Chapter 81

At first, Ruth Lukewarm forgot that she had made a promise to her sister, Sophia to come back home. Then, a few minutes later, she felt as if she was someone else.

In an apartment in West Virginia, a tired-faced woman opened the door and led her into a strong stench of urine. The living room was dark, unaired, and she imagined the whole building steeped in months, even years, of accumulated urine, and herself working every day in this urine cloud.

From inside the apartment, a man was groaning, deep and eerie sounds; they were the groans of a person for whom groaning was the only choice left, and they frightened her. It was as if the noise she heard made her feel like a woman whose end was close.

“That is my dad’s friend. He used to be a great man but not anymore. Now, he smells like a bag of shit who is ready to be disposed,” the woman said, looking at her with keen assessing eyes. “Are you sure that you can be able to do this?”

The advertisement in the Inter