I was just getting off work. It was just me and Alice that day. I remember the clouds like a dark pillow in the sky preventing any light from a quick escape. Along our route to the lonesome yet overcrowded tenement we pass the small bakery, about 2 blocks from our home. The enticing smell of the dough burning in their stone ovens reminds me of the endless repeating cycle some call liberty and i call life.

Rain begins to trickle from the sky and Alice nods off to me as she reaches her doorstep.

Goodbye

Come to find out on the following morning by an officer grasping his top hat in his left hand. “We believe you were the last person to see Alice alive.” What a reticule of atrophy disguised in a lack of understanding of the story. Her body was found in the sewer, with signs of sexual assault and extreme physical trauma. I was told she never returned home and they had an aliby from someone at the bakery. This tale so raveling I froze.

Such pathetic thinking to understand the insane. I imagine who done it being one whom holds such menacing stare you can see the misery outlined in his desires. But that path seemed unclear and there it be only me and my defense of I wasn’t there.