Someone changed the ending.
When I wake up, after a confused sleep, it is three o'clock in the afternoon and I am no longer in pain. I am animated by a lucid and inexorable determination: I will go immediately to get her back; I will treat her as she wishes, as she deserves. I will do her on the floor of the house without even waiting to get to the room, and all the better if we are seen: it will be the end of an indecent farce.
An anxious hurry begins to devour me: I have already wasted too much time. I hate everything about Tuscany; I do not intend to stay there a single second longer. I am in the grip of uncontrollable nervous excitement, close to hysteria: my hands tremble as I dress, I clench my jaws to keep from chattering my teeth, I cannot coordinate my gestures.
I swallow a couple of sedatives and strive to make the entire return journey in a state of complete narcosis. I succeed all too well, so much so that I risk twice crashing into the guard-rail; I don't even have enough lucidity to reach a lay-by: I have to stop under a viaduct, in the emergency lane. I recline the seat and lie down; I regret Tegame's company: if he were here with me I would not be so lonely, I would fall asleep with my face bathed in his reassuring smell of moldy bread.
I fall into a fitful slumber and have a dream.
Soundtrack: Brother James by Sonic Youth. 
I have arrived home. I try to run across the yard, but my legs are soft and slow and my feet sink into the gravel of the driveway, sticking to the asphalt of the sidewalk. I finally manage to get into the house and make a sure shot into the living room. I see her from behind, sitting on the sofa. She turns around: she is wearing a white dress, a veil covers her face. She doesn't speak, I don't say anything. I reach over, grab her by the hair and start dragging her like a sack across the fields to a half-destroyed basement. I take her in my arms, cross the threshold, drop her on the ground and kick her down the stairs; she stops against a brick wall in a dark corner. I reach for her, grab her veiled head and begin to slam it against a pointed arch, over and over again, but a strange force restrains my gestures and renders them ineffective. She laughs softly and lets herself be banged here and there like a puppet. I can't lift the veil, I barely catch a glimpse of the black circles under her eyes and her mouth open in an absurd grin. I finally crack her skull: I see blood splattering on the whiteness of her dress. I tear the veil, try to open her head with my hands, plunge my fingers into her brain. She arches her back with a long groan, faints. I grab her wrists and slip them into the iron rings protruding from the wall, rip off her white dress and try to rape her, but the frames are blocked, the scene unfolds as if in slow motion. The fatigue is enormous, I want to cry out but I am completely breathless; the desperation grows sharper, becomes unbearable, dissolves into intense pleasure. I take off, the beating of my wings becomes thick and frequent, I no longer feel any fatigue. I stay aloft gliding on the currents, she pulses in unison with me, the rhythm of contractions is light and regular: I tell her not to worry, I will continue like this until I kill her, until I die, never stopping. I feel a wonderful sense of well-being: I rise higher and higher as the sun emits an intermittent light, a high-pitched hiss as of a siren. I hear tapping rain; I try not to pay attention to it, but the pattering becomes more insistent. It is not rain, it is hail. The basement window is right above her, the glass is broken: the hail could hurt her, I have to protect her. With immense effort I raise an arm to close the shutters. I open my eyes: a policeman is knocking on the window of my car.
I get up in my seat completely dazed. I roll down the window.
- You cannot stop in the emergency lane. Remove yourself immediately or I will write you up.
Apologies.
- Are you sure you are okay?
- Yes, thank you, I'm just sleepy. I didn't sleep last night. Can you tell me what time it is?
- 7:30.
I deduce that I slept three hours. The policeman continues:
- Reach a gas station as soon as possible. The next one is five kilometers away.
I say thank you, start up again, and drive off.
I feel reeling, the sedatives have put an unbearable thirst in my body: I stop at a service area near Bologna, drink a coffee and guzzle a liter of water. I go to the bathroom. On the way out, the sun low on the horizon gives me a tremendous twinge in my eyes: as I put on my dark glasses, a gypsy woman approaches me; before I can react, she grabs my hand and begins to read it, brushing my palm with her grimy fingers. My brother could never suffer gypsies; I, on the other hand, who knows why, feel comforted by that contact.
- Tu male - he says - Tu desperado. Me take away bad, you want?
I smile at her exhaustedly:
- Why not?
- He takes this - he tells me, handing me a small ball of tangled thread. He closes my fingers into a fist in his and begins to utter incomprehensible incantations in who knows what obscure mixture of languages, stroking the air with circular motions of his hand over mine. She opens my palm with a small exclamation of surprise: the tangle is completely untied, the thread flowing docilely pulled by her fingers.
I appreciate the sleight of hand and reward him generously. I head for the car and drive off again. It is only at the highway toll booth that I realize, opening my wallet and finding it completely empty, that the wily magician is capable of far more skillful tricks.
I am forced to fill out a long report; there is no way to make the toll collector understand that I am the victim. A perverse sense of humor assails me as I sign the stupid papers: everything turns out exactly the opposite of what I had planned; I burst out laughing in the toll collector's face, an irritating jerk, like all bureaucrats.
I have lost a lot of precious time; it is now ten o'clock at night. My nerves are shattered, I am dead tired: I realize that in this condition I will not reach my destination alive. So I resign myself to sleeping a few hours in a service area. I sleep deeply for a few hours: my body needed it. When I wake up it is now 1 a.m.: I pull myself up and immediately get back behind the wheel.
It is half past three in the morning when I am on the road from Chieri to Turin, now only a few kilometers from my destination. Suddenly I see before me the gleam of a small fox's eyes on the roadside: immediately I stop to let it pass. The little fox, however, gives up on crossing and turns back to the grassy roadside, intent on retracing his steps. I engage first gear to get going again, but as soon as I make it a few meters the fox changes its mind, turns around and jumps under the wheels of my car, with no way for me to avoid it. I brake desperately, but it is too late. 
I stop desolate and rest my forehead on the steering wheel, unable to believe what has happened. At that moment I hear tapping on my window again, this time in a mild and gentle way. I raise my head and, to my enormous astonishment, I see a middle-aged lady, not very tall and quite sturdy, with short hair dyed blond, smiling at me and signaling for me to roll down my window. Stunned, I look in the rearview mirror and see the headlights of her car that had stopped behind mine. I am sure that previously there was no one behind me; the road was deserted.
Dazed and even a little alarmed, I ask her what she wants, thinking that she has had a car breakdown and needs my help. Instead, in a polite and subdued tone, the lady asks me:
- Excuse me for asking: is this the first time something like this has happened to you?
- First time in what sense? - I ask her interjectedly - She wants to know if this is the first time I put a fox under? If that's what she wants to know, the answer is yes.
He smiles.
- No, not exactly, that was not the point of my question, but never mind. Please know that I was behind you and I saw perfectly the dynamics of the accident: it was not you who ran over the fox, it was the fox who jumped under your car. And that changes things completely.
- In what sense? - I ask her again.
She tells me with extreme politeness:
- Look, I know a coffee shop nearby that stays open all night for truckers. If you'll allow me, I'll buy you a coffee so that you can recover from the shock. I don't think she is capable of resuming the trip in this condition.
I nod: she is right. However, I ask her to give me time to move the poor little beast's body to the side of the road, so that it will not be run over by other motorists. She says yes, and helps me move the still-warm little corpse on the grass, from the mouth of which a rivulet of blood is coming out. I am shocked and in disbelief.
The lady climbs back into the car and leads the way to a small village not far away, where the bright sign of an open bar shines.
We go in, sit at the counter, and the very friendly manager puts two coffees and two freshly baked brioches in front of us. As I eat my brioche, the lady gives me a speech I will never forget.
- Please listen to me as carefully as you can. Don't ask me who I am and what I am doing at this hour on the street: I can only tell you that I am an expert on such phenomena and I just came from a meeting where we talked about it, but that is of no importance. Just know that you are in danger: the behavior of that animal, we could say its self-sacrifice, is an attempt to stop you. So please, wherever you are headed, do not go there.
The morsel I am swallowing gets stuck in my throat.
- Excuse me, - I ask you - how do you know all this?
The lady smiles again. I look at her carefully: she has the reassuring air of an ordinary housewife, certainly not a witch or a sorceress; she looks a bit like Cinderella's godmother in the Walt Disney movie.
- I told her, it doesn't matter who I am and how I know. Right now the only thing that is important is her: I tell her again that she is in danger and should not go where she was going. 
- I was going home - I simply answer her.
He nods and tells me:
- Wherever she is going, she will encounter something or someone that will put her in danger. Please believe me. One more thing I must tell you: you must never, under any circumstances, meddle in the affairs of the occult. That would be most dangerous for you. Promise me that.
I promise them mechanically.
She gives me an affectionate peck on the cheek, gets up, goes to pay the bill for both of us before I can stop her, waves me off with a smile, and exits the bar. 
I finish my brioche in one bite and go out in my turn, looking for her to pay my share of the bill, but the lady has literally disappeared. There is no sign of her or her car.
I feel like I'm in a dream: I turn around to make sure the bar hasn't also disappeared like Cinderella's carriage, ready to see a pumpkin in its place, but the bar is still there and the bright sign is still lit.
I get back in the car and start the car again, deeply troubled by that series of events. I stop again to refuel and get some sleep at a service area, so as not to arrive at my destination too early-I would not know how to explain a dawn return to my parents. I wait until nine o'clock and set off again.
 
Finally, here I am at home. I cross the garden with soft legs, exactly as in my dream. I enter the living room, but instead of Antonia, sitting on the sofa, there is my brother who is talking to my father and mother. Strange: he should be on a business trip (hence the choice of this time for my vacation with her). I brace myself and prepare to endure yet another play for my parents' use. 
I take off my useless sunglasses and greet them with a knowing smile.
- What a nice tan," exclaims Michele, "Apparently you and your partner did more than just study. How did it go in the country?
- No big deal.
- We, on the other hand, have important news - my father says, but then does not speak. I notice that my mother casts furious glances at Teresa, who busies herself with superfluous activities.
- Thank you, Teresa, - she says dryly - this is not the time to dust the cupboard. You may go.
Teresa exits.
- Is that so? - I answer.
- Guess what - my brother says to me, smiling. I'm too tired to play hide-and-seek with him, struggling to mask my irritation.
- What am I supposed to guess?
It is my father who gives me the big announcement:
- Michele and Antonia are getting married in 15 days.
Michael spreads his arms wide.
- I don't know what to say, little brother. She called me last night: she was crying like a baby, she begged me to come back right away and arrange the wedding as quickly as possible; she wants to get married on her birthday, she says she's afraid, I didn't understand what about. She had never been so superstitious.
My mother does not seem at all convinced by that sudden decision.
- Are you sure about what you are doing, Michele?
- Yes mother, I am sure. It is a delicate time for Antonia, but it will pass.
My father also appears puzzled:
- Your mother is right, Michele. Think about it, take some time: Antonia is not well lately.
- Dad, I'm worried too, but it's the shock of the operation: he will recover. 
- Doctors said she may not be able to have children again.
- I know, but it is a risk I have to take. If I had wanted children at all costs, I probably would have left her for a younger woman: but I chose her and I am not changing my mind. Besides, the wedding was already planned, you know that very well: it's just a matter of anticipating it by a few months.
- This is a rash decision, Michele: think about it.
- Please - my mother insists.
My brother, irritated, cuts to the chase:
- Dad, Mom, the fact that you consider me a model son does not mean that I am your property: this is my life and I do not accept interference. That's all, have a good evening.
Despite the pain that ravages me, I am compelled to admire my brother's consistency.
Michele gets up to leave and abandon that unpleasant conversation; on his way out he sees my expression, approaches me and grabs my shoulders in a friendly gesture.
- Hey little brother, cheer up: it's not like I'm going to the gallows.
- Congratulations! - I exclaim, and back away with a fool's smile.
I go to bump into Teresa, I look at her, she has tears in her eyes.
Lost, I check the script: someone has changed the ending. My character is gone: I have been erased with a stroke of a pen. 
I cannot in any way take the blow. I don't even attempt to control my gait, I don't give a damn what they will think of me: I run out with my legs, I flee the room, the house, the garden, the road, the fields, the world. I have an immediate need to hurt myself. I take refuge in the barn, strip off my clothes and throw myself with open arms into the straw, scratching myself bloody all over my body. I lose track of time. I wait for a long, long time. But he doesn't come, I don't hear his footsteps on the step ladder.
It is already night when I re-emerge from that state of unconsciousness. I have had my fill of endorphins these three days: the pain I feel coming back into me is so strong that it almost breaks my heart.