Under the flickering lights on the corner of a run-down street, stood the black silhouette of a man, the light struck the gun. Load shudder echoed throughout the city as the gun was fired, the feeling of hot coals ripped through a man’s chest as the bullet tore through him, it was then we realised that this wasn’t a mistake. This was the callus act of murder. He was thrown from the street into the local canal where his body would lay rest until one unexpected passer-by sees the hand floating motionless in the dim murky waters.

A sepia door, draped in half twisted blinds and tangled cord lay the name P.I Tracey Mane. Light danced in a flicker as she lit another cigarette with the mixed thick aroma of coffee. Her life was as dull as her desk lamp and as empty as her patiently filed drawer. The dust had settled. Her mind alike, with the wild running thoughts of the night prior to his death. With little sleep this spelled her out, black and white newspaper printed. She was never a cover story nor was she in that type of business. Corruption and solitude was the life of the average hand me down copper. She wasn’t cut out, not as plain as the paper in her cabinet but as sharp as the knife she held for protection. Always close at hand.

The tension was visible like a thick fog that lay around shrouded trees in a dense forest. The chill of the cold metal on my hand as I grasped the door handle, I stood in the doorway. Between them and the world behind me, I stood waiting in strong pause.

Their faces dropped like the eerie atmosphere of an impending storm, their words spoke meaningless dribble like that of a convict villains, as they slowly stood up the floor shrieked like tense rusty springs of an old car on a bitter frosty morning. They knew that what befell of them. was going to be much worse than that of which stood in the door.

As the wind passes by the field of red and yellow flowers, mixing together like burst of fiery flames from the remains of a bush fire stood a girl in a clean white dress with long flowing hairs. As she walked her hands slowly stroke over the flowers with the delicacy of a butterflies wing. In the distance laid the ruins of a once monumental building that overlooked these fields.

A fast track blur. Her mind was an enviable blank page in the start of a book, the writer block. She started, dazed but delicate. Her bare feet brushed the dead earth where life once bloomed like the memories of her past like scattered ash to the wind. She was as forgotten as the ruins, abandoned inhabitations of her people. She was left behind.