chaplin
01-22-2008, 09:46 PM
I don't think much of this story, at all really, but, whatever, I'll go ahead and post it anyway.
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Night, Again
As expected, punctually at 9:00, a librarian informed him, like all of her fellow librarians had done one day or another, that the library was now closed. This woman, on a rapid course away from external youth, had grown accustomed to spotting him—hunched over, with legs folded in—at his customary table while on a last round of the floor (gathering up stray books left by patrons, here on a side-table, there on the arm of a chair). She spoke her wonted words, more casually than politely, and, as a reply, he turned his face toward her general direction. Before standing to leave, he slipped both arms through a backpack resting against a leg of his chair.
As he shuffled through the now half-lit building, he passed a line of people standing in an askew queue winding out from the check-out desk. As he neared it, the last person in wait—a college girl, painfully innocent-looking—involuntarily looked up from the books in her hands to his ample figure. She continued looking; her glance eventually passing from a half-conscious dart of the eyes to a patent stare. Don’t blame her for staring though; consider what met those glossy, girly eyes: a man, bearded with sandpaper stubble, whose large frame was covered only by a too-tight t-shirt and a pair of stained slacks that barely managed to just reach the dirty socks beneath them; and all this mass, lumbering in a half-waddle, was topped with that child-size, tangerine backpack. He did not return her gaze, having, long ago, become inured to the looks his appearance elicited.
He presently passed through the building’s wide, glass entrance doors, first ambling down a shadow-striped corridor. Then, outside in the close, shifting night air, he cut obliquely across the street and started down a long, dark road that, laced and traced all over with various sorts of shadows, led to his home.
Several blocks down, and farther away from the center of the city, he halted beneath a tall, spindly streetlight and languidly gazed at its equally languorous glow. Its dull, monotone, shining bulb was enveloped by the boughs of an adjacent tree, gloomily illuminating the drab foliage in a diminishing burst of listless, artificial light. Here, with this strangely pleasing sight as signpost, he strode off into a blackened park just behind and flopped his rough bulk onto a flattened, fading slab of cardboard.
He sighed, mostly from a sense of the accomplishment of one more day, and dragged his backpack around onto his lap. He opened it, the zipper moaning dejectedly, and lightly drew out a flimsy, slippery magazine page with three edges straight and square, and one ragged and ripped. The page held a smiling, porcelain-smooth woman, frozen in mute advertisement, her elegant form just made visible by the weak, limpid light of the moon. He held her more delicately than would be expected, examining her gentle lines one more time, then tenderly placed her in a tattered box, filled to the brim with similarly torn sheets, and soundlessly shut its halved lid on her unwavering grin.
Taking a swig of water from a label-less bottle at his feet, he leaned his head back onto the little backpack, and swished the cool liquid around and around his teeth, thinking thoughts—rudimentary, basic, vital—that the sumptuous procession of centuries has washed out of most minds.
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Night, Again
As expected, punctually at 9:00, a librarian informed him, like all of her fellow librarians had done one day or another, that the library was now closed. This woman, on a rapid course away from external youth, had grown accustomed to spotting him—hunched over, with legs folded in—at his customary table while on a last round of the floor (gathering up stray books left by patrons, here on a side-table, there on the arm of a chair). She spoke her wonted words, more casually than politely, and, as a reply, he turned his face toward her general direction. Before standing to leave, he slipped both arms through a backpack resting against a leg of his chair.
As he shuffled through the now half-lit building, he passed a line of people standing in an askew queue winding out from the check-out desk. As he neared it, the last person in wait—a college girl, painfully innocent-looking—involuntarily looked up from the books in her hands to his ample figure. She continued looking; her glance eventually passing from a half-conscious dart of the eyes to a patent stare. Don’t blame her for staring though; consider what met those glossy, girly eyes: a man, bearded with sandpaper stubble, whose large frame was covered only by a too-tight t-shirt and a pair of stained slacks that barely managed to just reach the dirty socks beneath them; and all this mass, lumbering in a half-waddle, was topped with that child-size, tangerine backpack. He did not return her gaze, having, long ago, become inured to the looks his appearance elicited.
He presently passed through the building’s wide, glass entrance doors, first ambling down a shadow-striped corridor. Then, outside in the close, shifting night air, he cut obliquely across the street and started down a long, dark road that, laced and traced all over with various sorts of shadows, led to his home.
Several blocks down, and farther away from the center of the city, he halted beneath a tall, spindly streetlight and languidly gazed at its equally languorous glow. Its dull, monotone, shining bulb was enveloped by the boughs of an adjacent tree, gloomily illuminating the drab foliage in a diminishing burst of listless, artificial light. Here, with this strangely pleasing sight as signpost, he strode off into a blackened park just behind and flopped his rough bulk onto a flattened, fading slab of cardboard.
He sighed, mostly from a sense of the accomplishment of one more day, and dragged his backpack around onto his lap. He opened it, the zipper moaning dejectedly, and lightly drew out a flimsy, slippery magazine page with three edges straight and square, and one ragged and ripped. The page held a smiling, porcelain-smooth woman, frozen in mute advertisement, her elegant form just made visible by the weak, limpid light of the moon. He held her more delicately than would be expected, examining her gentle lines one more time, then tenderly placed her in a tattered box, filled to the brim with similarly torn sheets, and soundlessly shut its halved lid on her unwavering grin.
Taking a swig of water from a label-less bottle at his feet, he leaned his head back onto the little backpack, and swished the cool liquid around and around his teeth, thinking thoughts—rudimentary, basic, vital—that the sumptuous procession of centuries has washed out of most minds.