The Red Woman I wondered why the cafe was getting colder. I lookedoutside the window and saw my answer. The shadows were closing in again. I had been insidethe cafe all day, the inside being warm and cozy, compared to the icy frost outdoors. Butthen the shadows started coming closer. They had left, after a while, but then the Red Woman camein. I didn’t know her name. I named her the Red Woman because she wore red. She looked sobeautiful, so pure, that no name seemed to fit her, even if I imagined her as someone else.She was sitting across from me with her husband, sipping coffee, unbothered by the shadows.And the shadows loved her. They avoided the toy shop and the clothes shop and the apartmentbuildings and the bakery. Last time they had haunted all those places. Not this time. Theywere running for the Red Woman, and even if shadows had no expression, I could still see theirsmiles of joy and absolute wonder and glee. If the shadows could make sound they would have beenlaughing. And then they burst through the giant glass window of the cafe. They were surroundingthe Red Woman, and the Red Woman was looking affected by the shadows for thefirst time. Her eyes were wide and she was backing away slowly, slower and slower, panting likeshe couldn’t catch her breath. And suddenly, it was like the shadows were human. Theysuddenly had long, black fingers that they were pulling from their milky and dark insides. Andthey were grabbing the Red Woman. They were squeezing all the power out of her, all her beauty.And then they left. The Red Woman was sobbing, asking her husband to help her, but her husbandran away from the soiled lump of a woman on the ground. She looked at me like I was herlast resort, and I realized I was. We were alone in the cafe. As the Red Woman looked at me,her features had already started to gray, her lips and nose already starting to twist and vanish.I realized that if I didn’t do something she would be left to lead a life of brainless nothingness.A life of shadows and cold and ugliness. And then I said the first thing that came to my mind. “Honey,” I said, because that was what her face changingreminded me of, slowly dripping honey. Then I laughed, because I realized how silly thatword sounded, coming out of my mouth in this situation. But the Red Woman was smiling. She slowlymelted away, her smile being the last thing, but I realized that she might, just might havebeen melting away to a world of warmth and kindness and… honey.