Every so often, I write something. Usually it is opening chapters to things I rarely finish, or small anecdotes about the banality of my existence, or sometimes, when I am feeling a sense of jubilation about something, a poem of some sort. Today however, is an opening chapter.
The chaotic city spun freely, without boundaries or purpose. Neon lights littered the darkened metropolis, with the promise of entertainment and excess. It's inhabitants galloped through the night, in search of love, in search of lust. In search. All the while, time running towards them and eventually past them. This was how nights were spent, in the pursuit of happiness, seeking respite and distraction from the crippling underbelly of social distress and isolation that plagued the city.
Alcohol and moral corrosion oozed from the soiled pavements, covering everything in a potent musk of underachievement and fear. This was the city, a place of dreams and horrors, of success and failure, of wealth and distress and it was these attributes that shone bright and echoed through the blackened alleyways. Luxury cars paced the narrowing streets, carriages to the rich, driven by the poor, a salute to the capitalism that engulfed the minds and actions of all. Toxins bled from the exhausts and cigarette smoke spilled out of the cracked windows which when intertwined created a mysticism that hypnotised and blinded onlookers.
In the northern-most hub of the city, traffic was replaced with tranquility and the blinding lights were dimmed in an attempt to convey a district in slumber.From where he sat, he observed rows of houses, alike in style and colour, all of them closed to the public. He liked that. He liked that people were able to cocoon themselves away from the outside world, bury themselves in the things they thought mattered, all manner of things, from the trivial to the momentous. They all did it. Whether it be an army of literature that resided on dust covered shelves, or the heaps of backdated newspapers and periodicals that lay strewed beneath them, like the house at Number 22, or the memorabilia of a past life, of past places, of post cards and china plates with the names of capital cities emblazoned on them like at Number 18, her loved it all. Oh how he admired the residents of Hudson Close and the way in which thet all possessed the ability to personalise their space, stamp their brand of habits and customs on a property that called home.
His eyes ran across the houses and stopped at Number 26, with its gate ajar and the protruding shrubbery that had seen better days. He stared through the downstairs window. From where he stood, he could clearly see the flicker of a televison set that had been left on, the only source of light in a room that was naked, bar the solitary beanbag and table that lay rest adjacent to the television. With familiarity his eyes closed in on the room. He remembered the many days and nights spent sitting on that beanbag, staring at the walls, contemplating her whereabouts, endlessly flicking through the televisions limited five channels in a weak attempt at passing the time. All that time. Wasted. He could clearly recall the amount of scuffs and scratches on the surface of the table in the room, a skill he had acquired on one particular evening while he awaited her call. The memories. From where he stood, the room seemed as empty and as alone as he had remembered. How he wished he had claimed ownership over that space, decorated the whitewashed walls with trinkets of a life lived, with literature, music, memories. Instead, the emptiness of his life was now staring at him.
"Sod it!" he thought. "I'm going home."
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