Her hair lay in sticky threads, escaped from a long plait, which perhaps once ran straight and dignified down her back.

She had been running. Banging herself against the frames of the little room- housing not much more than a steel cabinet, a writing desk, a chair. She had splinters in her palms, under her fingernails; she had scratched at the walls, frantic- some posters of pin-up girls had been torn down in her frustration. Their torn faces watched her sadly, their bodies posed in absurd positions, a leg here, an ear there...

In the time it took for her toungue to release itself from between her teeth, he had already walked to the bathroom and washe his hands of the filth.

Of the fifth.