Pale Carnations -ch.4 Up.5- -mutt Jeff- -

From his coat pocket, he pulled the pale carnation he’d taken from the parlor last night. Its petals were already bruising at the edges, brown creeping inward like decay remembering its purpose. He’d been inside the Velvet Thorn again—not as a customer, never as that—but as muscle. As the thing the madam called when a gentleman forgot that no meant no, or when a working girl tried to run. He’d never hurt the girls. That was the joke of it. He’d hurt the men who hurt them, and somehow that made him a monster too.

“Yeah,” he said to the empty street. “Same.” Pale Carnations -Ch.4 Up.5- -Mutt Jeff-

Chapter 4, Up.5, ends.