Descent

Home Sweet Home

The streets were empty aside from the occasional sound of horns honking and police sirens. Despite almost no one being around at this hour and most people being in bed, it seemed the city itself never slept.

Fred kicked along a small rock that he'd found to distract himself from the increasingly eerie atmosphere. The more he walked, the more run down the buildings became. Some looked borderline uninhabited, but each apartment complex had some kind of life in it, whether it be a bug infestation or thugs sticking around because of the cheap rent.

Fred loved the city but hated where he lived. The cost of living here was ridiculous. He could barely afford his apartment despite it being in one of the more run down and dangerous parts of New York. It felt like every week some kind of tragedy or criminal activity was going down in his small, dirty corner of the world.

He continued to kick the rock around and looking down at the pavement, not paying attention to where he was going. He kicked the rock a bit too hard, the pebble flying away from him and landing at the entrance of an alleyway. Fred followed with his head down, stopping in his tracks when he found the rock had bounced off of the wall and gone still next to something.

The rock sat idly next to a pair of dirty white flats, one of the flats bouncing up and down slightly as the owner of the shoes fidgeted. The smell of cigarette smoke suddenly hit him, causing his nose to twitch slightly. Fred looked to the rock, then the shoes before slowly looking up.

A woman looked up to meet his gaze, a cigarette planted firmly between her index and middle finger as she slightly strained her neck to make eye contact with the unusually tall man.

She was leaning casually against the wall, her back resting against the brick and her hips jutting out slightly. The button on her jeans was unbuttoned and the zipper of her dark blue bell bottoms was completely down, revealing the front of a pair of red lacy panties. Her soft stomach and curvy torso was completely exposed, her white shirt nearly revealing the underside of her bare breasts, clinging to her body like a second skin. Fred could see the gentle peaks of her nipples forming beneath the fabric, poking out of her top as if trying to taunt him.

Her hair was unnaturally blonde, her eyes an icy blue and her peach colored lips parted slightly, showing off her front teeth. She didn't break eye contact as she pulled the cigarette back up to her plush mouth, taking a slow drag before blowing the smoke out of her nose like a dragon that had just finished spewing out a burst of flames.

Fred averted his eyes. Not out of arousal or embarrassment... but out of disgust. He hid his slight disdain well.

The lascivious woman spoke, her voice soft and sultry. "Hello, Freddy."

Fred hesitated. "Hi, Candy."

Candy was... a character. One Fred didn't like to associate himself with. Despite his best efforts, the woman unfortunately always found a way to stumble into his path. "Candy" wasn't her actual name. Her real name was Page, but she went by the nickname for a very specific reason.

Candy frequented this part of town; it's where she got most of her "business". But it wasn't really business... it was just selling her body for money. Prostitution was illegal in New York, but that never stopped her from hustling any man she could find. If she ever got in trouble with the law, she would always find a way out of it. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how she got out of a prison sentence or a hefty fine either. Some officers were corrupt enough to make an exchange; they'd let her off the hook under the condition that she'd spend the evening with them at a motel. A lot of cops were like the men at the GCPD from the comics he read so religiously: corrupted and vile.