Stories need a roof over their heads too
I am the wonderer.
I pass underneath curtain-less windows, yellow light spilling out into the dusk and I wonder: What lives play themselves out on the inside? What excites them? Anything they look forward to? Or do they drift, aimlessly?
I wander through this maze of lives oblivious of my existence, always just a question or two away. Unless I ask, no one asks me. Time passes as I wonder. I imagine and write down their stories for no one.
The streetlamps wink out as I leave them behind.
It was just another night in Eden. Too dull. Plenty patrons, few thrills. Lots of souls milling about, but not enough bite.
Another night that announced itself woefully too short.
That’s what Eve thought, anyway, but she’s been a jaded barkeep for too long.
To anyone else, the place was buzzing. The dancefloor was packed, the techno beats pulsating. Strobes were drowning out the darkness. The cash registers were having a fucking ball.
Nostromo watched her reflection in the mirror, listening to the wall-mounted clock as it went tick-tock. She could go the longest time without blinking. Or breathing, for that matter.
It was an unremarkable day. Just like the many thousands that had preceded it and the hundreds that would follow. I was walking down a busy street, mid-morning traffic lazily buzzing by. Grey concrete pavement stretched ahead, the breeze kicking litter this way and that. The rows of identical brick townhouses broken up only by the usual assortment of convenience stores, mobile phone dealers, car mechanics, fast-food joints, the odd gas station. But there, in between this parade of humanity’s finest, something caught my eye.
Dr. Quirkey’s Emporium.
The dryad is dreaming of different days.
Days under a different sun and wind-kissed skies.
Days when the world was young, unbound, and carefree, full of laughter. Filled with endless fields of wildflowers and of butterflies twirling in the breeze. She’s dreaming of trees swaying to the tune the old gods once breathed into the world.
The fortune teller sits alone, shoulders bunched, back hunched, forlorn, watching passersby, eyes pleading, begging someone to ask her a question. Any question. The question that matters.