Brie turned slightly in the stool and slid the glass to the other side of the countertop. She looked carefully back at the bartender, over the flipped-up collarof her sheepskin jacket, before sliding down over the orange vellum and fighting her way through the heavy Irish lemonwood out to the crusty city, with the cleansing chill, that frosts over all the filth and cans and cats and corpses. It was nearly time for dinner.
I wasn't really getting anywhere, on my feet, in my thinning shoes and stuffy stockings. The streets passed like warped time, and they barely registered before the feeling. It came over the world, with such force that I turned to watch the epiphanies dawn in people's eyes. No epiphanies. Dull knife faces.
The bitter cold was tears in my eyes when a warm flood came to my face from the bookshop. I let myself be pulled in and quietly felt the sun in the rank flourescence of the store. The store's smell filled me.
The man at the counter looked at me from over his computer. There was familiarity in the gesture as there was familiarity in his eyes. I turned on a heel and hid behind the books.
I left the bookstore sneezing. The street was getting a burgundy-anguished colour, a colour for seeing out a window, not for walking in. I ducked into the next door I saw, to look for a phone or something. I had hated the moors at night, and I didn't want to find out what night in a town felt like.
Inside was a large countertop; further back, rows of wooden shelves with jars and mysterious things. I liked it right away.
4 comments:
I like it...meet me in the bookstore?
It will be arranged.
"I turned to watch the epiphanies dawn in people's eyes. No epiphanies. Dull knife faces." I love it.
Even now as I fight to bring these words to paper, I know I am losing. The overwhelming need for fresh air rattles in my lung with the regularity and rhythm of my hand scrawling across the page. Vapors and solid columns of stale air shifted solely by inhalation are sucked down and coughed back up. I have to get out of here.
Same day_____________________________Time: Much Later
Sometimes in my dreams, when I dream at all, I glimpse a shard or two, of my past. Or as accurate a representation of a past a man who remembers nothing of a life before can have. I leave it up to brain chemicals, firing synapses, and lazy neurons to warp and alter a thin strand of memories and spin them out at will. A thread pulled taunter and tighter with each failing. It breaks, and I am left with nothing but broken strands and a puppeteers bitter frustration. So far, I have determined two things in absolution: I live in the crux of hell; and secondly, am destined to remain here until I remember a life to go back to. Lately, in the twilight of night, I am haunted by the thought that perhaps I am not forgotten at all, but that this is really my life and subconsciously I am rationalizing it by pretending to be stuck here due to an absence of memory. That really my memories have not locked themselves away from me, but I from them. It is the darkest part of the night, and the despair pierces through any chance of sleep. Numb and cold I fight myself doubtfully, faithfully,crazily. Is it so sane to rationalize that I am insane?
The hours between dusk and dawn here are sacred. The bustle of the apartment building is nearly silent, for if anyone else is awake they creep quietly, silently alongside the night. Entrenched in silence, it is now that I can mull over the day clearly, sorting out the disjointed events as I make my way up to the roof. Leaning against the door jam, I face the outline of the city, never really looking at it too lost in myself. Sometimes I bring my journal up, thumbing through the various pages and entries, always searching; never finding.
Earlier, I left the building hurriedly, brushing past the hunched figure of a girl with rich, dark hair crouched over on the top of the landing of the third floor. Hiding her face against knees pulled up to her chest, hair flowing on all sides of her like a river darkened by a moonless night. But I couldn't stop, not even by the mailboxes where an elderly man with graying hair and deep crows feet etched around kind, intelligent eyes paused and turned expectantly, a half bemused smile on his absent face, lost in the recess of his own thoughts. Closer, closer. I reached the door, shoved through it and strode out into the street exhaling deeply; exchanging the musty, dank air of Thallow Flats with the polluted, grubby air that passes for clean in a city.
I turned down the street, walking toward nothing: dim, hunched buildings shadowed in the afternoon's weak rays or hidden behind a thick paint of grimy film line both sides of the street. RAGE caught my eye, the GAR faded and reduced to a dull outline, washed away by filth, rain, and a fresh layer of smog.
I anticipated walking miles, to the outskirts, with nothing to hold me back, to leave, to truly disappear, but the irony was too much. Who would miss me, but myself, which begs the question: who am I really? A neon, blinking Rare Books sign threatening to sputter out at any moment, caught my eye before I reached the end of the block.
I ducked under the dusty overhanging and stepped inside. As my eyes adjusted, filtering in heaps of books piled haphazardly on shelves and tables. Dingy yellowed light from a few tarnished lamps cast mellow circles around a few crumbling corners. A tattered red velvet arm chair sagged against the end of a book shelf, its hackneyed foot stool missing one leg, sloping awkwardly toward the floor but still manging to hoist up a few bounded covers and flimsy manuscripts from the growing stacks on the floor. I let my fingers follow the bumps of old, thick spines as I ran my hand along a shelf leading towards the back with a skinny, winding staircase. I turned the corner abruptly, running into a youngish, girl with a stack of books piled heavily in her arms. She gasped as the pile crashed on the floor between our feet, furtively reaching into the pocket of her sheepskin coat, as a beady head poked out. A rat? She patted it reassuringly, watching me as I bent down to pick up the scattered pile. I apologized, and a terse smile flitted across her face, she seemed distracted. Crouching down, I reached under the shelf for the last thin book , lowering my head to peer under the shelf as my fingers found nothing but plush carpeting, stirring up little pockets of dust with their probing. And that's when I saw it...
word.
Bridgette Bennet Wiggins
Brie sat on the lumpy bed smoking the last cigarette of the day, while her furball friend was curled up on her small pillow on the nightstand. The alarmclock flashed 12:00, giving the dim room a red glow.
The last drag reduced me into a coughing fit burning my nostrils. When I looked up, I saw her standing at my window, blowing smoke into the night. Her clothes were dark and torn and dark rings encircled her eyes.
I wanted to talk, but couldn't. She smiled and said she loved my accent, that if she could go half way 'round the world to escape she would. Then, she glided out onto the fire escape, and by the time I gathered my senses again she was no where to be seen.
After that, I decided I'd smoked too much and the nicotine was making me woosey, so I fell into a fitfull sleep filled with nightmares of back home.
In the morning, a little dove was sitting in a cage I kept for Moose. The door was bolted shut and the cage had been draged across the room to the window.
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