It stinks here.
I mean really stinks–make you want to retch kind of stink. It’s the sort of stink you back away from, and no matter how tightly you clamp your hand over your nose and mouth, it still wriggles its way in, takes up residence in the back of your throat, starts a family and begins an entire dynasty of nastiness no amount of toothpaste or mouthwash will be able to conquer.
But it wasn’t the stink that stopped me dead in my tracks. It was the fact that I was suddenly standing in the midst of something resembling a cross between a colourful shanty town and an ancient mystical bazaar.
The minute we stepped off the train and onto the dusty ground we were engulfed in a myriad of sights and sounds, the press of bodies, and hawkers bombarding us from all sides.
Oracle grabbed my sleeve and pulled me away from a man who, shouting in my face, was attempting to convince me I couldn’t live without what appeared to be a battered old thermos, and another who, tugging on my arm, told me he could cure all my ills–all for the price of a small secret.
As she dragged me through the throng of milling bodies and dilapidated tin shacks she pulled out a pocket watch, flipped open a dented lid, and checked the time.
“Damn it,” she said. “Why can’t this be easy?”