Although he was well aware of the kind of beings that inhabited the darkness, he preferred to walk through the city under the cover of night. Where he could move freely, without the inquisitive gaze of the common people. Although most of the city slept, there were marginalized sectors that continued to be active, roaming the streets in search of satisfying their vilest and darkest needs.

The stranger; despite this, found dealing with the presence of these beasts of the night much more tolerable. As long as their business did not intrude upon his own, of course.

He continued to walk indifferently, disgusted with everything around him. Every corner he looked at seemed corrupt, dirty, lifeless, gray.

He tried to give some relief to his head and for that he concentrated on making his mind blank, he did not want to think about anything else. However, despite his intentions, he did not succeed. In a few minutes the thoughts swirled in his mind again like a force impossible to evade. He then noticed that his clothes were soaked by the rain, as was the violin case he carried with him:

Should he go somewhere where could drink something strong and dry his clothes by the warm fire of some hearth? Or should he go back to his dark and lonely store? he thought. These questions went around and round in his head without an answer.

He remembered then all that had happened. Those terrible hours that had passed since nightfall. That unfathomable evil he had been able to survive. The enormous cost of his mistakes, the consequences of which he would have to bear for the rest of his life. He finally concluded that he did not want to go back yet, even though it was only after midnight and he preferred to continue wandering aimlessly through the streets.

He crossed under a bridge where two vagrants were abusing an old prostitute in a drunken state. One of them, noticing his presence, stopped what he was doing and demanded some money. The young man continued walking without giving any answer, ignoring them completely. And before his indifference, the subjects got angry and insulted him repeatedly, looking for a confrontation. But he continued without turning around. With his mind absent, little by little he moved away from the place where they were. In the end, those men desisted, somewhat disconcerted by his indifference, and returned to their own business. Thus he walked with no apparent direction. Like a specter condemned to wander aimlessly through the city.

He felt an inner emptiness that suffocated him and dragged him to the depths of a nightmare:

What if man's natural tendency is to exert his will always toward evil, and any attempt to reverse it is meaningless? he thought.

“It all seems like a lost cause!” he whispered. His thoughts tormented him and forced him to watch all his beliefs unravel.

Suddenly, someone stepped in his way and pulled him out of his reverie.

“Do you need company, handsome?” said a woman; who appeared unexpectedly from one of the side alleys, in a soft tone.

As he observed her carefully, he noticed that she was an attractive young woman with a slender body, dressed in modest but delicate clothes, with fair skin and reddish hair, damp from the rain, falling towards her shoulders and covering part of her breasts. Although she tried to hide it with a smile, a certain tiredness was reflected in her eyes, as if she had not been sleeping properly for some time.

What was that young woman doing in this part of town? he thought. And the question came to him suddenly. These backstreets of the suburbs were characterized by being little traveled or almost desolate" "To tell the truth, it would be one of the last places in the whole city that a prostitute would choose to carry on her profession. After observing her carefully, he realized that something about that young woman aroused a certain distrust in him, although he could not say with certainty what it was. In any case, his intuition warned him that something was not right:

“What's your name?” he asked sharply.

“For you, tonight I'm Candy” She answered, opening and closing her eyes sensually. “And you, handsome, what's your name?” she asked him, returning a beautiful smile as she approached him with a feline look.

The stranger remained silent, just staring at her.

She wore a long light-colored dress, with a tight corset that slimmed her waist and gave shape to a cleavage impossible to ignore. The prostitute stood in a provocative pose in front of the young man and approached him, brushing his crotch with one hand. Then she reached around his shoulders and very subtly touched his lips with her own.

“Now that I see you up close, I wouldn't mind warming your bed tonight for half the price,” she whispered those words in his ear.

The stranger shuddered as he felt her warm breasts against his body. And his senses went crazy, impregnated with the lilac scent of her moist skin. Undoubtedly, a part of him wanted her intensely. He longed to grab her tightly by the waist and possess her right there in one of those filthy alleys.

Candy watched him out of the corner of her eye, unable to hide her curiosity.

“What bad luck for me, it seems that the gentleman who came to rescue me tonight, had his tongue eaten by mice!” commented the young woman and her lips formed a sarcastic smile, while she continued clinging to him by the neck without taking her eyes off him.

“What do you say?” “Do you agree to spend the night with me? Or don't you find me attractive enough?” “It's frustrating to talk to someone without looking straight into their eyes!” she added with a certain whimsical air. And in a delicate way, with her two hands she took his glasses by the silver frames that surrounded the lenses-, “they are strange but I like the way they look on you.” The young woman smiled, while she slid the glasses carefully until she removed them completely.

The stranger continued in silence. He knew he should stop the young woman from removing his glasses, but still he didn't stop her. Delighted by her beauty, he wished that the warmth of her company would allow him to forget even for a few moments how miserable he felt.

Candy looked straight into the young man's eyes and gasped, inadvertently dropping the glasses to the floor. As she stepped back, all the terror she felt at that precise moment was reflected on her face. The stranger's irises; in the dim light of the streetlights, glowed with an intense violet hue, and this gave his presence a menacing aspect. As if they were the glowing eyes of a nocturnal predator stalking its prey from the darkness.

The young woman, frightened and paralyzed by fear, reacted impulsively and tried to get away from there in a fit of desperation.

“Wait a moment, I don't want to hurt you!” he shouted, while trying to hold her with his arms and searching in his head for the right words to calm her down. But the young woman managed to free herself anyway and ran away from there, running down the same street where she had appeared.

He remained motionless, watching her walk away until the figure of the young woman disappeared in the fog. Hundreds of thoughts churned in his mind, making him reflect for a few moments on how things had happened in that brief encounter with that mysterious young woman. And in the end, he blamed himself for allowing it to go so far. He remembered the same story repeated over and over again, but with the faces of different women from his past. With a sense of bitterness tightening in his chest, he bent down to pick up his glasses that were on the floor and put them on. Then he pulled up the collar of his coat to protect himself from the rain, and at that precise moment he realized that something important was missing...

His suspicions were right. The encounter with that woman had nothing to do with fate, far from it. Nothing in his life had ever happened that way, and neither this time his approach with her was an exception to the rule.

He thought of the beautiful young woman. In the sweet perfum of her skin. On her soft lips. But after a few minutes had passed his thoughts seemed to clear. He understood then that he had to get to the bottom of the matter if he really wanted to find out who was behind this.

Now, everything that had happened was very hilarious to him...

Unable to contain himself he gave a deep laugh that echoed through the silent streets, and then continued walking down the same alley where she had disappeared...

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