Chapter 133: S7E3: Midnight Walls Don’t Lie
Alma is always sunlight and flame — laughter, touch, warmth that feels like home. But tonight the studio is quiet. Just her… and Ragnak.
The scent of floor wax and her rosewater perfume hung in the air, a fragile veil over the silence. Alma moved without music, her bare feet whispering across the polished wood, each extension of her leg, each arch of her back, a language older than words. She wasn’t performing for the cold man leaning against the barre. She was reminding herself who she was.
Sweat dampened the hair at her temples, her chest rising and falling with deep, practiced breaths. She finished a turn, coming to rest, her fiery spirit palpable in the quiet room. The mirrors reflected a thousand Almas, warm and alive, and one single, still Ragnak.
Then the music in her head stopped.
“Your next test,” Ragnak’s voice dissected the stillness. “I want you to invite one of your dance students. Here, now. Pretend to give him a dance lesson.”
Alma blinked, her body coiling. “Pretend?”
“Yes. I want you to arouse him, then have sex with him.”
The words were clinical instruments, scraping the beauty from the space. Alma’s fiery warmth turned to a defensive blaze. “No. Absolutely not. That’s sick. My students trust me.” She crossed her arms, a barrier over her leotard. “I won’t do that to someone. I’m not Felipe. I’m not Delfina.”
Ragnak merely watched her, his silence more oppressive than argument. He didn’t remind her of the consequences of refusal. He didn’t need to. The memory of Martina’s shattered dignity in the café, of Felipe’s hollow eyes by the highway, filled the space between them. This was the machine they were trapped inside. Alma’s defiance wavered, her gaze dropping to the floorboards she loved. Her studio, her sanctuary, was being turned into a brothel.
“Pick one,” Ragnak said, the final incision.
Her shoulders slumped. The fight drained from her, replaced by a cold, heavy dread. With trembling fingers, she picked up her phone from a speaker. She scrolled, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. She chose Tomás, twenty, shy, endlessly respectful. He had a crush on her; she’d always gently deflected it. Now, she would weaponize it.
“Tomás? Hola. Yes, I’m at the studio. Could you come by? I, uh, want to work on that dip sequence from last week. The one you struggled with.” Her voice was bright, brittle glass. “Perfect. See you soon.”
She hung up. The phone slipped from her hand, clattering on the floor. She didn’t retrieve it. Ragnak retreated to a shadowed corner between two mirrors, becoming a spectre in the reflection, a part of the architecture of her corruption.
Tomás arrived fifteen minutes later, his hair still damp from a shower, smelling of clean soap and youthful eagerness. “You didn’t have to stay late for me, Alma,” he said, grinning, his backpack slung over one shoulder.
“It’s no trouble,” she said, her smile feeling like a painted mask. “Let’s… warm up.”
The next twenty minutes were a grotesque pantomime. She guided him through stretches, her hands on his shoulders, his back. She moved close behind him to correct his posture, her body brushing his. She felt him tense, then slowly relax into her touch. The innocent contact became charged, a current she was deliberately amplifying. She saw the confusion and hope in his eyes in the mirror.
“Let’s practice connection,” she heard herself say, her voice alien. “Close hold.”
They faced each other. She directed his right hand to the middle of her back, her left hand to his shoulder. Their bodies pressed together in the standard frame. She could feel the rapid beat of his heart, then, lower, the gradual, inevitable swell against his track pants. He blushed furiously, trying to pull his hips back.
“It’s… natural,” Alma whispered, her breath against his neck. “Don’t fight it. Just feel the rhythm.”
She began to sway, not to any tango, but to a slow, grinding roll of her hips. She pressed her pelvis against his growing erection, rotating in a slow, obscene circle. Tomás gasped, his fingers digging into her back. “Alma… what are we…”
“Shhh,” she murmured, one hand sliding down from his shoulder, over his chest, his stomach. She didn’t stop. Her fingers traced the hard length of him through the fabric. He was fully hard now, thick and straining. “Just feel.”
She unfastened the drawstring of his pants with a quick tug. She pushed her hand inside, past his waistband, her cool fingers wrapping around his hot, bare cock. He jerked against her, a choked sound escaping his lips. “Fuck,” he breathed, his eyes squeezed shut.
“Do you want me?” she asked, the question a vile parody of seduction.
“Yeah… God, yes,” he panted, beyond thought.
She guided his free hand, the one not clutching her back, under the leg of her leotard. His fingers fumbled against the damp fabric of her underwear before she pushed them inside, making him cup her. “Touch me,” she commanded, her own voice thick with self-loathing.
He rubbed her clumsily through the cotton, then, emboldened, pushed it aside. His fingers found her slit, sliding through her wetness—a moisture born of terror and adrenaline, not desire. She gasped, the sound authentic in its shame.
“On the floor,” she said, breaking the hold. She pushed him gently backward. He stumbled and sat hard on the polished wood. She stood over him, then lowered herself, straddling his lap. She yanked his pants and underwear down further, freeing his cock, which stood straight up, glistening at the tip where she’d touched him.
She positioned herself above him, holding his gaze. In the mirrors, she saw the multitude of them: a young man in worshipful ecstasy, a woman with dead eyes, and in the corner of every reflection, a watching shadow. She sank down onto him, taking his entire length inside her in one slow, devastating drop.
“Oh my god,” Tomás moaned, his head falling back, his hands grabbing her hips.
She began to move, riding him with the practiced rhythm of a dancer, but the choreography was base and mechanical. She fucked him with deep, grinding bounces, her leotard stretched tight across her breasts. The sounds were raw: the slap of their bodies meeting, his ragged pleas, the sticky, wet noise of each penetration.
“You like this?” she asked, her voice a harsh whisper. “You like fucking your teacher?”
“Yes! Yes, Alma, you feel so good,” he babbled, his hips bucking up to meet her downward strokes.
She increased her pace, using him, her body a tool to achieve the required end. Pleasure was irrelevant; only completion mattered. She felt him swelling inside her, his grip on her hips becoming frantic. “I’m gonna come,” he warned, his voice tight.
“Do it,” she snarled.
With a cry that echoed in the high-ceilinged room, he erupted. She felt the hot, pumping release fill her, his body shuddering violently beneath her. She kept moving, milking him until he was spent and soft, then she lifted herself off, his semen immediately trickling down her inner thigh.
She stood up, turning her back to him, facing the mirror where Ragnak’s reflection stood. Tomás lay panting on the floor, a dazed smile on his face. “That was… incredible,” he whispered.
“Get out, Tomás,” Alma said, her tone flat and final.
The coldness in her voice cut through his haze. He scrambled up, pulling his soiled clothes together, confusion and hurt flashing across his face. He left without another word, the studio door clicking shut behind him.
The silence returned, now polluted. Alma didn’t move. She stared at Ragnak’s reflection in the glass, her own face streaked with silent tears she hadn’t felt fall.
“Trial: Corrupted Nurture,” Ragnak stated, emerging from the shadows. He observed the sheen on her skin, the trembling in her thighs, the absolute fracture in her luminous eyes. “Status: Verified.”
He walked toward the door. As he passed her, Alma spoke, her voice shattered. “You’re not a person. You’re just a thing he uses to break other things.”
Ragnak paused, his hand on the doorknob. For a fleeting instant, something flickered in the surgical depths of his gaze—a memory of a sister’s laugh, a scalpel’s perfect weight, a heart that once beat. Then it was gone, extinguished.
“We all are,” he said, and left her alone with the thousand broken women in the mirrors.
=====
Ciro leans against the wall like it’s the only thing holding him upright. Paint-stained fingers. Wild heartbeat pretending to be a laugh.
Ragnak studies the mural.
Ragnak studies the mural.
The concrete wall is a riot of green tendrils and screaming red faces, beauty and panic intertwined under flickering neon. Ciro’s laughter, usually a weapon against the quiet, dies in his throat as he tracks Ragnak’s gaze. It feels like being X-rayed.
“You see that woman, over there?” Ragnak asks, his voice a scalpel slicing through the humid night.
Ciro’s eyes cut across the deserted street. A young woman, maybe twenty, paces under a broken streetlamp, shaking her phone as if the motion could conjure a signal. Her nervous energy is a live wire in the stillness. “Yeah, I see her.”
“Her phone is dead,” Ragnak continues, stating facts like a diagnosis. “I want you to help her with the orientation. She’s lost. In the middle of the night.”
A reckless grin flashes across Ciro’s face. This, he understood. Chaos as a service. “Alright. A midnight guide. Easy.” He pushed off the wall, the paint on his knuckles cracking.
“Only if she lets you fuck her.”
Ciro’s forward motion halted. The grin froze, then melted into a slack-jawed stare. “You’re joking.” He searched Ragnak’s face and found only topography, no humor. He thought of the stories, the hollow look in Felipe’s eyes at their last meeting, the way Delfina now seemed to be made of smoke. This was the mechanism. His reckless heart hammered against his ribs, not with excitement, but with a kind of terrified recognition. The dice were loaded. He swallowed, the sound loud in his ears. “Fuck. Okay. I accept.”
He walked toward her, his usual swagger forced, a costume. The night smelled of wet asphalt and distant grills. “Hey! You look spun around,” he called, his voice straining for casual.
She jumped, clutching her dead phone to her chest. “Oh! Yes. My maps died. I’m trying to get to Avenida Santa Fe, but I think I’m going in circles.” Her relief at seeing another person was painfully bright in her wide eyes. “Do you know this area?”
“Like the back of my hand,” Ciro said, thumbing toward his mural. “It’s three blocks that way, then left. You’re close.”
“Thank you so much,” she breathed, her shoulders dropping. “You have no idea how relieved I am.”
This was the moment. The transaction point. Ciro felt a surge of revulsion, so potent it tasted metallic. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “There’s, uh, a condition though.”
Her smile faltered. “Condition?”
“The help. It’s not free.” He forced the words out, each one a betrayal of every instinct that valued freedom, impulse, beauty. “You let me fuck you. Right here. Against that wall.” He nodded toward his own mural, the vibrant depiction of fear.
Her face underwent a devastating transformation: confusion, dawning comprehension, horror. She took a step back, glancing down the dark, silent canyon of the street. Her options were a void, a monster, or a different monster. Her voice shrank to a whisper. “You’re serious.”
“Dead serious.”
A long, agonizing silence stretched. She looked at the mural, at the wild, suffering colors, then back at Ciro’s painted, implacable stance. Loneliness and danger did a quick, brutal calculus. A single tear escaped. She gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. “Quick. Please.”
Ciro’s stomach turned to stone. He took her arm, not gently, and guided her the few steps to the wall. The rough concrete scraped against his knuckles. He turned her to face the mural, her cheek nearly touching a painted scream. “Put your hands on the wall,” he instructed, his voice thick.
She obeyed, shaking. He yanked her thin skirt up around her waist. He didn’t bother with her underwear, just hooked his fingers in the side and ripped the cotton aside. He fumbled with his belt and jeans, freeing his cock, which was half-hard from a sick, adrenalized tension. He spat into his palm, slicked himself roughly.
He pressed against her from behind. He was met with tight, dry resistance. “Relax,” he muttered, the word a grotesque parody.
“I can’t,” she whimpered, her body rigid.
“Try.” He shoved forward, forcing the head of his cock past her clenched entrance. She cried out, a sharp sound swallowed by the city’s distant hum. He pushed deeper, a brutal, inch-by-inch invasion into the unyielding heat of her. She was so tight it was almost painful for him. He bottomed out, his hips flush against her ass.
“Fuck,” he grunted, the obscenity hanging in the air. He began to move, short, rough strokes that ground her pelvis against the jagged concrete. The only sounds were their ragged breathing, the wet slap of flesh, the scrape of her zipper against the wall. He fucked her with a driven, frantic rhythm, trying to lose himself in the raw physicality, to transmute shame into sensation.
He gripped her hip with one paint-stained hand, the other braced against the wall beside her head, his fingers splayed over a streak of desperate green. Her body began to give, a treacherous slickness forming from friction alone. It allowed him to piston into her faster, harder. The wet, slapping sounds grew louder.
“You like that, you desperate little bitch?” he snarled, the filth falling from his lips, a script he felt compelled to follow. He was punishing her, punishing himself, punishing the art behind her.
She didn’t answer, just choked back a sob. He reached around, his hand sliding over her stomach and down, his fingers finding her clit. He rubbed it in rough, circular motions, a cruel simulation of pleasure. Her body shuddered, a confused spasm.
It pushed him over the edge. His rhythm shattered into frantic, deep thrusts. “Gonna fill you up,” he panted, his vision swimming with neon and panic. With a final, grinding lunge, he came, erupting inside her with a guttural groan that echoed off the flat wall. He pulsed into her, emptying himself, his forehead dropping against the concrete between the painted faces.
He stayed there for a moment, spent. Then he pulled out, a wet, ugly sound accompanying his retreat. He tucked himself away, zipped his jeans. He couldn’t look at her. “Santa Fe. Three blocks. Left.”
She didn’t move, her skirt still bunched, her body trembling against the wall. He turned and walked back to where Ragnak stood, a darker shade of night. The vibrant mural now felt like a crime scene he’d signed.
“Trial: Desecrated Art,” Ragnak stated. His eyes cataloged Ciro’s trembling hands, the sweat on his neck, the utter emptiness where his reckless joy had lived just minutes before. Another instrument, bent.
“Fuck you,” Ciro whispered, the words lacking all force.
Ragnak offered no reply. He simply turned and began walking down the empty street, his footsteps silent. Ciro watched him go, then looked at his own hands. The paint there didn’t feel like possibility anymore. It felt like evidence. The city’ hum around him seemed to have changed its tone, becoming the low, approving whisper of a machine that had just swallowed another piece of a soul.
=====
Lorenzo works quietly behind the counter when Ragnak arrives. No drama. No spectacle. Just calm presence — like a song you don’t realize you needed until it stops.
The soft hiss of the espresso machine was a gentle metronome, and the low hum of the afternoon regulars blended with the scent of ground beans and warm milk. Lorenzo moved behind the counter with an economy of motion that spoke of deep familiarity, polishing a porcelain cup until it gleamed under the warm yellow lights. His was a quiet anchor in the city’s chaos, a man who believed in the sacred second chance offered by a perfect crema and a listening ear.
Ragnak entered without a chime from the bell, the door swinging shut behind him as if the air itself parted to avoid contact. He stood just inside, a stark silhouette of black wool against the café's honeyed wood and exposed brick. His gaze swept the room—an older couple sharing medialunas, a student with headphones, a woman typing furiously on a laptop—before settling on Lorenzo. It was a targeting system acquiring a lock.
Lorenzo felt the warmth leach from the space around him. He looked up, a welcoming smile already forming, but it died on his lips as he met Ragnak’s eyes. They were the colour of a winter sea under a steel sky, offering no reflection, only a deep, consuming chill. He knew, with a certainty that dropped through his stomach like a stone, who this was. The stories from Felipe, garbled and terrified over a late-night call, crystallized in this single, silent figure.
Ragnak approached the counter. He didn’t speak until he was close enough for Lorenzo to see the impossible precision of his haircut, the sharp line of his jaw. “I want you to lock the client’s bathroom. Now.”
Lorenzo blinked. The request was so mundane, so bizarrely specific. “It’s… it’s open for customers,” he said, his voice softer than usual.
“Lock it.”
There was no threat, no raised voice. The command was absolute in its flatness. Lorenzo’s calm, which normally soothed others, felt flimsy. He reached under the counter, his fingers fumbling for the small brass key on its hook. He walked to the narrow hall, inserted the key, and turned the bolt. The click was deafening in his own ears. He returned to the counter, the key cold in his palm.
“Your next test,” Ragnak said, his voice low enough that only Lorenzo could hear. The café’s gentle soundtrack of chatter and clinking cups became a cruel mockery. “If a woman comes to you, asking about the bathroom, you’ll tell her she’s gotta let you fuck her, for you to unlock the door.”
Lorenzo gasped. The sound was sharp, involuntary. He took an unsteady step back, his hip bumping the espresso machine. “No. You can’t… that’s monstrous. I won’t.” His mind raced, thinking of the battered women’s shelter where he volunteered, the endless cups of coffee he served with a kind word, his belief that every person was a story deserving of grace.
Ragnak said nothing. He simply waited, his presence a pressure that collapsed the possibility of refusal. Lorenzo saw the futility. He remembered Felipe’s hollowed-out voice describing the highway, the way Alma had cancelled her classes. This was a machine, and he was now a cog. His shoulders slumped, the fight dissolving into a cold, sick dread. He gave a single, jerking nod.
“Good,” Ragnak said. He moved to a small, two-top table in the corner and sat, turning his chair slightly to observe both the counter and the door. He became a statue, a part of the décor.
The next twenty minutes were an exquisite torture. Every time the door opened, Lorenzo’s heart hammered. The student left. The older couple paid their bill. The typing woman ordered another cortado. Then the door opened again, and a woman in her late twenties, dressed in navy linen slacks and a blouse, hurried in. She had the slightly frantic look of someone who has been searching.
She approached the counter, offering a tight, apologetic smile. “Hi. Disculpá. The bathroom… is it for customers? I really, really need to go.”
Lorenzo’s mouth went dry. The key bit into the flesh of his clenched hand. He could feel Ragnak’s gaze like a physical touch between his shoulder blades. “It’s… locked,” he managed to say.
“Oh, is there a key? Could I possibly borrow it?” Her words were rushed, her body subtly swaying with urgency.
This was the moment. The transaction point. Lorenzo leaned forward, lowering his voice. The kind, listening barista was now a predator using his gentleness as bait. “I have the key. I can unlock it for you.” He paused, the words like shards of glass in his throat. “But there’s a price.”
Her polite smile faded into confusion. “A price? I’ll buy something, of course. A water, anything.”
“Not that.” Lorenzo locked eyes with her, forcing himself to hold her gaze. “You have to let me fuck you. After. Then I unlock the door.”
Her face went blank, then flushed with shock and dawning horror. She glanced toward the door, then at the only other occupant—Ragnak, who was studying the sugar dispenser with detached interest. She was trapped. Her physical need was a screaming, immediate reality. A small, pained sound escaped her. “Please,” she whispered.
“That’s the deal,” Lorenzo said, his own voice trembling.
She closed her eyes. A single tear tracked down her cheek. She nodded, a barely perceptible movement. “Alright. Just… hurry.”
Lorenzo took the key. He walked on numb legs to the bathroom, unlocked it, and pushed the door open for her. She slipped inside without looking at him, and he heard the lock engage. He stood in the dim hall, listening to the sound of his own blood pounding in his ears. He thought about walking out the front door and never stopping. But Ragnak was in the café, and the machine would find him.
The toilet flushed. The sink ran. The door unlocked and she emerged, her face pale and set. She walked past him, back into the main café, and stood uncertainly by the counter.
“In the back,” Lorenzo said, his words barely audible. He gestured to the small storage room behind the counter, a cramped space of supply shelves and the green glow of the break-room fridge. She walked behind the counter, her movements robotic, and stepped into the gloom.
Lorenzo followed, pulling the curtain across the doorway. The room smelled of coffee grounds and cleaning fluid. He looked at her. She was already unbuttoning her slacks, her fingers clumsy. “Just get it over with,” she said, the words flat and dead.
He unfastened his own jeans, pushing them down his thighs. His cock was soft, unresponsive, a limp symbol of his revulsion. He had to use his hand, pulling at himself roughly until he achieved a half-hard, functional state. He turned her around, bending her over a cardboard box marked ‘napkins.’ He pulled her slacks and underwear down to her knees, exposing her. He spat into his palm, the act filthy, and slicked himself.
He pushed into her from behind. She was tight, dry, and she hissed in pain. He had to shove, hard, to breach her, burying himself in the reluctant, clenching heat. He started to move, a slow, brutal rhythm. The room was filled with the sound of their breathing, the rustle of cardboard, the wet, sticking noise of his thrusts.
“That’s it,” he whispered, the dirty talk feeling like a corrosive acid on his tongue, a required part of the defilement. “Take it. You needed to piss so bad, now you get this instead. You fucking needed this, didn’t you?”
She was silent, her face pressed against the box.
He gripped her hip, pounding into her harder, trying to finish, to end it. “You’re just a tight little hole for me to use. A dumb cunt who traded a piss for a fuck.” Each vulgarity felt like a lash against his own soul. “Say thank you.”
“Thank you,” she mumbled into the cardboard, a sob cracking the word in two.
That broke him. His climax surged up, unwanted but unstoppable. With a choked groan, he came inside her, his body shuddering as he emptied himself. He stayed there, slumped over her, for five full seconds before pulling out. He turned away, tucking himself back into his clothes, unable to look at her as she straightened her own.
She left the storeroom without a word. He heard her footsteps cross the café floor, and the faint chime of the bell as the door opened and shut. The café was silent.
Lorenzo pulled the curtain aside. Ragnak was standing at the counter, placing a few peso notes beside the empty register. He looked at Lorenzo, his eyes cataloging the sheen of sweat, the tremble in the hands, the profound ruin in a man built for comfort.
“Trial: Perverted Sanctuary,” Ragnak stated. He absorbed the success, the absolute breaking of a gentle thing. “Status: Verified.”
He turned and left. The bell chimed once, cheerfully.
Lorenzo looked at the money on the counter. It was the exact price of a café con leche. He swept the coins and notes into the trash with a sudden, violent swipe. Then he leaned over the sink and vomited, his body convulsing, trying to expel the corruption now rooted deep within him. The calm was gone. The song had stopped, and in its place was only a ringing, endless silence.