It is dark early this time of year.

Raindrops fall off the eaves and hit the pavement, a million tiny mouse-traps in the dark. The wind wails like a small child as it blows through the trees. The child calls out for her mother, who seems to answer, before you realize that it is the roar of a train's whistle bringing death to any in its path. Your heart stutters with the cold as the rain pelts your coat with wet, icy bullets from the dark, bleeding clouds. Thy hang like a low and dusty ceiling, a basement to a bright world covered in stars, little holes in the fabric of the night sky. The bottoms of your bare feet freeze, as if the concrete were the frozen gray snow that collects in the crooks of curbs in the middle of winter. You slap them hard as you walk, trying to bring the heat of your blood back in, but the cold only creeps up your legs as if you were wading slowly in to an arctic ocean. The wind caresses your face gently, reminding you with its little beads of water why you came out dressed in everything except your shoes.

If you cried, your tears would offend the rain. You hold them in until it becomes too dark for the water drops to see them rush down your face in a flood that would make Niagra jealous. The tears hold no emotion, but dive headlong from your eyes in a constant stream of kamikaze fighters that head for the ground, bouncing off of your cheeks to mingle at your chin, leaping to join the cloud-blood-rain.

The heat assails you as you let the shower clean the dirt and grime from the pale and cold skin. The soap and lather, heat revives you.

You're ready to go back out again, and find yourself snuggled up in a strange room but with someone who is in no way a stranger.