“Hey there buddy…”, he murmurs absent-mindedly as we reach for the door. Shane looks at him mouth agape, like he’s not real, stepping right behind me unconsciously, mechanically.

“See you in a bit”, Dante says huskily, smiling again a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

With my hand still tightened on Shane’s, I walk across the yard and open the front gate. I unlock my car and open the passenger door. Shane sits on the passenger seat without a word. I walk around the car and open the driver door. I climb on my seat and rest my hands on the steering wheel, letting go a long sigh of frustration.
Shane turns her head towards me.

“Do you wanna tell me what the hell is going on?”, she asks, nervously.

I shake my head.

“Honestly, I have no idea. Let’s just wait here. Dante told me that he needs to be alone in our house for a while. I don’t know what he has in mind. I don’t know what’s happening, I’m just…”.

“Worried, yeah. And scared… Me too”, Shane interrupts me weakly. She grabs my hand.

And we wait. And we wait.
We wait for minutes, throwing glances at the silent house, waiting for something to happen, for anything to happen.
But there are no sounds, and no movements.
My watch ticks, moments pass. Terrible moments of ignorance and unknown fear and frustration and worry.

After twenty minutes, the front door opens and Dante walks out slowly, his forehead sweating, his features taut. He waves his hand in the air, beckoning us that we’re free to move.
Shane and I get out the car, walking together to the house. Dante steps aside, letting us in. He slowly rubs his forehead with the palm of his hand and lets go a long sigh of relief.
There’s an unknown object laying on the kitchen table.
It’s a black metal parallelepiped with a small screen which has been turned off.
There are several colored live wires stretching out the box. Red, yellow, blue wires.
The blue ones have been ripped off.

Dante sits silently at the kitchen table and clasps his hands together on the hard, cold surface of majolica.

“Take a seat, girls, please”, he mutters, staring at the box.