Source
The night was cold and dark when a strange being approached me in the deserted street. -
-Give me a pair of shoes, -he begged in a raspy voice.
As I looked at him, a shiver ran down my spine. He was a homeless man covered in dusty rags, with a rotting stench that turned my stomach.
-Where did you come from, -I asked him, feeling the fear rising up inside me.
The tramp brought his bony hands up to his face in a desperate gesture.
-Why should I tell you if you won't believe me? Come on, don't be mean, give me a pair of shoes.
Something in his pleading tone urged me to look away from his cadaverous countenance.
It was then that I noticed his feet peeking out from under his shredded trousers.
Festering, bone-open wounds leaked a thick, dark liquid, while maggots crawled through the putrid flesh.
The smell was so intense that I nearly vomited.
Paralysed with horror, I stumbled out of my shoes and offered them to him with trembling hands.
The tramp took them and exhaled a sigh so deep that I thought his soul would leave his body at that moment.
He slipped on his shoes and crawled to a corner, where he lay down and remained motionless.
At home, I tried to convince myself that it had all been a figment of my imagination, but the next day, when I passed the same spot, the tramp was still lying there, surrounded by a circle of onlookers.
As I approached, the world came crashing down on me: this was not a vagrant, but a corpse that had been stolen from the local cemetery.
The authorities had been looking for him for days without success... until they found him a few metres from where I had stumbled upon him, wearing my own shoes.
An icy chill froze my veins as I realised that this creature was part of the legions of hell that had managed to sneak into our world for one night.
And that perhaps, by giving him my shoes, I had signed my sentence to eternal damnation.
