Working the Shadows

Under the cover of daylight, beneath the mill and hustle of teaming crowds; a need and a life-grinding poverty swept her down a wrong way. She strayed into streets so narrow entered them as a shadow-less shadow stayed where rank rooms were rent by the hour where tussled bedsheets her only ownership. A small child might have slipped past the ranks of pot-bellied loungers, but the pimps were as thin as switch blades and their eyes scavenged for any walking flesh. No one kidnapped her; abused her much, she was taken by her own weakened self, nabbed by an ever willing surrender. Did she come to a dark end? Only the flickering city lights at the end of a day can both ask and answer that long searched for question.