Serpent's Walk
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There were two men in the dank, cluttered back-office of the lithographer’s shop. He who stood in front of the table wore faded workpants and a black, leather biker’s jacket. The jacket was old and frayed, its decals flaking, its once-angry motto now illegible.
The other man sat in shadow. Posture hinted at a younger person, a sophisticated man, one who might be acceptable in the upper strata of society. The black-jacketed man could see little more than a thin tie upon a white shirt, a black ribbon painted down the middle of a dazzling highway that glowed blue-white behind the table’s one fluorescent work lamp. Two arms sheathed in lead-grey tweed extended out of the darkness that was the man’s torso, and pale fingers plucked at the dog-eared files heaped upon the table top, pallid spiders scuttling about amidst a moonscape of buff and white papers and scarred, chestnut-hued wood.
“Best we could do on short notice,” the biker said. He was a diffident, ordinary sort. His face was raddled with pockmarks, and his complexion reminded the other of red-brick walls slathered over with graffiti.