Chapter Sixteen: The Concrete Throat
The canal underpass wasn't a place; it was a condition. A gullet of weeping brick and sweating concrete, it swallowed light and sound and spat back only echoes and the cold, wet breath of the earth. The air was a solid thing, thick with the smells of stagnant water, rat piss, and the deep, mineral damp that rises from forgotten foundations. Graffiti bled down the walls in neon gangrene—tags, threats, declarations of love for girls who would never