U Hesitations

She did not know why she had taken his advice but there she was,
standing in the darkened alley with the sky ablaze with dancing stars,
twinkling above the pinnacles of the daunting slate roofs. There she
was, standing ready. But she did not move. There was the courtyard at
the end, lit with the flickering light from a grandfather of a lamppost
that should have passed on fifty years earlier but was still clinging
to some lost rag of hope. One step was all it took, all it took to
enter the alley and forget the jazzy, light-stricken high street behind
her. Well, it hardly enjoyed that title. A crack resounded from the
walls of the old warehouses that hemmed the alley on both sides. She
had unthinkingly taken the first of her last steps.