The Hill

There’s a brief silence.

That particular silence that follows an hour of speaking on air.

While I check the final stream numbers, Carmen stretches her arms over her head with a barely audible groan.

“I’m mentally exhausted,” she says, rubbing her temple. “Gabriel… the soy thing… I think I almost believed it for a second.”

“You should,” he replies proudly. “It took me months of research. Connections, consumption data, grades. I had to bribe three professors. It’s my masterpiece—and it’s terrifying. My form of resistance is bringing my own food.”

I can’t help rolling my eyes.

“Well, Mr. Investigator,” I say, dragging out the words, “I hope you at least brought us a few new followers.”

I stretch and take a deep breath. My back cracks in protest.

“Tomorrow I’ll put together the clips for social media. Right now I need to breathe for a bit. I’m already seeing shadows on the walls.”

“That’s not a good sign, Elena…” Gabriel says, adopting a bargain-bin therapist tone. “Have you been eating the cafeteria sandwiches?”

Carmen frowns and leans closer to the camera. Her image pixelates for a moment.

“Are you going out now?” she asks, concern creeping into her voice. “It’s almost eleven.”

“Just to get some fresh air,” I reply. “Nothing weird. A few laps around campus. Maybe I’ll find a 24-hour shop that sells ice cream.”

Carmen doesn’t look convinced.

“Alright…” she relents. “Remember, tomorrow we have to meet to compile the metrics and put together the report for digital journalism.”

“I couldn’t forget,” I say, clicking my tongue. “Bye, guys!”

I stand up to leave. I can see them waving goodbye before I close the window.

As I put on my sneakers and a jacket to go for a walk, I realize the call is still active in a small thumbnail. Carmen’s camera is still on.

Before I can say anything, I see Carmen turn toward Gabriel and—surprising me with an intimate gesture—straighten the collar of his shirt. He smiles. Neither of them looks particularly exhausted. If anything, they seem full of energy.

I close the laptop harder than necessary.

“At least turn off the camera…” I mutter.

I leave my room and head down the residence stairs at an unhurried pace.

I still remember how the podcast started. We were assigned a long-term project for the degree, and Carmen proposed it as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

I wasn’t particularly excited.

I always thought it was hard to make a living out of something like that—or even get a decent grade. For me, at least back then, it was just another requirement in my academic grid. Carmen sees it differently. More seriously. More professionally.

Sometimes I think that for her, Talking Nonsense is already her first job—not just an academic project.

Once outside, the cold air hits my face. I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with something other than the stale air of my apartment. I needed it.

It’s a full moon night, but the sky is covered in clouds. The moon is there, but its light barely shows—just enough to make the streetlights feel necessary.

The north sector, where the residence is, feels like a different world at this hour. Too quiet. I start walking aimlessly, looking for an open shop somewhere on campus. It’s safer than going outside at this time.

I walk just to pass time. I’m not sleepy yet. I need to clear my head of the podcast—even though, despite claiming not to care that much, my thoughts keep drifting back to it like a magnet.

Metrics. Retention rates. What we can improve. Who to invite next. Or whether, after tonight, we should stop having guests altogether.

I feel like in the end it’ll just be another grade in the program… although, if I’m honest, it has its fun moments. Like the time we reacted live to an international awards show, or when the whole episode was just Carmen and me talking about our childhoods.

None of those episodes did numbers. But they were fun anyway.

The podcast is our small space of controlled chaos.

I pass one of the open shops, buy a cup of vanilla ice cream without thinking too much about it, and keep walking, letting the cold and the sugar do their work.

“Maybe Gabriel was right about his vanilla ice cream theory…” I think.

I stop for a moment at a concrete bench to eat the ice cream without spilling half of it while walking. I take out my phone to check social media trends—looking for inspiration for future podcast episodes, and also to see if there’s any important notification.

I check for conversations or mentions about today’s episode with the special guest. The first few hours after each episode matter.

But there’s only silence.
Talking Nonsense, speaking into the void.

By the time I look back at my ice cream, it’s already a sweet soup on the bench.

“It wasn’t even that good,” I think, tossing it into the trash.

I stand up, planning to head back to the residence to sleep. In the distance, I hear muffled shouts, the sharp snap of a ball, and whistles from people playing on the fields.

My thoughts drift to Carmen. I wonder what she’s doing. I regret it instantly. I know exactly what she’s doing—and with whom. I’d already seen the prelude with my own eyes.

Better not think about it.
Better not think.

Suddenly, the atmosphere feels heavy. I couldn’t say since when. There’s no wind. The air feels drier, stagnant, with a strange smell—almost metallic.

The voices from the fields sound… different. Too close now. For the first time, I notice that the familiar structures of the north sector are gone.

Without realizing it, lost between my thoughts and the sugar, I’ve reached the south field. Twenty, maybe thirty minutes of walking—evaporated in a mental lapse.

In front of me, brightly lit by powerful floodlights, are the southern campus fields. Far behind them, I can see the hill.

The one with the “entity” Gabriel mentioned.

I swallow.

A knot tightens in my stomach.

“It wouldn’t kill me to take a look, right?”

I start walking slowly. Phone in hand.

Gabriel had mentioned two specific things: that the entity wasn’t photogenic, and that it had golden eyes. And even though I didn’t want to give Gabriel credit, if I managed to get proof of either—photo, video, audio recording—it would be gold for next week’s episode.

I was already halfway across the field toward the base of the hill, and I still hadn’t seen anything like what Gabriel described. It was difficult anyway—the hill wasn’t lit. The field lights only reached halfway up, creating a brutal contrast between brightness and absolute shadow.

For a moment, I considered that this was a stupid idea. If it were just a person, what reason would they have to be there? And if it were an “entity,” wouldn’t getting closer be genuinely dangerous?

The reasoning was impeccable.

Still, I kept moving.

Eventually, I reached the base of the hill. I still saw nothing. The smell of damp earth and something metallic was much stronger here. I waited a few minutes, looked up, looked around.

Nothing.

A wave of relief and disappointment washed over me in equal measure.

“Maybe I got the wrong hill?”

I was about to leave when the sky—until then fully covered—slowly began to open.

Instinctively, I look up.

And lit by the full moon, I see it—my skin prickling along my arms.

A tall shadow.
Humanoid.

I see two golden eyes.
Alive.
Brilliant.

And fixed on me.