She is tall and narrow. Her shoes make her taller. She seems to be in immediate danger of toppling over with every step. Her dress could be any color. In this place it merely looks pale. Pale, tight, clinging fabric, heavy with moisture. Pale ruffles around her wrists and neck, pale billows at the bottom of it all, just above her dark shoes.

She takes long strides and the narrow fit of her dress forces even her slender hips to swivel perilously to accommodate. She sways from side to side in a pendulum motion as her feet swing. Bok, bok, bok. The raised wooden platforms strike against the ageing bricks of the road like mallets. Her breaths are shallow and frequent and high-pitched. Her face is hidden in a wide, hat-induced shadow but seems as narrow and long as the rest of her. A slender satchel hangs on a long strap from her right shoulder. Her right arm holds the straps while her left cradles the bottom of the satchel, holding it to her thigh.

Bok, bok, bok...

Mist lays thickly about like a drowned body. Wet and cold and unpleasant to touch, smelling like rotten meat and garbage and water. Shot through the mist are sparse streams of woodsmoke. The mixture coils along the streets and chokes the life from the city. It pours down the sides of buildings and seeths in from the distant waterfront. Every surface is slick with its slime. Structures are concealed, crouching invisibly to spring forth at the last minute, rearing up in the darkness as swirls part and coalesce. Lights hang too far apart in the grey, serving little purpose other than to illuminate and define specific strands and coils, suddenly pale yellow in the murky mass.

Bok, bok, bok...

Her strides are quick and regular. Her wooden soles place her dangerously high above the slickness of the road, but somehow she maintains her speed without slipping. Occasionally her thin, narrow head swivels from side to side, searching the shadows and mist in vain for something unknown. Something which makes her hurry, alone. Something, perhaps, which keeps these streets so free of other traffic tonight. Some reason that her shoes are the loudest sound for countless blocks. Not all of the moisture beading on her narrow chin and occasionally dripping to the pavement far, far below is from the congealing mist.

The next yellow glow slowly resolves itself into the light of a lamp, swaying imperceptibly in the flow of smoke and fog. Dirty glass in a pale of copper rusted green and white, hanging from a once-ornate hook on a pole that could be the woman's cousin in form. She walks to a point not-quite beneath it and stops, bok-bok, craning her neck forward to peer at the signs meant to be illuminated. To stand close enough for the soot-covered letters to be read through the fog and yet observe from the front, she is forced to bend her already unstable body even more precariously. Her breathing is still quick. She does not seem to like stopping. Tension in her body builds like a shy animal, ready to spring into flight at the slightest noise. As she tilts her head, pale features at last become blurily visible through grey tendrils. Her skin has no color save that of the lamp light. Her lips are thin and tight and faint wrinkles might be seen at the corners of her mouth and eyes, if such details were clearer. Her hair is as dark as the shadows of these dirty buildings, thin and tightly bound, and her eyes are deep pools of blackness, stretched wide and round with fear. Her nose is small and round and faintly pink with cold and her nostrils work frantically to supply her too-intense heartbeat.

She wrinkles her nose and blinks several times, and the grip on her satchel pulses tight, then relaxes. She closes her eyes and her breathing slows somewhat. Crash, clatter...sudden sounds from a nearby street jolt her back to life. Quickly she is striding along a new cross-street, apparently convinced by the information on the signpost. Bok, bok, bok... She risks a glance over her left shoulder at the road she has left, but her right heel slips on the bricks and she only barely balances herself by letting go of the satchel with her left hand, long pale fingers splaying in the cold damp air like a tightrope walker. Her shoulders hunch up as she drives forward down the street, risking no further distractions.

Raaooowr, hisssssss...Crash!

Bok, bok, bok...

Alley dwellers prowl and fight over their domains in the background. This street is narrow and winds about, curving around every ancient rise in the ground, around every clump of rotten buildings as they grow in the darkness like fungus. At every noise she starts and skips her feet a bit, before continuing. Lamps are even more unlikely in this place, and the shadows of tall monolithic apartments tower to either side, leaning forward as though they leer at her, more sensed than seen in this place. Shadows ripple and run across the shape of her body and her dress, grey glows interrupted by dark flowings.

Her steps slow noticeably as she climbs a small hill, steepening bricks more treacherous now, more uneven and widely-spaced. In places bits of the street have been worn away to nothing or broken out by angry vandals, seeking any vengance possible against their lives. They are replaced only infrequently and catch her feet in sinking holes of mud and filth more than once. The air is somewhat warmer here, but carries a proportionally greater stench of decay and waste.

...hehehehehe...The sound is soft and faint. Distant.

Her breath is sucked in suddenly. She pauses for a second, and then doubles her pace.

Bok-bok-bok...

She grunts softly as she crests the hill, a small sound like a whimper and a gasp intermingled.

...hehehehehehe...Teasing.

Another whimper escapes her throat as she negotiates the downward slope as quickly as possible.

Bok-bok-bok-bok... As she reaches the bottom of the hill, an unfelt breeze removes the flat hat from her head, sending it soaring gracefully away into the shadows to her left. She whines frantically and begins to clop after it, but after only two steps-worth of searching, she changes her mind and lurches forward again. Her dark hair is now entirely exposed, a tangling sillouette showing less of the order imposed on it before her journey. She gasps as a particularly foul odor wafts lazily forth from an indistinct mound gracing the building to her right. Her face bunches tightly and she slows, for a few steps, looking as though she needs to recover her balance.

Suddenly the mist twists at her back and she leaps forward, eyes bulging, mouth opened in a silent O showing lean teeth whose yellowness is probably not entirely due to the feeble light. She charges forward with a neck-breaking stride.

The mist swirls and relaxes...

...hehehehehehehe...The sound seems close, as if a child giggles while toying with some small pretty only paces behind her.

BokBokBokBokBokBok...

Her arms flail back and forth as if trying to swim forward through the fog. Her chest heaves back and forth with astounding speed and power, gasping in thick mouthfulls of scummy fog and shadow. For a moment, all is silent around her. The city holds its breath, listening to her fear, observing her energy, her will to live.

For a moment, it looks as if she will succeed...

...HeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHe...This laughter is unmistakeably in front of her. The shadows suggest a form close enough to reach out and touch...extending to do just so...

With a colossal shriek she attempts to halt her mad rush, feet sliding out from under her. Her tailbone hits the bricks with a loud crack, her dress tears loudly up one side, her satchel goes spinning away in the darkness. Her feet flail and scrape against bricks desperately as she tries to scoot backward and stand up and recover her satchel all at once, and consequently she accomplishes none of these things.

The mist swirls...and glimmers in lamplight...

Gasping, she pushes herself to unsteady feet. One shoe strap has broken and the heavy sole hangs from her ankle like a dead pheasant brought in from the hunt. Kicking it off at any adversaries which may lie in front of her in a token display of unconvincing bravado, she limps sideways, trips over her satchel strap, manages to pick it up without quite falling again, and begins careening down the nearest alleyway, head bobbing up and down with her now uneven legs, squeezing satchel tightly against her unimpressive chest as though it may be her savior, or her only child. Her stockinged foot squishes in unnameable filth and wetness.

...hehehehehe...Bok-Slap, Bok-Slap, Bok-Slap...

The giggles are far behind her. She runs in darkness, twisting as the alley twists, stumbling and crashing over stacked boxes and cans and glasses, smashing her elbows against sudden walls of brick and wood.

At last, she comes to a stop, wheezing the noxious fog in past her teeth, closing her eyes tightly to shut out pain and fear...

She shuffles into the open doorway of a long-abandoned shanty, tearing her stocking on sharp edges unseen, stubbing her toes on uneven flooring. She gropes her way around a corner and collapses in a heap on the floor, sobbing. Tears and snot flow freely down her face, but she will not move her arms away from the satchel to attend. She coughs and wheezes a few times, then sneezes loudly in a cloud of dust.

In time, she begins to recover. She shifts her bottom on the floor, squirming away from her injury, and with one hand, smears the substances on her face around. Distant light illuminates only through cracks between boards and shows nothing but decay and clutter.

...hehehehehehehe...A child, laughing unashamedly at a great joke.

She stands up, gasping, eyes wide once more, but her scream is muffled by the frigid, slick hand which grasps her mouth, gleaming faintly in stolen light.

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