It was a dark evening and rain had ceased just a moment ago, when a grey star disturbed a little kitten’s contemplation of the road in front of her. The grey star fell on the little kitten’s beige back. Annoyed at being rudely disturbed, she shook herself and meowed. The star fell onto the concrete slab beneath the kitten’s stack of papers and rolled off into a corner. The kitten went back to staring at the road. She spied a lone figure of a girl in a drenched beige coat and trousers wading her way through the heavy flow of vehicles. Those vehicles disturbed puddles, splashing water all over the place and dousing the girl’s clothes in muddy water. But she walked on undaunted, her shoulders still held upright even under the heavy weight she carried on her back. She looked happy to be alive. The kitten purred.

From the corner of her eye, the little kitten spied a hefty man in a grey coat watch the girl’s progress from across the road. He took one step ahead, hesitated and with a vigorous shake of the head and a punch into his own chest, set forth towards the girl.

As the hefty man appeared in her field of vision, the girl’s body tensed. The little kitten’s whisker’s twitched a little and a faint shadow of blue smog began to envelop her tiny body.

The girl tried to appear unconcerned and concentrate on the road ahead. The man stepped right in front of her, bent towards the girl’s right ear and whispered something. The girl shook her head and tried to go past the lurking figure of the man. The little kitten stood on her legs, alert and a little stiff. The blue smog around her thickened.

The man held out a hand to touch the girl and throwing all pretense of unconcern to the wind, she began to run. The man grabbed her by both arms. The blue smog around the little kitten thickened and began to spread until the whole street was covered in a cloud of blue smog that stank of rotten carcasses. The little kitten’s growl drowned the girl’s scream. A red patch decorated the plain grey of the man’s coat.

The grey star rattled in its corner.

The End