Writing prompt

At my first meeting with my writing group the group leader brought a box of writing prompts. I picked out a picture of a man and his dog, sculpted to appear as if walking into the wall with only the back half of their bodies visible.  This was my first experience using a writing prompt and it wasn't easy.  The following is what came out, written in one sitting and without edits--I don't have a story to use this in so I wanted to leave it in "original condition:"


'A vanishing night.  That's what his dad would have called a night like this one.  Thornton looked around at the fog and drew his patched coat closer around his neck.  It was like being on a stage with the curtains drawn, he thought.  The normally intrusive city noises were cowed into submission and street lights that usually glared through the night's depth were mere ghosts that wavered through the misty sheets.


"Heel, Slate."  At his command a short-haired dog obediently padded over.  Together they turned beneath a lamppost and trudged down Oak Avenue, the name on the sign the only actual tree on the street.  Reaching out, Thornton let his hand slap against the rough limestone corners of each set of stairs leading up to another building--another sagging pile of dark apartments.  At number seven he turned and rose up the stairs, grasping for the key in his pocket.  Around him now a few squares of yellow light peered blearily at him and he bit back the urge to start shouting at them, if only to hear a voice in the darkness. ...'  Read the rest.