Thousand: Seven Hundred Fourteen

briskly, the girl doesn’t catch. For when everything has been yanked away but her robes, she is standing in an institutional hallway lit by flickering fluorescents, scuffs worn into the brown squares of the linoleum by countless shambling inmates, one nearby door standing open letting a pure white light pour forth. “Not to mention the leprechaun,” the girl says aloud. It stands in the pose she left it, one claw-like hand raised, an expression on its twisted face that could be rage or could be indifference. Hell, it could be joy. She’s tempted to go over and give it a