Taking a short cut through a downtown alley wasn’t always like it was in the movies. He’d rarely witnessed crimes, or found dumped bodies among the dumpsters and rats. The smells were close to death but not quite. Urine and sun roasted garbage were the aromas of the night. No night-blooming jasmine for this short cut.
Walking along he wasn’t afraid. There wasn’t anything to fear except maybe stepping on something disgusting he’d have to scrape off of his shoe later. But then he saw her standing at the end of the alley.
Had she been a cat he would have taken her home, or found her a forever home, but she was not.
“Hi Val,” she said in a girlish voice. She sounded like she was maybe twelve instead of twenty eight.
“Nikki. You look good.”
She looked good for Nikki. Val hadn’t seen her this clean, well, maybe ever. She’d been…
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Teraphobia - Two Shades and a World Changed 
Your welcome. I have been so busy with my art lately. I’m so glad I got to sit and read this. I love when a story has emotion and this one is very good.
I’ve known my share of lost souls in life. I was one at one point. Never this bad. I was lucky.
matt
Thank you for reblogging this story. Yesterday Clara and I were in downtown Sacramento walking down an alley looking for a mural. It smelled like urine. We could tell people had been camping there. Later we were about a mile away in another alley in a residential area full of old houses built in the 1800’s. Someone painted blue birds along an old metal fence, among the homeless camps and old buildings. There has been a nasty homeless problem in this area, and in the Sacramento area. We’re near two major rivers, four major interstate highways going north and south, east and west. There are a lot of lost souls dealing with addiction and mental illness. It is sad, and disgusting. We’ve all known a Nikki or two. After I wrote this I was so sad. That surprised me. It touched something I didn’t know I had in me.