City of Strays - Part One

She took the cigarette like water, sucking down the smoke in gulps. The dim blue glow of the moon lit her face with shadows, her red lips puckering to blow then swirls of smoke danced circles before her. She dropped the butt beneath her pivoting foot and began to walk toward home, her high heels clicked on the concrete. Jean's only solace was her lonely stride home through streets littered with the trash of the world in a city built for strays. Sidestepping past bums was just part of the path and turning a deaf ear to the whistles and calls from dirty old men became routine. Jean was the prettiest thing about that part of town, a diamond in the mud and the mud was drowning.

In the night, there, in the City of Strays things tended to change, buildings would twist and stretch and some would sink into the sand-soft pavement. Jean loved watching this happen, it seemed like she was the only one who noticed anymore, at times she questioned whether anyone else could see it at all. By morning everything would look the way it always had, dull gray buildings covered in filth, but the night, yes, the night was magic.

Jean slid the key into the lock on her front door, she felt the pins move beneath the grooves, a twist and a sigh and she was home. She knelt to retrieve the mail finding only one unmarked envelope. Jean sliced open the envelope with one of her long red nails, she pulled out the folded paper hidden inside to find a single sentence typed.

"Wednesday 7:00 p.m. Gravel Pier"

Jean tossed the note into the fireplace and followed with a match. She went to her bedroom, flipping off her shiny black heels along the way, and began unbuttoning her dress; the neck stretched to just below the chin and the hem to just below the knees, little black buttons swirled their way down the length of the blue satin fabric embroidered with pink cherry blossoms, following lines of black piping. Eventually managing to free herself of the garment, she unclipped her stockings and rolled them down her statuesque legs and placed them in a drawer. She pulled the pins from her auburn hair and let it fall free onto her slender back. And there she stood nearly bare at the floor to ceiling one-way mirror which was her window to the ever changing city, ten stories above the trash and filth and scum of the world in that muddy little part of town. She stood watching the buildings sway and bend and wondered why this was, why the city could change at night and show no signs of its dance by dawn.