"I was thinking about what lies ahead."

"I was thinking about what lies ahead..." As he spoke, Walter clutched his head in pain. When he opened his eyes, he found a young woman his sister’s age cowering behind him. Looking down at his hands, he found an unfamiliar walking stick. Raising his eyes, he gazed out over the unfamiliar city. Rows of uniform houses lined cobblestone streets, electric lamps dotting the street. Chimneys pumped black smoke into the air, exposed gears spun and ground together, and pipes ran steam from one machine to the next. The whole city was alive with an energy that Walter had never experienced before, having come from a sleepy country village.

An angry shout from in front of him had him looking around. Walter started in shock. A burly man with a billy club was rushing at him. His coal-darkened skin was black from countless hours spent working the furnaces that fed the steam pumps.

Was this a dream? But everything felt so real, from the finely crafted walking stick that he held in his hand to the faint scent of smoke that drifted downwards, what remained after the majority of the smog was siphoned from the skies by hidden machines.

Deciding that he might as well act under the assumption that this was at least real enough, Walter raised his walking stick. He was by no means an experienced street fighter, but both Mother and Father had been in agreement on his undertaking of fencing lessons, which he had taken to like a fish to water, or an Irishman to anything alcoholic.

Swinging his walking stick, Walter stepped into the burly man’s charge, parried his wild attack, riposted with pinpoint accuracy, and left the man gasping for air, clutching at his throat. A quick blow to the temple with the weighted oaken walking stick knocked the man senseless.

Turning to the young woman behind him, Walter was surprised to find her motionless. In fact, looking around, the whole world seemed motionless, as if knocking out the burly man had knocked out time itself.

The smoke hung in the air, billowing columns frozen as they emanated from black cast-iron and red brick chimneys. The birds in the sky were frozen too, as was the water pouring from the gutters. The plain woman who was scurrying away from the back-alley fight was captured in mid-fall, her skirts already falling over her head, revealing her plain white knickers. Despite her exposed undergarments, Walter paid her barely a glance. A coward was hardly worth his attention. Were she conscious, he would have mocked her for being unwilling to help a young woman in trouble, but as was, there was no point in insulting a statue.

Turning to the two more immediate people, Walter tried poking the man, receiving no response. Poking the woman a few times also resulted in no reaction. While she was frozen, Walter took some time to study her. Her clothes were worn, showing clear signs of having been patched repeatedly. The patchwork clothes were loose, clearly intended for someone of larger stature. Since she was frozen, Walter decided he might as well see what lay beneath such baggy clothing.

Undoing her belt--more a piece of twine really--he let her already loose pants slide down her legs. Her shirt followed suit, landing in a pile beside her. Underneath her dirty clothes was a surprisingly girlish body. She had acceptable curves, a toned waist and stomach, and enough muscles to easily lay Walter out were he to dare to do something like this while she was conscious.

Walter had to admit, there was a certain charm to muscles. Though dainty girls like Charlotte or Mother were all well and good, a tough young woman who wasn’t afraid of a little hard work was good too. Come to think of it, Jane was sort of like that.

He shook thoughts of other women from his head. After all, it was rude to ignore someone in front of you. The young woman who he had just removed the outer garments of had a bit of a surprise lying underneath. Her undergarments were, in contrast to her clothes, clean. Cheap, perhaps, something that Walter could easily tell as he felt their texture while he removed them, but they fit well and were better maintained than her outer garments.

The woman was, by this point, left completely bare. Her red hair was filled with dust and grime, her nose slightly long, her cheekbones slightly sunken, her hands calloused. Her skin was, much like the burly man’s, blackened by coal soot. But after wiping her off a bit with some water from the canteen Walter carried, pretty white skin was revealed. It wasn’t as flawless as Charlotte’s or Mother’s, but it was a hearty, healthy kind of skin.

As he walked around the woman, he examined every part of her, from her breasts to her butt, from her nose to her toes. Her hair, after a bit of water was once more applied, was shown to be a fiery red. Her eyes still shone with spirit, despite her hiding behind Walter. To be fair, Walter didn’t blame her. Few people would want to face off against an angry, burly man, coming at them with a billy club. Were he not fairly certain this was an illusion of some sort, even he might not have been so brave.

The sound of a machine resonated in his ear, causing Walter to stumble. It repeated again and again and again, each time louder and louder, and the woman’s naked form blurred. As the sound grew louder, it became more distinct. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Walter's vision was filled with blackness, and his ears were filled with the ticking of a clock.