Isabel Ostrander 
Annihilation 

A SEVEN-FIFTY derby, new only that afternoon and destined already to be reblocked! Ex-roundsman Timothy Mc Carty, whose complete transition to civilian attire was still so recent as to be a source of satisfaction to himself and of despair to his tailor and haberdasher, shrugged his broad shoulders and trudged sturdily along in the teeming downpour. A walk he had come out for, to clear his head of all that psycho-junk he’d been reading, and a walk he would have, but he could think of a place the devil could take this rain to, where it would be better appreciated!

Rain dripped down upon a sodden wisp of tobacco which hung dejectedly from beneath his mustache, and muddy streams spurted up almost to his knees with every step. It was a mean district, a neighborhood of broken, narrow sidewalks, dilapidated tenements and squalid wooden shacks, which became more squalid as Mc Carty neared the river, although here great warehouses loomed against the lesser darkness of the night sky. It was barely nine o’clock but there was scarcely a light in the streets, except where irregularly spaced street lamps emitted a blurred glimmer which emphasized rather than dispelled the murky gloom, yet Mc Carty strode on with the unconcern of one treading a once-familiar precinct.