Núria de Manuel – The dark room
Further away from reality and time, enveloped in darkness, lies a room. No matter in which direction you walk to or for how long, you won’t be able to get out of it. Within that room rests a monster with an insatiable hunger. But don’t be fooled, he was once a human, before he lost his mind to the unknown. This man, Chronos, was running from his persecutors when, desperately looking for a way to escape, he discovered an empty tree. But when he entered, he was transported to that little box of nothingness. Weeks, months, years passed; and as he spent eternity alone, he began to transform his loneliness into insanity, becoming a shadow of what he used to be. It had just reached a millennium when another soul entered the room, transported by the same tree, which had been cut down and whose powers travelled among the earth. But Chronos was no longer a man, he had turned into a beast with long muscular limbs and an horrendous face, whose only happiness was brought by devouring the souls and bodies of others. And so the story says that everyone who disappears and whose body is never found, appears in that room; trying desperately to get out and escape, only to be devoured by the creature.