It was a school day, but neither Ariel nor I had gone even though it had already been a week since she had been attending regularly. I left early to pick her up because she already lived on the farm, and we went for the moving truck that we had rented, I hoped to do it quickly, neither of them was supposed to be at home, both would be working so they would not notice it until they arrived in the afternoon.
I didn't worry about my furniture or anything, I already had new furniture in my new room, I would just go for my clothes, my computer, and what I thought I might need, such as my photos, passports, visa, important documents, and toys that I still had.
I held the letter in my hand undecided whether to leave it or not, but Ariel took my hand and kissed me on the cheek to encourage me, I sighed leaving the letter on the table, they were a few words of farewell to my parents telling them my emotions, how they made me feel, what I liked about them, what I hated about them and other things encouraging them to seek to be better people.
I also left them the details of a bank account with ten million pesos, double what I calculated they could have spent on me so that they would not call me an ungrateful son or have complaints about it, I did not tell them about Ariel or my new life, I only told them that I would be fine, I did not want them to contact me and I even left the family chat group, I would no longer use that number, I deleted my social media accounts hoping that they would leave me alone and accept my farewell in peace.
Ariel understood my decision and even encouraged me to do so, but that didn't take away from the fact that she was a little upset with me, and how could she not be?, we were polar opposites in this case, she would give that new farm and more if it meant having one more moment with her parents, and here I was voluntarily abandoning mine. She firmly believed that any problem could be solved by talking about it, and that when they saw that I would no longer have financial problems they would accept it without opposition, but I told her that that was not my concern, but that they would want to take my money just as her aunt took away her parents' house, she insisted that parents would not do that to their children, although it was less her insisting and more as if she tried to wish it were so.
I sighed as I drove the truck back home, our home. I told her that I wish it were too, but that unfortunately reality was not always as we would like it to be and I didn't want to risk it, and she didn't talk to me the rest of the way turning around at her window, not out of anger, but because she didn't know how to refute my words, who knows everything that was going through her head at that moment, but I sighed hoping that she would learn this lesson.
When we got home we unloaded the truck, it was not only to go get my things but also to get others that Ariel wanted, such as a hammock, a stove, a washing machine, a dryer, and a lot of plants and flowers that Ariel and I chose.
It took us all afternoon to move things with the help of a forklift she had rented, but between the two of us we could handle everything, she was surprisingly strong.
We gave ourselves two hours to rest and enjoy our achievements, but when we finally got bored we began to load the mallets, tweezers and gas canisters into the truck.
Ariel felt a lot of frustration for the house that was rightfully his that he could never keep, and only jokingly I told him that maybe we should destroy it to leave him only the land that his aunt claimed so much, I laughed waiting for him to look ugly at me or something just thinking about doing something to his parents' house, but I was the one who was frightened when she, far from getting angry, began to consider the idea.
He looked at me with stunned eyes, how could I not think of it? And she put a hand to her chin thoughtfully with a frown, then her gaze gradually changed to a cruel and vengeful smile.
"I think I will. – was all he said before dragging me to buy mallets, gasoline, blowtorches, etc.
- Are you sure you want to do this? – I asked when I parked the truck in front of his old house.
"Yes, she took away what my parents left me, I won't leave her a nice house, I'll leave her a place so destroyed that it will be cheaper for her to tear it down and build another one to repair it." If it is not mine, it will be nobody's. – she said with hatred in her eyes. God, is it bad that she looks so pretty when she feels like killing someone?
With a last breath I let my doubts come out and I also smiled like crazy, if I was going to destroy a house I was not going to prevent myself from enjoying it.
We got out of the truck, put on our helmets, safety glasses and gloves, we already had our boots and overalls on, we took the mallets, blowtorches and safety bottles. Ariel's keys didn't work, it looked like they had changed the lock, but this was her house, she knew all the tricks and ways to get in, we went to the back where there was a little ladder of stacked stones big enough to pass the fence, I climbed up and climbed the fence sitting in the middle for her to pass me things and throw them inside, I put the bottles of gasoline in a row on the fence to lower them later.
I helped her up and when we were finally inside the ground we started Operation Chernobyl.
The back door still had the same key, but instead of opening it normally Ariel decided that this would be its opening, he took one of the hammers and hit the door so hard that the glass in it broke, only a second blow was enough to destroy the sheet metal and leave the door unusable.
We entered like two mafiosi with the sledgehammers resting on our shoulders and the destruction began.
It would have looked great if we had recorded it to do a slow-motion montage later on with rock music or heavy metal or something, but we couldn't leave any evidence.
The walls creaked with each blow of Ariel's hammer, her rage contained in that smile moved me so much that I myself began to hit the walls with all my strength. We started on the second floor, we hit the floor of the second floor destroying ceramics until we saw the rods, we broke the toilets and showers next to the walls leaving water leaks from the damaged pipe. We completely destroyed the wall between two windows, the kitchen counter was shattered, the stairs broke preventing the passage to the second floor, we broke window by window in a competition to see who left the most pieces.
The floor of the cistern collapsed and if it wasn't for Ariel's quick action mu would have fallen into it. Finally we emptied the seven bottles of gasoline all over the first floor and threw bottles of improvised Molotov attempts down the destroyed staircase to the second floor, we opened all the gas outlets including the tanks outside the kitchen and ran so as not to be trapped in the gas, with equal force we broke the entrance door as well as the back one carrying the empty bottles and mallets back to the truck and turning it on to have our escape ready, then we returned until we were at a safe enough distance and each one threw a bottle of gasoline and a burning rag at the destroyed house.
We ran to the truck saving ourselves from the roar of all the gasoline igniting, it was not an explosion but more like fire suddenly emerging, so much so that it even escaped through the windows, but not even five seconds passed when a thunderous explosion was heard, as if thunder had fallen next to it. I stopped a little to look in the rearview mirror at the burning house, but it was incredible, it seemed as if its roof had collapsed, Ariel also saw it leaning on my legs to look out the window, a cruel and ecstatic look rested on his face.
We stared at our play for a few seconds and left before people started coming out to see what was going on. I stopped from a higher street because Ariel's house was at the beginning of a hill, from there we could see how the second floor collapsed and fell on the first while everything was still burning.
- HAHAHAHAHA that felt amazing!! – she shouted, jumping on the seat of the truck.
We were tired and exhausted, I drove home with some pain and I was very sure that tomorrow we were both going to have a sore body.
A few days passed, but Ariel's aunt called him furiously blaming her for everything, Ariel feigned dementia and told her that she had no idea what she was saying, we left the call on tape while Ariel laughed like crazy but without making a sound, she said that that would be her alarm clock tone to always start the day happy. I was just wondering what kind of psychopath I had married, or was it that after all the strong emotions she went through at the funeral something had changed in her, well, whatever it was was fine as long as she didn't exaggerate too much.
Oh and about the aunt, apparently she was planning to move into that house because she didn't have one of her own, until now she lived in a kind of neighborhood where the owner had forgiven her a few months of rent out of pity and because she pretended to be good people, but when she thought she would have her own house she began to act shamelessly until she was kicked out, she was not worried but just on the day of the move was when Ariel and I did our little work of retribution and she arrived at a house surrounded by firefighters, policemen and gossipy people, the videos on social networks were very funny I have to admit, seeing her go into such a big panic made Ariel not be able to hold back her laughter for almost fifteen minutes.