Roof

I am trying to get out. The factory is immense, a huge labyrinth without clear edges; a living structure that breathes in old metals, forgotten gases. I move through corridors where there are no lights, and yet everything is illuminated with a dull glow, as if the air itself remembered the sun.
I know my friend is nearby, outside. I saw him one last time in the half-light, near some broken stairs, lifting his hand without saying a word. My beloved is out there too. Surrounded by a group, speaking as if time didn’t exist, as if we had all been born inside this same factory and she were the only one who knew the way out. But I don’t.

•  

I arrive at an open space. There are giant holes in the floor, geometric mouths. Perfectly cut, black inside. I walk to the edge and look down.
People are working down there. Like tiny figures in an underworld, carrying things I don’t understand. Sometimes they look up, but not at me. It’s as if I don’t exist from this height; as if anyone who makes it this far up has already been forgotten by those still inside.
The fall is deep. There are no railings. Just the edge, and the echo.

•  

I think about walking carefully around it. The lines in the metal form uncertain routes, curving from one end to the other without logic. Everything seems designed to have no exit. But then I see a sign, nailed crooked into one of the walls:

"THE BEST WAY OUT IS THROUGH THE ROOF"

And it’s so absurd that it might be true. There’s no map. Just a suggestion that sounds impossible.

•  

I start going up. The stairs are rusted. The metal creaks under my weight, like it remembers others who tried to escape. The entire roof is covered in sheets of corrugated metal. Worn, warped, some on the verge of falling off. Small holes let in a sick, white light. Every step is a distinct possibility of a final fall.
I don’t think they just let it decay. I think they made it dangerous on purpose. It’s ideology; their particular way of seeing the world: If you want to get out, you have to risk something. If you fall, you didn’t deserve to leave. They believe in the merit of lethal danger and deep wounds.

•  

I go forward. My hands brace against the jagged edges of the metal sheets. Some shudder, others come loose as soon as I touch them.
There’s no one else up here. Just me and the sound of the wind sneaking through invisible cracks. But I feel something else. A presence—not a person, but an awareness.
The factory is the body of an idea. And I am just a tiny mistake in its huge digestive system.

•  

I reach a place where the sheets no longer lie flat. Now I have to climb; there’s a steep incline that quickly becomes a wall. That’s where the greatest danger is. Not because of the height but because of what’s behind it.
It’s as if the roof has a guardian. Not a creature, but an intention. A final test.
The sheets are loose. I have to move silently. Each step must be taken with a silent prayer.

•  

I stop and think of my old friend. His endless jokes and his polite, restrained laughter. The way he said everything was a game and that one day we’d get out, it was certain. Always so sure of what he said.
I think of my beloved, looking at me with that particular blend of anxiety and patience. They are both outside but I am not.

•  

I breathe. The air up here tastes different, as if the particles were older. As if what I’m breathing now was exhaled by someone long ago and only just reached me; a kind of air full of memory.
I place one foot on the steepest part of the slope. It groans beneath me and I freeze. The wind touches my face. Ahead, there’s nothing—just a curve of brightness hiding whatever comes next.

•  

I remember a moment… she once told me a dream she had. She was walking down a long dark hallway, and at the end her grandfather was waiting. And her grandfather said: “There is only one path through this life, mi niña, but no one can tell you what it is.”
And she woke up crying.

•  

I take one more step. The metal shifts and my entire body tenses. I’m not sure I should keep going but I know I can’t go back. I have come too far.

•  

I look behind me. The path I climbed already seems further away than it should be. As if it was someone else that walked it.
There is definitely no return. Only rooftop ahead of me, and sky.

•  

I think of my father. The way he talked to me, his mind always full of twisted ideas. How he believed everything in life was a system of hidden pipes: if one part gets clogged, everything breaks down.
Maybe he helped build this place; maybe it was his own design in the first place. Maybe the ideology that sustains it passed through his hands as well.

•  

I raise my eyes and a single black bird crosses the sky.
Silent. No one sees it. Only I do.

•  

And then I understand: There is no door in the roof. No marked exit.
The only way out is to dismantle the roof itself, piece by piece… to tear it apart, to completely break the inner logic.

•  

I begin to pull carefully on the metal sheets. Each one that loosens lets in more light. A growing light, as if the factory itself doesn’t want this to happen.
But it’s too late. I no longer belong to it.

•  

One final sheet and a great gust of wind. And then:
The sky.
Real.
Open.
Without geometry.
Without limits.
And far below, the sound of someone calling my name.