It's an extract from a children's (although I don't know about this part. The second half, with the Circus will fit more for children) story I'm trying to write right now. Not got a lot for it just yet, but I'm writing it on a "make it up as you go along and see how it all fits" kind of way. ---- It had an incredibly appropriate name. Gutter, the town was called - probably after the man who founded it, James Gutter, or maybe it was just named after the great big shithole it had become. It rained almost all the time in Gutter; if it wasn’t from the constantly-grey clouds that lingered above, then it would be the piss that people threw out the window. What did it mater who it landed on? In one of the many gutters of Gutter a rat swam in the mix of urine, spit, rainwater and last night’s bath. Sad to say that it wasn’t the worst thing that would be swimming down these streets. Its journey was stopped abruptly by the long sharp stick that had dug itself into the rat’s back. With one sad last squeak, the rat died. The owner of the long sharp stick, an old woman, almost bent double from old age, danced around happily and let stream from her mouth a quite extensive array of gibberish words. She took off the rag which she had been using as a shawl of some kind to reveal a small makeshift bag which had been slung around one shoulder. It stank of mud and faeces and some animal which she had forgotten to take out some weeks ago. Watching the shish-kebabed rat with wide, greedy eyes, she was about to put it into her bag when, out of nowhere a large hand pulled her back, and with a lot of force, slammed her into the wall of a nearby building. The huge man then picked up the rat-on-a-stick and smelled it with his hair logged nose. “Ooh! S’fresh!” he said. Ripping the rat off the stick and shoving it into the pocket of his tattered cloak, he ran the down the street.