Beneath the Paint: Genre Undetermined

[penthius]

The paint peeled from the wall. Every time that she stood for too long in the alley, she would start to work at it with her long red fingernails, flicking away a small patch. She spent a long time waiting in the alley, and so it became that a quite large portion of the paint was shed by her fingernails. At first, she thought that the bricks underneath were merely discolored, but as she flicked away a piece here and a piece there, she saw that there was a pattern and design underlying it all. It was beautiful, too, something that she did not realize until one patch as large as her palm was revealed. It became her obsession. She would go to the alley even when she had no business being there, and she would pick-pick-pick--

Inspiration: 2046.
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: She's not a prostitute, though it's likely something very shady that brings her to the alley. And this would be a very noir, urban decay sort of story.