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The Dead of Night

Alexandra Tbare

    The air clanged with white noise slowly hitting each corner of the buildings. Streetlights were smeared in old water puddles and seeped into the wrinkles of the road, beautiful to only the trained eye. A woman was walking on the sidewalk, and she carefully stepped over the puddles, her shoes dry of life. Her face had deepened wrinkles of age resembling a person in their seventies. Her fingers, knobbed like the roots of a tree, gripped her new jacket tightly. The air was thick with a cloud of bitter humidity causing grass that crept between the cracks of the sidewalk to be humiliated by its icy fingertips. The woman quickened her pace as the light in the sky began to slowly disappear. She looked down at the rose shaped buttons and the soft blush exterior of her jacket and told herself it was worth the long line. Her gaze darted around her surroundings to watch for any lingering eyes of strangers who could be a potential threat. She stepped on a crinkled paper and glanced down in time to notice it was a lipstick ad, the woman on the front untainted by reality. Her skin was white as heaven and her hair black as hell. Her lips were the perfect plump curvatures that resembled the innocence of a child but darkened by the heat of the gloss: “Beauty is at your fingertips.” She passed the overflowing garbage bin on the street corner; the humidity of filth surrounded its air. She momentarily thought about throwing the magazine ad into the garbage but decided against it. The ad was too pretty to be found with ugly things.
    She passed several shops with thin glass separating her from valuable materials. Her reflection adamantly croaked its way back at her from the weak glass. It was already dark, but she decided to peek at some of the toys when she noticed the dolls. She thought back to when she was a child, and her parents would drag her away from the windows of toy shops for dolls. Susan. The doll’s name was Susan. She had two blonde braids, bangs, and she looked just like her. “Enough. You’re spoiled as it is,” her mother would say. Her family always used the word spoiled as though she was an egg that had gone bad.
    Age did not change her desire for toys, the toys just had different appearances now. She clutched her jacket tighter as the chill that was caressing the air seeped towards her chest, finding its way to grip at her thin skin. That’s when she noticed the man across the road. He was sitting cross-legged. His hair was in tuffs on either side of his head that was cocked into an abnormal position. Her breathing stopped. She stared at the man; only a shadow of a silhouette illuminated his threatening figure. Numerous thoughts scratched at her, but the fear that he would take her new jacket was dominating all her other fears.
    After some time looking at the man, the woman had a severe heart attack, and it caused her instant death.
Her body was mangled against the clear cracked artistry in the pavement. Her cheek was soaked in the cold rainwater, muggy with the illusion of reflection.
    The being the woman thought was a man seemed to shift and morph. An arm protruded from the darkness covered with sparse black fur. His paw pressed into the road as his toes slightly separated, movement slow and accurate. It was not a man, but a stray dog. The gentle animal scampered across the road towards the woman’s body. The dog’s weakness was adamant; his body resembled that of a crack addict, each step slightly painful as it shot shrieks of lightning through the bone trunks holding the animal steady.
    When the woman had stopped dead in her tracks the dog sensed her foggy fear clouding the air before she collapsed. Now there was nothing. The dog licked the woman’s arm, covering her coat. She was too dead to notice.

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