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question that he had ever been asked, or it might have been like the simple patter of raindrops on the corrugated iron roof of a rude hut somewhere up high in the jungle mountains. Thoughts were, after all, like raindrops, boisterous distractions to be examined briefly, but never acted upon or held onto too tightly. He had once heard that rich Victorians gambled thousands of pounds on the first raindrop to reach the window frame outside their lavish gentleman’s clubs, while the crazed poor starved on the streets outside. “Where are you going?”  It seemed to Dylan that he was never travelling anywhere; like a good Buddhist, perpetually glued to the present moment, he had little sense of direction. At least not on a physical level, spiritually, he was afloat on a sea filled with man-eating sharks, his vessel little more than a plywood raft; one false move and he was fish food.
    His mind was a nest of snakes, both poisonous and constricting, twisting to escape the confines of the crowded reptile conference inside his cranium. Sleeping with Kelly had been a mistake, perhaps a grave one. If the killer were to play with him like Jack had all those years ago, she would be in danger. That aside, he was now one of them. One of the devils that came to the city to get what they couldn’t get back home. The men who came East to get what they couldn’t get West. Yes, he could fool himself that this time it was different. That she actually liked him, he spoke her language, and he understood her pain, her background, her hopes, fears, dreams. In his mind, he could believe these things. However, the truth was different. The truth was that he was an abuser of a woman who was fifteen years younger than his thirty-three. Fifteen years was a long time. It wasn’t fifty years, but it wasn’t a two-year gap either. She was little more than a girl who had lived the life of a woman twenty times already. He was an abuser, he had sinned, yet The Detective had no religion, so who had he sinned against? What had he done wrong? Where lay the punishment? And what was a night with a bargirl in comparison with what was happening on the streets? Inside the bars and on the pool tables? The image of Tammy’s mutilated body flashed back at him like a television broadcast. Then, the image of Monica in the capital, another corpse, a lifetime ago came. It was a dangerous occupation. It was a dangerous occupation back in Jack’s day too. The deterioration was gradual and psychological, like a prison sentence or a terminal illness. He knew that many of the girls enjoyed the city and the scene as much as the men did. They were all aboard the same rollercoaster.
    The men paid for the rides.
    The whores won, not at first, but later, once their souls had been burned, and they were willing to take any sucker to the grave, physically, emotionally, financially. Kelly was almost at this stage in her career as a bargirl, she was willing to wound, yet, somehow still afraid to strike. She had learned that moments of kindness were often followed by episodes of cruelty. She was scared of kindness, wary of affection, like an abused puppy that cowers in the corner, too afraid to bite, and too scared to be stroked, fed, or loved.   
    She stood up. Her body was what artists painted and writers wrote about, yet somehow , she wasn’t aware of how to carry herself. She awkwardly navigated the distance to the vanity stool and gathered her belongings, her eyes gazed at the tiled floor and one forearm covered her generous breasts. The whole episode felt like a scene from inside a Russian novel, punctuated with sadness and foreshadowed by an impending doom; a doom that neither of them had the power or the will to stop.
    “Where you going?”  
    “I have to move out of here. I’m sorry, Kelly. You have to leave. I have a job to do.” The Detective pulled on his shirt and jeans. He walked into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. Returned to the bed and sat