The Seventh Secret

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The sky over Port Elizabeth was clear, but beneath the peaceful mask of the pleasant late summer weather, a putrid stench wafted around the old buildings in the city center. With the night came the vermin — hidden in the crevices by daylight — and crime. Under the pale yellow street lights lining the empty sidewalks of Govan Mbeki Avenue, footsteps echoed; two pairs almost in perfect cadence with each other. It was just before 3 am, a time for the city's pests to thrive, but there were darker things exchanged here than the common lechery of prostitution and the desperate deeds of broke junkies.

Cheryl stared out over the melancholy of the barren street, flanked on either side by historical buildings and once beautifully constructed museums, now reduced to slums and crumbling memories of order and care. Her windows were tainted, not by some fancy form of glazing but rather the layers of dirt and build-up from years of foregone cleaning.

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