As the morning sun rose in the east, I was wide awake, preparing to take my work to the District. I had to be early if I wanted to claim a nice spot on the strip. I had collected all the work I wished to take with me to sell plus a few blank canvases to work on while I was in the downtime.

Now I was just getting dressed. Times were dangerous – especially in the District, especially for me, so I wasn't dressing nicely.

King Jarvis's men were liable to be everywhere. Hunters, Undead, you name it.

He had a big habit of sending others to do his own dirty work.

I took a final look in my mirror before heading out, and that's when I heard it.

There was an Undead crawling up the window – sniffing out shifters again. I froze, staring at the window, hand slowly moving to the sword at my side. Inside I was growling. This was the third time this week. Did someone suspect me?

I inched closer to the window and looked out.

The Undead was not far from me now, but he was too far to the left of my window. His clear, unseeing eyes not noticing the attention he was drawing from me. He was dressed the way all King Jarvis's Undead men were fashioned: red shirt and blue jeans cut-off just below the knees. King Jarvis didn't spend a lot of money on his Undead, but they were always uniform.

He paused about five feet to the left of my window, sniffing the air hard. Like all Undead, he clung to the wall. Undead were faster on the sides of buildings then on the ground anyway.

Suddenly, his head swiveled in my direction, and I found myself staring in those clear, unseeing eyes. My breath caught in my throat.

Just as suddenly as he stopped and looked at me, he was moving on, snuffling about the wall like a dog on the hunt.

I turned and leaned back against the window shivering. That was too close. One of these days, the Undead were going to be investigating my abode, and what could I do beyond saying, "Welcome in sir!"

Still, there was nothing I could do about the Undead for now. All I could do was pray that they never came for me.

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Author's Note: I'm currently working on several stories at one time. If there's a particular story you think I'm working too slowly on, send me a message. Messages saying, "Get your ass back to work!" are just the right kind of motivation someone like me needs in order to move on, and for right now, I have plenty of time to work on different story ideas at once.

This story, although based on Earth, is different (obviously). If you think I need more description about the way things are working, feel free to let me know. I could always use pointers and people yelling at me, saying "This is wrong. That is wrong." or "That is right. This is right." or even "Why don't you try this instead?" In other words, all my novels (anything that says it has more than one chapter) could use a beta - someone to tear it apart and spit it out again.