Rain lashed down, and a harsh wind whispered, casting the street in a damp, uneasy gloom. It was the kind of storm that clung to the skin, not with a refreshing chill, but with a kind of malice that settled upon the street and muted the world. Mr. Fisher pulled his collar tighter. He had been helped out of a spot of debt some time back by an acquaintance of his, and the favour had been recalled in the form of a short trip to the post office to pick up a parcel. So presently Mr. Fisher found himself equipped with a scrap of parchment detailing its address, and the object of his misgiving, an alley that slunk on the side of the main street, was where it called for him to go. But with the onslaught of rain and a strange taste in his mouth, he found himself reconsidering the whole affair. It wasn't just that. Mr. Fisher found himself questioning the address he had been given; it was written in an unfamiliar hand, and, as far as Mr. Fisher knew, there was nothing there at all. Just some nameless buildings. Certainly no post office. But Mr. Fisher never made a business of inquiring and man's word is his bond, so, with a furrowed brow and a growing sense of unease, Mr. Fisher forged on.
The alley was forgotten by the world; Long, strangled and cloaked in a vile, verdant tempered pall, the rain had rendered it a thousand twisted reflections of itself. There was silence except for the thrum of the rain, the intermittent sounds of Mr. Fisher's footsteps and the wounded howl of the wind. Children, their faces black with soot and smeared with grime slunk in alcoves and recesses. Mr. Fisher quickened his pace, suddenly all too aware that he, with his greatcoat, gleaming pocket watch, top hat and scientists' satchel, was exceedingly out of place. That made him a target. On the man went; left, right. Another left. Mr. Fisher, ever inclined to the more poetic sentiments to life, supposed that, if this winding network of streets, with its byways and back-alleys, was the labyrinth, the intermittent streetlamps were his Ariadne's string. They stood there, straight-backed and guttering diligently against the rain. Mr. Fisher permitted himself a smile. He found some irony in the thing. His musing was halted by the emergence of a tall, frail building which sagged somberly over the street. He had arrived.
The building was one that to bore an uncanny resemblance to that of a hunched over old man; the mottled redbrick facade could have been wrinkled skin, stretched over a wooden frame. The eyes were hollow sockets of windows, broken until nothing remained but a periphery of jagged glass. Mottled redbrick protrusions were gnarled fingers that clutched a wooden support beam of a walking stick. Brass letters, their luster long since forgotten, read 'THE OLD MAN'S MENAGERIE'. A menagerie? The letters were nailed unevenly such that the old man's face was twisted into a toothy sort of smile. The whole thing, with its subtle incline and rotted foundation, looked to be in immediate danger of collapse. The man knew that he should turn back, tell the acquaintance that he had the wrong address- but, despite the building's sinister charms, he was seized by an intrigue- something which could only be described as the singular and wholly insatiable curiosity of a scientist. And so it was that the man walked in, and it crossed his mind-though not for long- that if those broken windows were the eyes, and those faded brass letters were the yellowed teeth, then he was walking into the building's gaping maw.
After some walk, the man found himself in a room that was lined from floor to ceiling with nothing but shelves- and upon them, jars full of green liquid. And there was something floating in them. Mr. Fisher was a man with one of those faces: solemn, sombre, sober, dim and dusty; and never known to be marred by expression. but after seeing the 'something' in one of the jars, his face contorted, and his characteristically dim complexion flushed with purple. It was an eye. its pupil was dark and fathomless; the sclera a stark white with a convoluted mess of capillaries; and its iris the same poisonous green. He continued checking the jars, which were all filled with some new grotesquerie- reptilian appendages, organs, but it was only after Mr. Fisher spied a whole cat in the last jar that he deemed the whole business to foul to continue, so he turned around and reached for the handle, when something caught his eye- fleeting, almost imperceptible, yet unmistakable: it was the eye from before. It had blinked. He stared at it, and it stared back, the veins shining with a pulsating verdant light. At once the other jars commenced to move: the reptilian appendages flexed, fingers curling and uncurling. A tail, still suspended in liquid, swayed lazily. The cat's eyes shot open, glowing an unnatural green, and its mouth stretched into an impossibly wide grin. The shelves groaned as the jars rattled, their contents awakening to a strange, synchronized rhythm. Cracks spiderwebbed across the surface of the jars. One by one, they shattered, and the creatures inside slithered, crawled, and crept free. Fisher scrambled for the door, but it wouldn't budge.
Then, amidst the growing chaos, footsteps –slow, steady, deliberate-- echoed down the hallway outside.
Closer.
Fisher's eyes widened in terror as he heard a slow, raspy voice drift through the unending gloom.
"I see you've met the collection."
...
Outside the menagerie, a lone streetlamp flickered dimly against the rain. It sputtered once, twice, gave a last, mournful sigh, and went out.