I’ve never been one to believe in superstitions.
Not in dreams, not in omens, and even less so in the words of those women who wander the streets, their clothes in tatters, their hair tangled, and their lost gazes seeming to inhabit a world other than ours.

But that day… it was different.

It was Saturday afternoon, and the market was alive: vendors were shouting their offers, the smell of ripe fruit mingled with that of freshly roasted corn, and I had just bought a couple of sweet potatoes for dinner. I was walking among the stalls when a high-pitched voice, almost a shriek, broke the din.

“He’s going to kill you!” she shouted.

I stopped. I didn’t understand at first. I thought she was talking to someone else, but her eyes… her eyes were fixed on me, as if she’d known me all my life.

She began to push her way through the crowd. Her legs were thin, her skin sunburned, her lips dry. She reached out and, without asking permission, touched my stomach with a bony hand.

“Your husband… he’s going to kill you with fire,” she whispered, this time in a low, deep voice, heavy with certainty. Then she looked at me intensely and added, “Three days before your birthday… run. Don’t ask anything. Just run.”

I couldn’t react. I froze. I wanted to laugh, insult her, or walk away… but something in her gaze rooted me to the spot. I looked around for any sign of mockery, as if this were a market joke, but no one said anything. Everyone watched in silence.

My heart was pounding. How did she know my birthday was in three weeks? No one knew. Not even the market women, with whom I spoke every Saturday.

I went home trembling. When I told my husband, he burst out laughing.

“So, some crazy woman told you I’m going to kill you… and you believed her? Wow, I really did marry a ranch woman,” he said jokingly.

But that night… something about the way he looked at me made me feel strangely cold. He stroked my hair like someone trying to imprint every strand on his memory. I couldn’t sleep. In my head, that woman’s voice repeated over and over: Run… run… three days before your birthday.

Two weeks passed, and I tried to convince myself that it had all been the product of a disturbed mind. However, the signs began to accumulate. My husband spoke softly on his phone, locked in the bathroom. He started watching documentaries about fires. One night, while he was sleeping, I checked his computer… he had searched for “gas leak accidents” and “house explosion deaths.”

I confronted him, but he called me paranoid. Even so, I stopped sleeping peacefully. I started hiding money, packing my documents, and thinking of escape routes.

And then that night came. The third before my birthday.

I woke up at two in the morning. He wasn’t in bed. I got up and smelled something strange. I went to the kitchen… the gas cylinder was open. A small box of matches lay next to the stove.

I ran to the window and saw him… standing in the dark, staring at me, with cold, empty eyes I didn’t recognize as his.

I didn’t think. I didn’t pack. I didn’t scream. I ran barefoot down the street, my heart pounding, until I reached the police station.

When the officers arrived at the house, he said I was crazy, suffering from postpartum paranoia. But when they checked his browsing history… everything was there: the plan, the timing, the motive, the life insurance policy in my name.

They arrested him that same night.

And the market woman… no one ever saw her again. She disappeared as if she had never existed.

But I know the truth.
She wasn’t crazy.
I wasn’t lost.
She was sent to save me.