This short tale is the product of an art trade with DarkestHour55.  He produced two images based on two short stories of mine, and challenged me to come up with a story for his image "Back Alley"
 

Since all my short stories double as writing exercises/challenges, I took the opportunity to produce a work written entirely in the second-person POV. I also kept dialogue to an absolute minimum in an effort to flesh out longer, more descriptive blocks of text.