The basement

The basement won almost immediately, as the stairs leading down to it were right there, in the center of the back wall of the building. Going down would be much safer than having to go up the main aisle to the central staircase leading up to the second floor. Donna hastily headed to the rickety wood staircase and headed down it, the old wood creaking beneath her feet, as she descended into the dimly-lit basement.

At the base of the stairs, she stepped onto a floor mat, then onto the dirt floor beyond. The basement had been preserved in its original architectural state, as part of the city's historical site program. While tours of the architecture and its historical significance almost never happened anymore, the laws still stood, and the basement was still stuck in the 1800's, an anachronism juxtaposed against the modern computers and lighting found upstairs. Outside of a small seating area for the microfische station, there was little in the way of seating down here, as the lighting was too poor for serious reading.

As her eyes adjusted to the anemic lighting, Donna began her search for a private spot to strip her dress off in, heat pulsing in her lower abdomen as she did so. The dim lighting made her both thankful and apprehensive at the same time, as it would make her harder to spot and make it harder to see what she was doing to fix her dress.

With how poor the lighting was, she realized the only chance she would have to fix her dress was by one of the few windows that had been installed in the basement. They were tiny, grubby, ancient affairs, but even a little sunlight would be a massive upgrade from the dim, barely-there lighting in the rest of the basement. She moved to the front of the basement, in a corner, the only sounds accompanying her being the muted scuff of her flip-flops on dirt, and the seemingly-loud echoes of them slapping her heels.

Once there, she took one last good look and listen for anyone else in the basement, then she carefully pulled the dress up her torso and over her head. A slight shiver ran up her spine as she removed her solitary, flimsy covering and stood nude in the dim corner. Naked in public hadn't been in the plan for the day, but she wasn't about to complain!

She turned her attention to the damaged strips on the side of her dress, struggling to see what she was doing in the poor lighting. After a few moments of fumbling, trying to find what she was looking for, she let out an exasperated sigh and looked up at the filthy window over her head. She needed more light, that meant opening the window, and she wasn't tall enough to reach it. She'd need a chair or stool or something to stand on.

She looked at the wadded ball of fabric in her hands, then back up at the deserted basement. She was going to have to leave the corner, and there was no one down here. Did she really need to untangle her dress before she went looking?

Thanks to ElvenStrider for a much-needed assist in keeping me from writing myself into a corner!