The apartment door opened wide only after he had knocked for the second time. It was opened for him by a very fat man with a soft face, a few days' old unkempt beard, and a pair of vacant eyes, which together with his proudly upturned chin contributed in no small measure to his terribly stupid air.

When he had crossed his gaze with Alessandro his brow furrowed into a hostile expression, which, however, achieved nothing other than to make the whole even more comical.

"What do you want?" he exclaimed with strafing.

''Lorenzo sent me,'' Alessandro replied dryly.

The man seemed surprised.

''So you're...how the fuck did you get here so fast?!" he blurted out in a tone somewhere between incredulous and accusatory.

Alessandro remained impassive.

''May I come in, or would you rather continue discussing this on the landing?''

The man peered at him puzzled for a few moments, but finally seemed to have made up his mind.

''Wait here, I'll be back in a minute.''

Adding nothing more, he closed the door in his face.

While waiting, Alessandro took the opportunity to look around. It was located in a three-level building with a few decades on its shoulders, and provided as well with a small inner courtyard, so that to access each of the living quarters it was perforce necessary to walk along a narrow balcony protected by a steel railing.

The apartment in front of which he was currently standing, number twelve, was the last one at the bottom of the second floor from the elevator, exactly where Lorenzo had told him it was. In any case, perhaps because of the late hour, perhaps because the tenants of the building were not particularly curious, the hallway outside continued to remain deserted, exactly as it had appeared to him when he arrived.

The vigorous rumbling that rose from his stomach was almost immediately overpowered by the siren of a distant ambulance, although the same could unfortunately not be said also for the terrifying hunger that was tearing him apart.

Gritting his teeth in frustration, Alessandro tried to muster up courage at the thought that within a few minutes at most he would be able to gorge himself on whatever he wanted. The fact that in order to achieve that goal he was about to rob a drug den, almost certainly filled with people affiliated with the Mafia, seemed to him an entirely minor detail.

In order to put an end to that unbearable feeling of emptiness, he would have been willing to do more than that, even if it was to pick a fight with a group of gorillas.

The apartment door swung open again as the echo of the siren began to fade in the distance, and predictably, the same guy from just before opened it for him.

''I have to search you,'' he announced dryly, ''if you refuse you stay out.''

Alessandro shrugged his shoulders.

''Whatever,'' he conceded, spreading his arms wide.

The operation did not take more than a few seconds, and after the man had felt his pockets and the sides of his coat for the third time, he seemed to convince himself that no weapon would be found on him. At that point he took a step back, and after standing close to the wall just beyond the front door, he nodded to the man, inviting him to cross the threshold.

''All right, you can come in now.''

Alessandro did not let it be repeated twice and obeyed.

In spite of what had been imagined, the apartment turned out to be much larger than expected, and judging by the quality of the furniture decorating the large living room it also looked as if a lot of money had been invested in it.

Well, I think to myself Alessandro. If they could afford a sixty-inch plasma and as many as two consoles complete as well with a virtual reality viewer, surely they would have no problem accepting the idea of parting with a few hundred Euros.

Having established this, the only question still to be resolved remained that of how. And as for the latter, his ideas on the matter were still rather confused. The simplest solution would have been to scare them with some knockout transformation, and then force them to hand everything over, but by doing so, who would then stop them from running around telling people that they had been mugged by some sort of mutant?

Of course, one also had to take into consideration the fact, that they could never have ventured to report the unpleasantness to the police, and in any case practically no one would have believed them anyway. However, there was still a certain margin of risk. Perhaps it was convenient for them to simply knock them out and then look for the money quietly. Who knows where they were hiding it.

The sound of the front door closing behind him wrenched Alessandro out of those thoughts, and seconds later the fat guy who had opened it passed him as he walked past, then joined his companions who were sitting on the long L-shaped couch at the end of the room.

Including him there were three in all. The first was a black guy in his thirties with a pair of mirrored glasses and shaved hair, while the other was a gymnastic man with a goatee, buzz cut, and thick black eyebrows.

Jeans aside, they dressed very differently. Branded sweatshirt with the hood pulled back for the dark-skinned 30-year-old, and a navy blue tank top for the muscular guy, who unlike his partner also wore a silver chain hanging around his neck. Both seemed busy watching a soccer game on television, but when Alessandro crossed the threshold of the living room they immediately stopped staring at the screen, and focused all their attention on him.

Like the fat guy, they did not seem surprised by his stature, nor by the certainly unorthodox attire he wore. Whether this was due to incredible cold-bloodedness, or a cleverly orchestrated act, however, remained a mystery.

''So,'' exclaimed the guy in the tank top, ''so here you are, dear...''

''Matteo,'' Alessandro concluded, firing off the first name that came to mind.

''Matteo,'' the man repeated, nodding smugly.

Despite the affable tone in which he had addressed him, the host did not make the slightest nod to invite him to sit down somewhere. Alessandro was glad of this. He would not have accepted anyway.

Allowed a few seconds of silence to pass, during which the two merely scrutinized each other with the TV reporter's voice in the background, the gymnastic man brought his hand closer to his chest and continued with the introductions.

''I am Fabio,'' he announced jovially, before pointing with his thumb to the black boy sitting nearby. ''This is Daniel.'' He turned a nod in the direction of the fat guy. ''While the nice doughnut who was kind enough to come and open for you is called Italo.''

Curving his lips into a joyless grin Italo emitted a low grunt, within which Alessandro seemed to detect a ''but fuck you,'' which, however, Fabio did not give the impression of having noticed.

''If my sources don't lie, I heard you need money,'' he said in a practical tone.

''Yes,'' Alessandro confirmed dryly.

''And what do you need them for?" interjected Daniel, straightening the teal-lensed glasses he wore on his nose.

''To buy food,'' Alessandro answered sincerely.

The three burst into thunderous laughter. Alessandro did not participate.

''I hadn't heard that one yet,'' Fabio sneeringly confessed.

Alessandro's expression remained impassive, and he stopped laughing.

''How much money do you need?" he asked simply.

''How many do you have?

Italo's eyes widened in amazement, but Daniel merely chuckled.

''The behemoth is crazy,'' he commented amused.

Alessandro ignored him.

''If you are looking for work,'' Fabio continued.

''I'm not looking for work,'' Alessandro interrupted him abruptly. ''I'm looking for money.''

''Money is made by working,'' explained Fabio calmly.

''Rather than work for you, I will kill myself,'' Alessandro retorted scornfully.

The three men all suddenly became serious, and this time even Fabio stopped smiling.

''Well, I'd say we can help you with that,'' he sentenced frostily.

When he felt the metallic click behind him Alessandro certainly did not need to turn around to see what was happening. Then again, the shadow he only then saw reflected on the floor at his feet did not leave much room for imagination.

Judging from the fact that he had managed to walk so far without producing the slightest noise, the stranger behind him must surely have been shoeless, and although he could not verify this directly he seriously doubted that he was pointing a stapler at him.

Why hadn't he thought it might happen? It was so obvious. So predictable. To be lounging on the couch in the face of a possible threat without even bothering to set up some kind of emergency countermeasure? He should have known right away that there was more behind it, too. A plan B ready to be triggered as soon as the main one proved unsuccessful.

And now that he had laid his cards on the table, it was too late to retrace his steps. As fast as he was, he had no chance of turning around and disarming his attacker before the bullet reached the back of his head. Whether he wanted to or not, he would soon find out whether his resistance to falls from great heights also guaranteed him resistance to bullets. If not, he would never leave that apartment in one piece again.

''First you rob Lorenzo and then you also have the gall to come here and attempt the same on us?" growled Fabio, curling his lips into an expression of utter contempt.

Alessandro did not respond. Instinct and fear suggested he did not.

Confronted with his silence Fabio stared intensely into his eyes for a few seconds, as if trying to decipher his thoughts, but finally he shook his head in disappointment.

''You're just a fucking idiot,'' he commented in disgust.

Striving not to give in to the panic that threatened to take over, Alessandro slowly raised his hands in the air, and when he was confident enough to express himself without his voice trembling he broke the silence.

''Listen...''

The roar of the gunshot ringing in his ears forced him to cover his ears with his hands. Because of the sudden shock it took him a few moments to realize what had just happened. Perhaps the gun had been loaded with blanks or perhaps it was just a simple scattergun, the fact is that he had not been shot after all.

Now convinced that he was confronted with a blatant attempt to intimidate him Alessandro raised his eyes, which in the excitement of the moment he had turned toward the ground, and returned to make eye contact with those present. It was then that he realized that something was wrong.

Unlike what he had imagined in fact, Fabio and the others did not stare at him with a mocking smile plastered on their lips. On the contrary. The expressions they sported on their faces were of utter amazement.

No longer able to resist the curiosity he felt growing inside him, Alessandro turned his back on the trio sitting on the sofa and for the first time looked into the face of the man who had authored the shot.

Brown hair, brown eyes, an anonymous face. With the exception of a few esoteric symbols tattooed on his forehead or cheeks, the only detail about him that attracted attention was the Beretta equipped with silencer that he clutched in his hands. In any case, they had no way of prolonging eye contact much longer, because soon after Alessandro turned around, the gunman broke all hesitation and opened fire.

He had been wrong before. So much for a scattergun, that gun was real!

The first blow reached him in the right cheekbone, the second in the eye, while those that followed he wasted no time either counting them or trying to pinpoint their place of impact. Terror prevented him from doing so.

In utter panic Alessandro tried to shield himself with his hands as the bullets rushed at him, quick and merciless as invisible darts. He felt no pain, but with the fear he felt he doubted he would notice even if he was seriously wounded. The only thing he was certain of was that he wanted to make that rain of blows stop as soon as possible.

Under normal conditions, with a clear mind and not under attack, he would probably have thought that to protect himself he would only need to create a shield or change his form, however, in that state conceiving thoughts more complex than a mindless plea for help addressed to unknown entities represented an effort far beyond his actual capabilities.

In the end, the only strategy he was able to implement was that of frontal attack.

Closing his eyes as if for courage Alessandro sprinted forward, and allowing himself to be guided solely by touch he tightened one hand around what he believed to be the attacker's shoulder, and then dealt him a punch straight in the face with the free one.

Initially there was a strange pop, reMarcoably similar to the sound of a balloon bursting, and suddenly, without him even having time to identify the source of the noise, Alessandro found his face completely wet, as if he had just been hit by a water balloon.

The gunshots ceased almost at the same time that something metallic fell to the ground. With nerves on edge, and torn by an irresistible desire to find out what had happened, Alessandro immediately opened his eyes again, but once he lifted his eyelids he instantly regretted it.

Exactly as until a few seconds before, the attacker was still facing him, but unlike when he was shooting at him, he was now found to be missing a key element.

His head in fact was absent.

With his arm outstretched toward the gun that lay abandoned on the floor, his body hung helplessly like a creepy marionette, holding on only to his right leg, which was held artificially outstretched because of Alessandro's grip on his collarbone.

Bits of brains and bones mixed with gruesome splatters of blood soiled the floor behind him, although even some parts of the living room wall had failed to escape the inevitable soiling. It was Alessandro himself, however, who was worse off.

The entire upper part of his body was dripping blood profusely, as if he had just returned from a most unpleasant tour in the throat-cutting department of a slaughterhouse. Shuddering in the face of that chilling spectacle, Alessandro let go of his grip on the lifeless body of the man, who therefore sagged to the ground with the docility of a rag doll.

Unable to bear that sight any longer, she turned away, but as soon as Fabio and the others saw her blood-smeared face they immediately sprang to their feet, their muscles shaken by an unmistakable tremor.

''Oh, Christ,'' whispered Daniel, twisting his lips in a grimace of horror.

"Who the fuck is this guy?!" shrieked Italo in terror.

''But who cares!" ranted Fabio in shock. ''You kill him!!!''

Spurred on by those words Italo reached for the back of his pants, searching for the weapon he kept tucked in his belt.

"Stop!" shouted Alessandro, extending his arm.

As was to be expected, Italo did not listen to him, and drawing his gun from under his shirt, he prepared to point it at him.

This time, however, Alessandro did not allow himself to be caught unprepared. Having formulated the request in his mind he created a long black tentacle from his back, at which point he darted it forward.

His goal was simple. Tighten the appendage around the barrel of the weapon, and then snatch it out of the attacker's hand. He only had to stun them, not kill them!

Meanwhile, Italo had already turned the muzzle of the semiautomatic pistol toward him, preparing to fire.

Aware that he had to hurry, Alessandro issued the planned command, but because of his anguish and desire to hurry, he ended up making a gross mistake. Instead of tightening on the barrel of the weapon in fact, the serpentine tip wrapped itself like a whip around its owner's wrist, and before Alessandro could even realize the oversight he drew the tentacle back to himself.

A purple spray and a terrible cry rose from Italo as his arm came off sharply at shoulder level, smearing the sofa, coffee table and Fabio's face with blood.

For several seconds no one did anything. In spite of the groans and frightening screams Italo was hurling as he writhed on the floor, neither his two companions nor Alessandro dared to move a muscle. Apart from staring into each other's eyes while remaining motionless like panting statues, the panic by which they were gripped prevented them from doing anything.

However, it was enough for Daniel to lay his gaze Italo's severed arm hanging limply in midair supported by the tentacle for reality to come crashing down on him in all its ruthless rawness.

''It's a monster!!!'' he screamed in horror.

And in what had all the air of a desperate attempt to escape, he launched himself across the living room, trying to reach the hallway on the other side of the room. Seeing him run like that, probably headed for a back exit, represented more than enough of a stimulus for Alessandro to awaken from the psychological torpor into which he had fallen.

She could not allow him to escape. Not after what he had witnessed. First she had to make him swear not to tell anyone anything, take Italo to the hospital, and then ...

The flow of thoughts was interrupted the very instant he took the leap forward with which he was supposed to catch up. Indeed, he succeeded, but like the previous time, he miscalculated again.

Too fast. Definitely too much. His sudden jerk sent him sprawling across the living room as if he had been jolted out of a speeding train. He could not stop; his feet no longer touched the floor.

The eerie crack he heard the moment he pinned Daniel to the wall at the end of the living room made him realize what had happened before he had even seen his own forearm pressed against the man's crushed throat, and when the man then uttered a choked gasp spitting blood from his mouth, that terrible suspicion turned into reality.

Exactly on par with the headless attacker, Daniel fell back to the ground slowly sliding down the wall, his eyes no longer covered by the mirrored lenses stared vacantly into the void.

It seemed to Alessandro that he was trapped in a nightmare.

The sight of his blood-soaked hands almost horrified him more than the man's lifeless body, although when he noticed the arm suspended in midair next to him, still supported by the tentacle sticking out of his back, it was very close to him not smashing through the ceiling jerking in fright.

Having made the serpentine appendage disappear, the severed limb plummeted to the floor with a thud, just as the screams of its rightful owner suddenly began to diminish in intensity. Italo was bleeding to death.

However upset Alessandro realized he could not afford to waver. He had to act and he had to act now or it would be too late!

The unmistakable metallic clang that echoed behind him sent an icy chill down his spine, paralyzing him on the spot before he had managed to move a muscle. Perhaps the effect would have been no different from the bullets that had hit him earlier, however, the prospect of being caught up in a shotgun blast to the back prevented him from clinging to that hope. If he was wrong, the next splash of blood on the wall would be his.

Spinning around with simply frightening speed, Alessandro stretched out his arm toward the source of the noise, and braced himself for the impending threat by sprouting another tentacle from his back. Fabio stood on the other side of the coffee table in the living room, his wide eyes fixed on him and his rifle clutched in his trembling hands.

There was no time to think or he would open fire!

The tentacle splashed forward before Alessandro had time to determine the strategy to follow.

He had to stop it somehow, but how? Attack directly? No, just kill! Disarm him, then. How not. And given the precedent what would be the difference! What, then?! Of course. Shield!!!

Eventually it did all three at once. Cleaving the air like a crossbow bolt, the tentacle sailed across the room and then pierced through Fabio's rifle from side to side, reducing it to a thousand pieces.

The shot, however, had been too abrupt, too careless, and in fact, once the weapon was destroyed, the tip of the serpentine appendage went into the very center of the chest of the person holding it.

For what was only a split second, Alessandro and Fabio made time to exchange a look of absolute terror, peering at their own fear reflected in the other's pupils.

At that point, the man exploded.

Sprays of blood and organic matter flew in all directions as the tip of the tentacle expanded wildly, taking the shape of a giant hoplite shield. Once it was revealed, the red mottled disc hovered in midair for a few more moments, then landed hard on the ground, penetrating the floor tiles by at least three centimeters.

A long, chilling gasp accompanied the terminal phase of Italo's agony, who after a final painful spasm stopped moaning and ceased moving. Except for the indistinct buzz of the sports reporter on TV, silence fell in the living room.

For more than a minute Alessandro remained motionless where he stood, unable to react. It was as if his own mind was engaged in a desperate battle against itself, aimed at convincing him not to be fooled by what his eyes were showing him.

No matter how obvious or incontrovertible the reality was, he refused to believe it. The metallic smell of blood, mixed with the pestilential stench of mangled corpses and entrails exposed to the air, he thought, finally shattered that pious illusion.

Hoping with all his might that he would be proven wrong, Alessandro stared at his own bloody hands, and at the sight of them he recoiled in shock, as if it were the body of another. Stumbling over Daniel's leg he then collapsed to the ground, unhappily finding himself crossing his gaze with him.

The unexpressed accusation that seemed to conceal his dull eyes fixed on nothingness forced him to hastily drag himself to the narrow passage behind him, crouching between the side of the sofa and the wall beside it. Panting with his face concealed in the hood of his coat, Alessandro clutched his knees to his chest, and although he was aware of the futility of the endeavor, he tried to calm himself enough to put his thoughts in order.

But how on earth had he been able to go that far? No more than five minutes must have passed since he had set foot in the apartment. How the fuck could anyone go from smiling introductions to low butchery in such a short time!

He didn't have to kill anyone. He didn't want to kill anybody. Instead, now four of them were dead. These were still people who had no qualms about trying to reserve the same fate for him, but that certainly did not absolve him of his responsibility.

He had killed those men in the most horrible and disgusting way he could conceive. And all this for what!

The ominous rumbling that came in response to his question resounded with such force that it even covered the sound of the commercials they were playing on TV, while a tremendous twinge in his stomach thought to exacerbate to exponential levels the monstrous hunger he had been forced to live with for more than three days.

Without even fully realizing it, all the worries that crowded his mind dissipated almost instantly, swallowed up by a thick, inscrutable white fog. Like an infant devoid of reasoning, there was now room in his head for only one thought.

Food. He needed food.

Food was bought with money.

Money. He had to find money.

His remaining brain capacity did not allow him to go any further. Sprinting to his feet with unnatural swiftness, and reabsorbing shield and tentacle into his body, Alessandro then began to roam the apartment, searching for the money he knew he desperately needed.

Having hastily cleared the living roomactually more out of an inability to endure the sight of it for too long than out of real diligence, he headed into the hallway from which the other rooms could be accessed, and after a brief stop at the bathroom to wash off the blood, he sifted through them all.

The mechanical gait with which he proceeded in his bleak investigation was strikingly reminiscent of that of a somnambulist, as the thoughts that crowded his mind followed one another relentlessly, overlapping one another in a delirious cacophony.

Physical need and lacerating psychological wounds clashed with each other in an attempt to gain a monopoly on his attention, but neither could overpower his opponent.

You need food, find money.

What on earth did I do?

You need food, find money.

Why is this happening to me?

You need food, find money.

I am a disgusting being. I deserve to be beaten to a pulp.

You need food, find money.

The gruesome refrain accompanied him throughout the search, during which he rummaged through drawers, cupboards, pantries, furniture, closets, jars, shoe boxes, and any other compartment or hiding place that might conceal cash inside. In the kitchen he found two thousand euros hidden in the sugar bowl, and another fifty inside the wallet placed next to the ashtray on the coffee table in the living room.

From there on, however, with the exception of a few trinkets of very dubious value, failures followed one after another. Most of the rooms did not seem to contain anything valuable, and since he certainly could not afford to drag around bulky or otherwise difficult to convert into money items, Alessandro began to fear that he would not be able to scrape together anything else.

Refusing to accept that truth he stubbornly continued in his search, but after he had finished ransacking even the bedroom, the realization that he had stumbled into yet another watering hole caused him to collapse nervously.

In frustration he grabbed the bed frame, and cursing aloud he hurled the piece of furniture against the opposite wall.

The impact knocked the poster of the half-dressed woman that was hanging in the center of the wall to the floor, and also opened a large crack where it impacted the headboard, however, as the bed bounced back landing on the floor, Alessandro seemed to recover some semblance of lucidity, thus managing to halt the horrendous mental chanting that had never left him during the last quarter of an hour.

At that point he burst into tears.

Hiding his face in his hands Alessandro allowed the tears to flow copiously, venting in that way all the unspeakable anguish he carried inside.

He hated himself for what he had caused, and he hated himself even more for what he was doing. He had become a murderer, and now a thief as well. In fact, worse, a jackal. A vile scavenger who was stealing from the dead.

How could he have fallen so low?

If only he had confessed the truth to his family all that crap would never have happened. There would undoubtedly have been an initial phase of enormous shock, but eventually together they could have overcome it. Instead what he had done in there could not be overcome in any way.

Why had he been so stupid? Why did he always have to complicate his life by making such foolishly bad choices? Why didn't he...

The vigorous gurgling that erupted from his stomach tore him away from those thoughts. At first he felt only hungry, but then, as he recovered rationality, anger took over everything else.

Contracting the muscles of his face in a snarl of pure hatred, Alessandro pushed his face away from his hands, and with his eyes still dripping with tears he suddenly raised his right fist, as if preparing to deliver a punch to his own belly. He was now ready to strike, when a piece of plaster came off the wall damaged just before, revealing the reddish bricks concealed underneath.

Alessandro lowered his hand.

Noticing something strange, he approached the white-painted wall and ended up discovering the small hole, which appeared right where he had impacted the headboard of the bed. When he looked into it, it seemed to him that he discerned an empty space, as if there was a gap inside the wall.

Without a second thought Alessandro lashed a fist at the wall, penetrating it with disarming ease.

He was right. There was indeed an empty space back there. Groping his hand, he tried to detect the presence of some unusual object, until his fingers tightened around what had all the appearance of a handle made of fabric. Alessandro grabbed it and retracted his arm.

Chunks of concrete and bricks flew across the room as a large portion of the wall was torn away by the impetuosity of that gesture, at the end of which he found himself clutching a black gym bag in his hands.

Shivering with excitement Alessandro settled him on the mattress and unzipped his fly. If he was looking for money, he had certainly found it now. Bundles upon bundles of fifty, one hundred, and five hundred euro bills filled the bag to the brim, forming a capital that he could only imagine, but which must certainly have been in excess of hundreds of thousands. At that sight, Alessandro's eyes lit up in amazement.

The howl of an approaching siren jolted him, forcing him to look away from the contents of the duffel bag.

Fire department, ambulance, or police? Had one of the neighbors heard something and become suspicious? If that was indeed the case, he could not afford to waste even a second.

Pulling the zipper in the opposite direction, he closed the bag and slung it over his shoulder, then reached for one of the windows overlooking the courtyard outside. The cold night air filled his lungs as soon as he had opened it, although he did not feel at all the sharp drop in temperature that had occurred since he entered the apartment. In return, he saw the fog, the lights of the houses across the street, and above all, the black sky.

A simple mental flicker caused his coat to take on an intense raven hue, darker and darker than the deepest of abysses. Perhaps invisibility remained a goal beyond his reach, but dressed like that nothing and no one would be able to see him.

Having ascertained the effectiveness of his disguise by observing his gloved hand, Alessandro then placed his boot on the ledge and prepared to jump out. He had not yet had time to hoist himself poised on the edge when an irresistible impulse convinced him to turn around.

The threshold of the room that overlooked the hallway appeared ominous and eerie to him in all its apparent normalcy, as if just knowing what lay just a few feet ahead turned it into something horrifying, as if it were the very gates of hell.

As the police siren grew closer and closer and an icy chill ran through him from head to toe, Alessandro averted his gaze abruptly and jumped out of the window, disappearing like a drop of ink into the dark sky.