These mansions had large rooms, very large, and those small rooms were mostly closets or depositories. She had a similar one in her house, but that one was turned into a bedroom, a small bedroom for the maid.

Every family in this city had a maid, maybe two, including the middle class. Society was divided by racial lines, not social or economic. Even poor people of white extraction had maids, they had to. It was a status symbol but also a necessity.

Houses got dirty very fast in the altitude and dry air and it took a long time to cook. The lack of oxygen made cooking a difficult task. It took longer for water to reach a boiling point.

She went out to the balcony overlooking the interior courtyard. She was on the open part of the balcony. The other three sides were not open, they were covered by large windows. Most ofthose windows were broken. The old wood floors were carpeted with broken glass and dirt.

The roof was made of tin, a sign that this was not a colonial house, that it was built sometime in the 19th century. There were some old, historic colonial houses, 300, 400 years old, that were preserved, some of them at least.

It was not very different from the place where she was living, except that her house was in better shape and there was life in it. This house was more like a corpse. It lay in ruins, falling apart, eaten by the ravages of time, the wind, the rain.

It was sad. At the same time its abandoned state is what attracted her to the house. She identified with the house. That was strange because she was not an old abandoned woman. In fact, she was the opposite. But the house seemed to mirror how she felt inside.

She was looking for something better, even if she wasn't very sure what exactly it was that she looking for. She figured she would know when she found it.

The feeling was there, though. A strong feeling, as if the house was a lover. She didn't feel like that very often, at least not towards the men she met. Perhaps one or two were attractive enough, but not in the physical sense. It was something else, something in them that she found irresistible.

Just like this house. Once she had obsessed over a guy, a musician. He was good-looking, yes, but there was something else, something in him that made her feel weak. Something in the way he played his guitar, as if he was in deep pain.

Again she passed by the room where she felt a presence, but she just walked by, deep into her thoughts, stepping on the broken glass, her steps and her breathing the only sound around, perhaps a bit of the wind as a general tone.

She did not hear the floor inside the room creaking, she didn't notice that there was someone there, hiding behind the shadows. A ghostly figure, dark and menacing.

Red Feline stopped and turned back, she felt she was being followed or watched. There was no one behind. She pushed that feeling aside and went on her way to the front of the house.

The figure approached the door out of the room to the balcony. The black pants shining under the light of the sun.