pisceanindigo-blog

[pisceanindigo-blog]

my best story - prompt

My best story begins every Friday around 4:00pm in Markham. The sky is one of the most boring shades of grey I have ever seen, and people on the sidewalks walk with a slouch in their shoulders. Their eyes are always lowered. I don’t bother trying to make out exactly who they are at all. In fact, I would prefer them to not know who I am, or what I think about. Once I let this go, my journey begins. I start by scraping the loose change from it’s hiding places in my house. The kitchen counter, the bookshelf, the stack of abandoned or unwanted wallets. The moment my pocket feels heavy enough (usually after approximately 4 minutes of scraping), I grab my pipe. After some short breathing, I feel my body dismiss it’s tensions, and for a fraction of a second, the sky cuts itself in half, revealing an orange opening somewhere in the middle of it all. The clocks in my room stop ticking. I know it is time I leave. 

I place my hand over my pocket, beginning to visualize where todays story might lead me. I regard them as dreams, each consideration floating through my mind, one after one. My hunger grows. I pull an ample amount of coins out of the depths of my pocket, and I drop them in the box. The driver studies me closely. We both know 6 dimes and 10 nickels do not add up to the required fare, but no one seems to mind. I lift my gaze from the payment and regard him. He is slouching in his seat, and his eyes glaze over, as if he hasn’t seen home this week yet. His vacant expression sends a sharp chill down my spine. I silently ask the universe to take care of him, and the rest of them that are lost. I step towards the back of the bus, as I always do. It is easier to think that way, with all of my prompts appearing directly in front of me. It’s the equivalent of a big puppet show to me. Posing as cracks deep within the sidewalks whose shapes seem to remind me distantly of a premonition I’ve once had, or the nameless colour of the southern skies -- the direction where I seem to be headed towards today. But I don’t care much for direction. I allow myself to see more. 

I watch from my corner of the bus as two more make their way on. They are smiling and carry stars deep within their eye sockets, at a disbelief that the bus hasn’t already flown away without them. They are used to everything being very quick. They are used to being left behind. I watch, slowly, from the back of the bus as humanity happens. This is my favorite part of the story. They settle in, and my breaths allow the clouds from the nameless sky to grab hold of me now, and for the rest of the ride. Although my body is seated, I can clearly see the top of the bus from where I am now. I watch more buses, some going East, some West, all in a hurry. I wonder if there are more of us on them. I ponder the idea of possibility -- if the route I have gravitated towards prevented some big occurrence which was meant to happen to me. 

When I come back down, the bus is at a halt. I make an effort to exit at the front of the bus, curious as to if the man’s eyes had come back to him at some point during the ride or not. I glance his way, and he mine. To no surprise, as he turns his head inch by inch, I am greeted by sinister eyes. They are cloudy, as if he were within a deep trance. Dream like. We are not similar. I smile at him anyway, and he smiles back. His is held together by two stitches, one on each side of his mouth. They look cheap, as if they had been stamped on somewhere within a factory, long ago. I silently admire him for his strength. I feel a strong urge to grab hold of him, and rip each stitch off slowly. Not stopping, even if I know I’ve hurt him in the process. I want to free him, to tell him that everything will be okay, and that he should follow me, but I will not. Not this time. I am underground now. I seem to be going West towards the city, The city I know in the back of my mind to be the one kids like me grew up in. Kids who scrape. Kids who see. I knew some that would steal, too. Time, money, silver and gold. They never had stitches either. I sit myself down and I allow myself to be. 

The old man in front of me smells strongly of life -- he reeks of wisdom and understanding. This is why I prefer to travel alone. And so far. The second our eyes meet, I am greeted by his soul, and although our hair or our fingernails are not the same, I can not shake the feeling that he knows I’m tuned in. That he knows I am here, right now. There is a soft pause, and I feel compelled to make my way on, wherever it seems that I am going. I approach the stairway. The one that leads me to my heaven each time I finish my journey upwards. This is my religion. I worship life, even if I know I am of very few who can feel it this deeply. Every step I take up the stairs triggers a small hallucination deep within the parts of my mind that are too far for anyone to reach. The parts that are absolutely foreign to the mundane vitalities of the puppet masters, and the dreamers they create. A rich profusion of my worst nightmares, designed specifically to destroy, to eat. To stop me from feeling, from sharing these words, from speaking, and most importantly -- from seeing. Still, I see suffering in the form of ignorance. I see a single flower, frail and delicate -- one of the purest forms of life I have ever witnessed. Around it, 10 bloody corpses, gather by the second. Some try to capture a picture of its beauty, the blood dripping off the edges of their charred fingertips and onto the ground. Others come equipped with grey scissors, anticipating the snip of each petal, one by one. They are composed of blood and determination. Clawing at each other senselessly, competing through both life and death, although they are all made of the same matter. They smile, each time they get closer to the flower, revealing a mouthful of millions of barbed teeth. If you looked close enough, you could see chunks of blood in the spaces between each tooth -- you could see the missing pieces. But I am not scared. Although they are made of evil and blindness, I know I am made of soul, and try my best to see. This reminds me that I will always win here, time and time again.

As I reach the top of the staircase, the bodies begin to disappear, awaiting the next time one us takes a step on, ensuring further torment to our minds. I open the doors to the city and I am greeted by the sound of a large car horn. Humans are everywhere. Some are breathing, others are crying. A few can even be seen smiling if you look closely enough. Some have wounded mouths, as if a part is missing, or has been stolen from them. I see the stitch people in the shops, behind the counters, or on display. They are even trying to put a price on flowers! “How absurd” I tell myself, plucking one off it’s stem. I carefully place it somewhere between the thick strands of my golden hair, and walk the other way. No one seems to mind. I do not recall what year it is. There is no such thing as time here, and most of the people around me do not slouch. Instead, they walk confidently, even if they have no sense of real direction, no end goal. Their eyes are not glazed over, but wide and focused -- absorbing each element of their surrounding, examining each detail carefully. It seems as though they are at a fascination with nothing more than existence itself. The sky isn’t grey, but an interesting shade or magenta now. And then green. If it could talk, I’m sure that it would tell me it’s been waiting for someone to look up and point out that it isn’t grey for thousands of years! I laugh at this. I continue to laugh all night, until the moon reminds me of home. 

Even now, I notice the city -- illuminated elegantly by the glowing advertisements on each angle of my peripheral vision, the corporate buildings whose lights never seem to dim, even in the darkest of ages. It is late at night, and at this time, I bump into some of my stitchless friends from years ago. We pause and laugh for a few moments as two grown men ahead of us shout over the flower that they seemed to have misplaced. We watch, as they blame each other for the loss, and scream soundless words at each other until one gives up and walks in the opposite direction. My stitchless friend smirks, revealing a pocket full of golden petals. I smile at the thought of his family eating tonight. “The thing about the man that would kill another for a flower” he tells me, “is that although he is angry for his loss, he knows he has an entire garden waiting for him at home”. This is what I know to be the real reason behind their madness. That is what makes them slouch. It is why they have grey skin, and their mouths hang open every time somebody speaks. I close my eyes, and focus again on my breathing. I see that my story today is on it’s final bouts of ink, on it’s final page. I quietly thank the universe for all it has written for me today, and I allow the slouched bodies to lead the way back to my bedroom, the skies of cement watching closely by.