Raven Read Free Page A

designed for storage converted into an open plan bedsit. It suited her fine; she didn’t have any visitors come to her home – not ever. On the way up the lift’s cables whined mercilessly and the light that lit the small cubicle flickered in protest. Once on her floor she took her keys from her satchel and went to open the lock.
     
    What disturbed her most were the fact that the lock was already open and the door ajar. She hesitated a moment, her ear strained at the door listening for any movement from within. Five minutes past, to which she was certain if anybody had been still in there than surely they would have moved by now. The old door creaked open as she pushed it with the toe of her boot and came to rest in the door stop on the wall behind it.
     
    She took a moment to survey the room, methodically working her eyes over each object to ascertain if it had been moved from its previous position or not. Happy with the way things were, she moved towards the only other door in the apartment which led to the bathroom – nothing suspicious in there either, so she went back and shut the front door and dead bolted it.
     
    It was only as she moved towards the kitchenette that she noticed the sliding door to the balcony had been forced open. The lock clasp was now broken and the remnants of it lay on the floor where it had come to rest. Someone had been in her apartment, and from the looks of things, that someone had come in through the balcony door. She stepped out and took a careful look around. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She glanced up and checked the roof and then peered around the sides of the balcony.                         
     
    Being the only resident on the top floor meant it was almost impossible that another tenant were the culprit of her home invasion. Well whoever it was had gone to great lengths not to walk in the front door. Aiyana wondered why this was considering the same person seemed to have left that way.
     
    The distant wail of a siren brought her back to the present and she glanced in the direction of the central business district which now seemed to house the low-life population of coastal society - the murderers, wheelers of drugs and armed weapons traders. The ever present dark clouds hung like a blanket over the dilapidated buildings, threatening to spill more rain at a moment’s notice and only further enhancing the doom and gloom of the once vibrant city. Steam and fog also seemed to cling to the skyscraper buildings that dotted the skyline making it impossible to determine where the city actually started and finished.
     
    Her mother had once told her of such a place called Gotham City that had screened in a Batman movie her grandmother had seen over eighty years ago. You could still download it on AAD – which was the All Access Device that people view cinema on these days. Gone were the large and cumbersome DVD and Blue Ray players – those things were old news. Times had changed and what mattered a hundred years ago couldn’t be further from the minds of the inhabitants of the coastal city nowadays. Honestly, it was a feat just to walk down the street without getting mugged or killed. Aiyana sighed, completely deflated that her private sanctuary had been invaded by strangers. She took one last look around before heading back inside.
     
    She went and fetched a long off cut of wood from under her bed that she used to frame the paintings she did and brought it back to the living area and wedged it into the track frame of the balcony sliding door so that it couldn’t be pried open from the outside. Satisfied that it would keep her secure for the time being, she pulled closed the drapes and went and made a cup of tea and something to eat.
     
    Ten minutes later she had a grilled cheese sandwich next to her as she placed a fresh blank canvas on her easel and got busy mixing black and white paints. The city was dark, her mood was dark and this was going to