Poor, Poor Alice.

Alice is soft-spoken, generally reserved, highly intelligent, and heartbreakingly naive. Nestled into her tiny Boston apartment, she kept her blankets folded, books alphabetized, and her lamps dusted. The warm décor and soft lighting concealed her cold, still existence. The photo frames she kept on her desk held memories of a brighter time in her life, a time filled with more love and laughter than a girl could ever ask for. Her parents were her best friends, and after death ripped them from her life, she was never the same.

On Fridays, she left her safe cocoon of a living space to keep up with the only friends she held onto, for coffee and a book club.

This week was Wuthering Heights. Before she left, she slipped into her favorite sweater, which matched her deep brown eyes, and, in Alice fashion, she arrived five minutes early with dog marks in her book and almost every page annotated in her messy handwriting. Alice dissected Catherine and Heathcliff’s tortured love — her own vulnerability slipped through.

“I just think,” she said with a hesitant smile, “everyone wants to be loved. Even when they pretend they don’t. I think... I think people are mostly good, even when they’re broken.”

Her friends nodded. She noticed a brief look between them. She sensed the light, underlying judgment in their eyes. Silly, silly Alice, they chanted under their heavy sighs.

She walked home alone that night. The cold breeze was nipping at her ankles. Just as she walked over a puddle, she dropped her book right in front of her.

“Damn it,” she whispered. She would have to buy a new one.

As she went to reach for it, another hand beat her to it — this one much more calloused than her own. She looked up to see a man in a dark jacket, with blue eyes, jet-black hair, and a tragically charming smile.

“I believe this is yours.” He spoke with a smooth, captivating voice that caught Alice's attention from his first utterance.

Poor, poor Alice.

“I’m June. Let me walk you home…” he offered.

At first, she was slightly wary, but his charming demeanor — though slightly jarring — gave her a sense of ease. A false one maybe, but a calm comfort nevertheless.

They spoke of everything: Boston’s seasons, their shared experience of losing parents too young, learning independence when the world gave no other choice. He didn’t ask for her number — he earned it. And when they met for coffee days later, it felt like a page turning in her life.

Ever since June had entered her life, something shifted. The rain persisted over the city, and the cold began to infiltrate her previously comfortable apartment. One morning she woke, and after her daily coffee on her porch, a black cat with beady yellow eyes dropped a dead rat at her feet.

Disgusted, “Hey, take that away!” she yelled at the cat. He sat, licked his paw, and stared at her.

Poor, poor Alice, the cat seemed to say.

That same night, as Alice sank into a heavy, dreamless sleep, something shattered the stillness.

She awoke with a gasp — the air thick, her room steeped in shadows — to the violent flurry of wings and a shrill, piercing squawk. A crow, black as pitch and maddened, thrashed through the room in a frenzy. It dove at her, claws slashing the air, talons scraping across her skin like razors. She screamed, disoriented and bleeding, flailing wildly as the creature tore through the space like a living nightmare.

The attack felt endless.

Finally, with trembling hands and desperate shouts, she drove it back toward the window, its wings brushing her face one last time before vanishing into the night. The silence that followed was deafening.

Chest heaving, Alice stared at the open window, her blood smeared on the sheets, and whispered to herself, voice shaking:

“Never again.”

She told June about her experiences, who only smiled.

“Sometimes life sends omens,” he said cryptically. “Sometimes people don’t listen.”

She should’ve walked away from him then. The feeling his words gave her sent shivers down her spine — a feeling in her gut she could not shake. But instead, it only drew her in more.

Poor, poor Alice.

Then, the dream.

She saw her parents — not as she remembered them, but luminous and distant, as if pulled from the stars. Her mother’s voice was soft but firm. Her father’s eyes were sorrowful.

“Noli credere verbis malis ex pulchro risu,” they warned. It was Latin. Her parents took pride in teaching her.

“Never trust evil words from a pretty smile.”

She was utterly lost.

She woke with tears on her cheeks and a tightness in her chest she couldn’t name. She put on a coat and left her apartment, walking into the night. Her footsteps led her past a dim alley where the streetlights flickered like dying stars.

A hand grabbed her — the same calloused hand that once picked up her book.

She gasped, but before she could scream, June had her pinned against the brick wall, his grip iron around her wrist. His eyes were wrong — too dark, too hollow, not at all what Alice was used to.

“I know what you fear, Alice,” he whispered, his voice deeper and darker than she remembered. “I know that echoing silence you live in. I know how scared you are of being forgotten, of being... alone.”

“Let me go,” she hissed, trying to pull free.

He moved in closer.

“I can give you what you want. No more empty rooms. No more cold dinners. Shake my hand, and you’ll never be lonely again.”

“C’mon, Alice, won’t you make a deal with the devil?” he smiled, striking her with the same soft face that melted her heart.

“You’re insane,” she snapped, trembling.

She turned to run.

But then — he said it.

“Noli credere verbis malis ex pulchro risu.”

She froze.

How did he know?

“Poor, poor Alice. You’ll never escape me.”

“I don’t understand,” she muttered.

Heart thundering, she turned back to him. Her mind screamed no, but her hand lifted. She told herself it was a dream. That this wasn’t real. That maybe, just maybe, loneliness was worse.

She shook his hand.

June pulled her close and dipped her like a dancer in a twisted waltz. His lips brushed her ear.

“But you will forever be alone.”

Then he dropped her.

She fell hard onto the pavement as his body melted into shadow, curling upward like smoke until there was nothing left but the silence of the alley.

Doctors said she had a psychotic break.

Her neighbors only then began to question why she was so quiet and never left her apartment.

Her friends pitied her. Never invited her to Friday readings again.

She sat on her porch, days later. Her eyes focused on nothing. She whispered to the shadows. Her hands, constantly shaking, grasped her coffee mug.

“Poor, poor Alice,” they sighed.

“Her mind has slipped through the cracks of grief.”

But the black cat still waits on her doorstep.

And crows still linger on her windowsill.

And somewhere, in a city that never stops moving, a crooked smile waits for someone new to believe in it.