There was a shadow apart from the night outside a building in the middle class block. The fire escape was neglected but sturdy in its original build. The metal made ominous sounds for the shadow's weight. Black gloves on iron bars, three floor ups. He was an apparition of a very partial justice, but still adhered to a certain code. It kept his back straight and his chin high enough to stick out from the cover of the hood. A simple magnet defeated the mechanisms of the latch on her window. And then there was a shadow on her floor that wasn't from childhood trinkets or grown-up furniture.<br/><br/>It was appropriate that the male was faceless. He'd sold himself for modern gold in the shape of numbers on a network. Maybe he'd spend it on something someone else would have to perform equally dubious acts to provide. Another diode blinking black in a board of crime. His skills were useful, so he was allowed to subsist on the run off from the larger animal. A dark tentacle sent out to tend to some interest that tickled the main net of nerves. Poor girl had seen good days, but that was about to change with this moon by the actions of this nameless errand boy.<br/><br/>He wasn't immune to her beauty, sleeping there, unassuming in the sheets her father had bought her for money he didn't have. It was an old fate, but one that endured, not even as an echo, but reprint without corruption, ever since one man wanted something from someone else. The reaper likeness hovered close to her bed. Perhaps he was interested in another way. He'd been told explicitly her flesh was not to be compromised in any way that might diminish her new owner's sense of novelty, but it didn't cost her anything, especially when she was sleeping, to be thought of in that many sordid situations. He wanted to hear her mewl and choke.<br/><br/>It became a ceremony for the intruder, and he came down on his knees by the edge of her bed. Beautiful objects changing homes deserve a bit of ritual. In being forbidden, he might see her as so much more desirable in the vague streetlight coming in from the road. It is a flaw in a man, but one even his employer shared. Her value, other than the delights her body could give, was that which she had from another man. Ill fated since the first card and last dice. Sometimes, men in debt do not care, and it leaves their loved women to a life of filthy toil, filling up their mouths and bellies with patrons of their new, buried societies.<br/><br/>He took out a plastic bag and unzipped it. The strong scent was already in the air, eager to do the damage to her brain it was brought for. He took the cloth out, pure white just like her soul, currently. But bleached things can be made to do dirty, too. He pulled down the cover to fully expose her, and sighed quietly at a longing that he'd never have the right to quench. Why are recently sprung women such currency? He touched her hair, and continued to roll the sheet down. He was sure she wasn't the kind to sleep in the nude though, but if she was, he'd allow himself a grand eyeful.<br/><br/>And then, when he'd paid her beauty the respect he thought it was owed, he would put the fuming cloth onto his gloved hand. He wanted to have an interaction with her, wanted her to see him, even if he was drowning in the darkness sans her nightstand lamp. So he stroked her cheek and touched her lip with his free glove, and waited for her to stir awake, and when she did, he'd flick that lamp on, and see the color of her irises and her expression before he'd jump on her, and tightly press her nose and mouth with the chemicals and the serene fabric. His hips would weight hers down, a make-shift compromise for not getting to have her, while his arm kept her head deep in the pillow as she was drowning in the concoction that wanted her back in sleep.