If nobody has told you today, you look absolutely gorgeous.

(Or handsome you choose :3)

Gore Street was not a street you found by accident. You could live in the city for decades, learn every shortcut and alley, memorize the rhythm of the buses and the way the light hit the brick at sunset, and still never see it. But if you were meant to find Gore Street, it would open to you without warning, like a cut in the map.

It never appeared the same way twice. Sometimes it branched off a clean, respectable road with cafes and hanging plants, a thin crack between two buildings that looked too narrow to be anything at all. Other times it surfaced behind train stations, beyond loading docks, or at the end of streets that should have ended in dead ends but didn’t. People argued about its location, even about whether it existed. Those who hadn’t been there insisted it was an exaggeration, a story told to scare children or tourists. Those who had been there rarely talked about it, and when they did, they never agreed on the details.

But everyone agreed on the feeling.

Gore Street felt old in a way that had nothing to do with age. The buildings leaned inward, not quite touching, as if conspiring. The air was heavier there, damp even on dry days, carrying the smell of iron, oil, and something organic that no one could quite name. Sound behaved strangely: footsteps echoed too loudly, voices carried too far, and sometimes you could swear you heard whispers coming from walls that had no openings.

The streetlights flickered constantly, though no one ever saw them fully go out. Their glow was a sickly amber that flattened colors and made skin look pale, almost bruised. Paint peeled from doors in long strips, revealing older layers beneath—reds, blacks, browns—like the street was molting. Windows were narrow and tall, most of them dark, but occasionally you’d notice a pair of eyes watching from behind cracked glass, disappearing the moment you met their gaze.

What made Gore Street truly unsettling wasn’t violence, despite the name. It wasn’t blood on the pavement or bodies in the shadows. It was memory