The distinct aroma of ingrained, unwashed late night whiskey piss of Irish brawlers and nobleman gamblers, of filthy, burdened life teeming through this Georgian passageway, wafts. The brick arch cramps up into mildewed voussoirs, unhealthily transmuted into grey, having originally been painted white. A lion’s head keystone, icy with weather, gawks sightlessly outward. The walls are dirty white brick. It is a cramped slum, it reeks, burns the nose. Soot, muck, human shit pigs blood. Life.
He releases her, shoves her against the opposing wall, shakes his hand of the shock of her little teeth. He gives no time for recovery or thought; he is swift as a storm. As all dead things are. There he is, this dark scourge before her, then near her face, talking through his teeth, enraged. His forearms slam at each side of her head, in case she gets a notion to escape.
“Why do ye come ere? Unwelcomed whore?” he asks.
She would not know what had become of him; what fate had turned his life into after he'd been unable to claim her for his, what road he’d chosen to go down himself. She was innocent. He had not the logic to care. Essentially, he lacked the soul that she tries so desperately to keep spotless in order to pass thru the promised, pearly gates of her ruthless, quiet creator. There was nothing left to save in him.