Zeniyama
07-20-2011, 02:52 PM
A strange story I wrote yesterday. The Man in the Sheets is a working title for now.
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I don't leave my house very often. When I do, I make sure to cover my entire body. To achieve this, I wrap a thick blue sheet about myself. The only part of me that shows as I make my way through the city are my eyes. I try not to leave but once a week, always early in the morning, to avoid meeting very many people. You see, a man walking through town in a blue sheet tends to attract a lot of attention, and attention is something I don't need. Oh, everybody in town knows of me, to be sure, but not many people at once have seen me, so that I am less of a person to the city-dwellers than I am a town rumour or myth. But enough about that. I left my home today intending to buy some groceries. As early as I was in the store, the only other patrons were the quite-strange types of people who usually frequent grocery stores very early in the morning. When I made it to the cashier with my buggy full of items, she saw me as a weirdo as well, I have no doubt. She yawned as she scanned and bagged my groceries, and I bid her good morning as I paid and left. Walking through the streets again with my bags in my hands, I felt thirsty and decided to stop off at the pub on the way home. I laid my money on the counter, received my beer, and sat down at the bar. A drunk sitting at one of the corner tables stood and approached me asking for money. I gave him a little, and he thanked me, but just when he was about to turn and sit back down at his table, he asked me why I always walked about with a sheet wrapped around my body. I shrugged and told him that it was just what I wore and that that was that. He responded that since it was as trivial as that, I should have no problem showing him my face, just once. I told him that he would be disappointed. He laughed and asked me was I ugly, and swore that he would never tell anybody about it if I'd just show him my face only once. I refused him once more. I took a sip of my beer, and my lips felt the wet spot it left on my otherwise immaculate blue sheet. Then I felt a tug. My newly-visible skin gave out a blinding light. Or it would have been blinding, had the bartender and the drunk, the only two men in the world at the time who could have seen it, not been instantly killed by it. In vexation and embarrassment, I left the bar, my groceries, and the two smouldering piles of ashes, pulling my sheets on hurriedly as I left. I am now sitting naked at home, the walls flooded with my brilliant light, and I know that I must leave immediately. I must find a whole new town, full of hopefully incurious strangers...
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I don't leave my house very often. When I do, I make sure to cover my entire body. To achieve this, I wrap a thick blue sheet about myself. The only part of me that shows as I make my way through the city are my eyes. I try not to leave but once a week, always early in the morning, to avoid meeting very many people. You see, a man walking through town in a blue sheet tends to attract a lot of attention, and attention is something I don't need. Oh, everybody in town knows of me, to be sure, but not many people at once have seen me, so that I am less of a person to the city-dwellers than I am a town rumour or myth. But enough about that. I left my home today intending to buy some groceries. As early as I was in the store, the only other patrons were the quite-strange types of people who usually frequent grocery stores very early in the morning. When I made it to the cashier with my buggy full of items, she saw me as a weirdo as well, I have no doubt. She yawned as she scanned and bagged my groceries, and I bid her good morning as I paid and left. Walking through the streets again with my bags in my hands, I felt thirsty and decided to stop off at the pub on the way home. I laid my money on the counter, received my beer, and sat down at the bar. A drunk sitting at one of the corner tables stood and approached me asking for money. I gave him a little, and he thanked me, but just when he was about to turn and sit back down at his table, he asked me why I always walked about with a sheet wrapped around my body. I shrugged and told him that it was just what I wore and that that was that. He responded that since it was as trivial as that, I should have no problem showing him my face, just once. I told him that he would be disappointed. He laughed and asked me was I ugly, and swore that he would never tell anybody about it if I'd just show him my face only once. I refused him once more. I took a sip of my beer, and my lips felt the wet spot it left on my otherwise immaculate blue sheet. Then I felt a tug. My newly-visible skin gave out a blinding light. Or it would have been blinding, had the bartender and the drunk, the only two men in the world at the time who could have seen it, not been instantly killed by it. In vexation and embarrassment, I left the bar, my groceries, and the two smouldering piles of ashes, pulling my sheets on hurriedly as I left. I am now sitting naked at home, the walls flooded with my brilliant light, and I know that I must leave immediately. I must find a whole new town, full of hopefully incurious strangers...