The afternoon was exceedingly hot and Anamaria went to the market earlier than unusual; she knew that the discounts would be steep on the fresh fish about to spoil in the Noon day heat. The errand saved her life.

Anamaria was a creature of thousand faces; today she wore an old blue dress and comfortable set of stays that thrust her tits out just so to make the good Creole men sweat a little more and their good Creole wives bitch.

As she approached the building, the hair on the nape of her neck below her tall tignon began to stand on end. There were blackguards milling about and she could smell the fecal scent of death and gunpowder.

She kept walking; she sidled past the open door, her head bowed down, her sandaled feet peeking beneath her hem with each step and caught in the corner of her eye a bloody body face down in the stairwell. Running out of alley, Anamaria attracted the attention of one of the men in black coats.

Anamaria did not believe in God or the Devil, she did believe in Lady Luck and invoked her name as she went to the last house on the left and tried the door. It was locked.

Hot, cold, the shock of it shot from the nape of her neck, down her spine, to her fingertips and toes before barreling back to its source. Her arm lifted slowly in a trace, as if her fingers were in a dance, and curled a fist as delicate as a night blooming flower recoils in the dawn and brought her knuckles to bear upon the door.

There was no answer. She knocked again and saw herself being wrenched back before she felt it. The man in the black coat had grabbed her arm and as she turned to face him, her face was as shocked as any innocent woman's.

"Monsieur, retirez votre main de ma personne!" He did not understand, Anamaria could see it in the crinkle of his face. Determined, she spoke firmly as one would speak to a dog, "Lâchez-moi!"

The blackguard did not release her and she screamed in his face, a high-pitched sound that reverberated down the alley and rattled the glass in their frames on the little second story windows. She slapped him in the face with her parcel of fish and the poor dead creatures looked as shocked as he.

"Ye fuckin' black bitch!" he yelled and the knife in his fist gleamed like the scales of a fish as it flashed in the sun towards her belly. The force of the blow slammed her back against the door and she could not breathe. The fish flopped into the dirt.

There was a thundering in her ears and she thought it was her heart as she slid down the solid length of the door. Anamaria tried to suck in a breath and she knew what it was to be a fish out of water.