Junkdust
an excerpt

London was different by night. Lights dotted the tall buildings, connecting like webs, and the lurking spiders of dark alleys and darker hideaways enticed welcome victims with long, broken fingers of brick and stone. A moist touch and a soft kiss of breeze to the skin. Someone’s mangy cat screamed, lost in the rubbish, or perhaps put out in the bag. They couldn’t feed him anymore.

Claire stumbled over a crack in her hurry to reach the glow of a streetlamp hanging on its last volts. Seizing and blinking, cascading sparks failed to ignite the bone dry cement. Someone had thrown something at the light, dislodging the cover and cracking the plastic. But it was the only light on this street that worked, and every building was dark.