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Leonardo and Mari were a recently married elderly couple who had decided to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city.
They managed to buy a beautiful house in a village near some incredible mountains. They had been captivated by the area.
The name of the village was Hutsuls Hill, a town that inspired tranquillity and at the same time had an atmosphere of mystery because it was shrouded in a dense fog.
For Mari the place was disturbing, it gave her a certain fear, but the tranquillity captivated her more. For Leonardo, it was the ideal place to get inspired to write macabre stories for a publishing house.
Mari noticed that on the outskirts of the village, there was a small house that was much visited by the villagers, this made her curious and one morning she couldn't stand it any longer.
He told Leonardo that he would go to the town center to buy some groceries that were needed.
Arriving at the grocery shop, Mari asked the dispatcher for the house outside the village.
The dispatcher told him that an elderly doctor lived in the house, who was well known for being a fortune teller.
Mari had always been interested in the world of fortune-telling, so the dispatcher's words piqued her interest.
Not even an hour had passed and Mari was already aware that the old fortune teller was seeing patients in the early mornings and in the evenings he was giving consultations in which he showed off his gift as a fortune teller.
Mari went home to tell Leonardo what she had discovered, she was excited. Leonardo gave her a cup of coffee to calm her down and take a deep breath so she could tell him what had happened to her. The woman calmed down, told what she had discovered and asked her husband to accompany her for a consultation.
They did not wait for the next day. That evening they went out anxious to know what the fortune-telling man would tell them. The reading would be done over cups of freshly drunk coffee.
On arrival, they found a queue of people wanting a consultation. Some left with sad, long faces, others with happy faces, depending on the outcome of the consultation.
When Mari's turn came, the fortune teller, an old man, asked the woman for her cup. After reading her cup of coffee, the soothsayer told Mari that there was something very dark about her life and that she should beware of someone close to her. A demonic figure was haunting her and wanted to end her life. She had to get away from this being immediately, to get out of the village as soon as possible.
Mari was puzzled by the reading but decided to ignore it. She left the room and told Leonardo to come in, but not before handing him the cup in which she had been drinking coffee.
Mari and Leonardo returned home. She kept talking about what the fortune-telling man had told her, and she kept asking Leonardo incessantly what his future was.
-He didn't tell me anything interesting or that I didn't know. -Leonardo said.
The next day, terrifying news circulated around the village just as Mari and Leonardo were shopping.
The elderly doctor, the fortune teller, was beaten and strangled. The police indicated that the incident took place at night and that the motive was not robbery, although it appeared that the coffee had been taken.
Mari's lower jaw almost dropped to the floor at the news; she was shocked. The whole village was in shock at what had happened.
The couple went home and when they arrived, Mari began to remember that close to midnight, Leonardo had gone out and when he returned, his hands were bruised, as if he had hit something hard. She asked him what had happened and he told her nothing, that they should sleep because they had to get up early. Mari felt that something was not right.
Some time later, a series of strange events made Mari remember what she had been told in the consulting room. She told Leonardo what she had perceived, but he implied that she was being paranoid.
However, shortly afterward, Leonardo disappeared without a trace. Mari suspected that something bad had happened and decided to seek help from the police.
They told him that he had to wait more than 24 hours to file a missing persons report and start the search. At the moment they were busy with a series of murders that had just been committed.
Mari didn't stay calm and began to search on her own. Leonardo was nowhere to be found.
Mari decided to flee the village, to go to her friend's house in the big city; she had no direct family; her closest relative was her husband Leonardo.
On the way, she was intercepted by a large vehicle that collided with her and dragged her into the lake.
Mari's body was discovered days after Leonardo had reported her missing. Police said she had lost control of the vehicle, falling into the lake to drown.
Three days later, Leonardo would receive a substantial cheque in the mail from an insurance company. Mari never found out that she had a life insurance policy that provided a very valuable policy and Leonardo as her survivor was the beneficiary.
A year later, Leonardo remarried a beautiful older woman and everything the soothsayer predicted came to pass.
Original content is written exclusively for #STB Creative Writing Prompt: Week 33 - Option 1
I use CANVA to edit the images you see in my publications.
It is my responsibility to share with you that, as a Spanish speaker, I have had to resort to the Deepl translator to share my original content with you.