from those whispering shadows seemed to light a small flame of relief inside her lost mind – and it was warm enough to contrast her feelings of total despair. Aliena tried to take control of her body, which she couldn't even feel rightly, and move herself towards that minuscule source of whiteness. As she moved slowly without actually moving, the little speck of light seemed to become a little bigger only to pull back a second later and hesitate again the next moment. But she tried, and tried, and tried with all her remaining strength – she had to get out, didn't care to end up in Hell nor in Heaven nor in some underground cavern of Jupiter, she just needed to leave right then of that damn darkness that wouldn't let her breathe.

Suddenly, right in front of her, the little light exploded in a dazzling cascade of white that completely flooded the kingdom of shadows and forced her to close her eyes as hard as she could. She was mortally scared – because it had been so long since she could understand nothing about what was happening – but a faint thought of hope made its way in her mind, foolishly telling her that everything would end alright. And then, just as it had disappeared, the sensitivity seemed to return to Aliena's body in an unimaginably unpleasant way – she could feel her head just about to explode, and every damn fiber of her body seemed to have been ruthlessly beaten to death. It hurt like hell to even think that it did hurt, and she didn't even a clue about the cause.

Now she regretted to have trusted that fucking light, and she cursed it with her very last thought.

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An eternity later, the delicate threads of vague consciousness began to slowly find their proper place within her mind – a blinding white, fathomless mist was all she could sense around her. Aliena thought she was on some kind of cottony clouds, far away from reality, and tried to outline a melancholy smile, breathing peace for the first time in what seemed a really long time. Then, she caught some haunting whistle reaching her ears as a distant echo – pi, pi, pi…, faster each time – what it was, she didn't know, and then the remote cacophony of movement – steps somewhere, unintelligible murmurs, something that almost sounded like one sparrow chirping. Her eyes were trying to fight the own power of her eyelids and being open – which she thought that was impossible – and, when she blinked, once, twice, three times, the shadows disappeared.

She was not dead.