Lee is ComingOnly three more steps before the landing, and then he could rest. Now only two. One. Finally, the landing. Bathed in perspiration, Aziz unfastened his shirt’s top button. He had made it to the fifth floor. The bench he was hoping to sit on to catch his breath, the very same bench he used to climb on as a child, had vanished. There in the morning, gone by the afternoon. Leaning against the wall, he muttered, ‘Stairs are good for me,’ though he no longer believed it.
One more flight of stairs and he would be home.
Wafting up from the building’s internal courtyard through a broken window came the smell of rotting garbage. He tried to breathe through his mouth, looking down at the floor and away from the shattered windowpane. His eyes fell on two dead cockroaches, the size of la
