| Dirk Gently
Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Upon the shore
Posts: 8,304
| Fiction: A Stranger
[image=left]http://www.alternativenation.net/gallery/files/1/stranger.jpg[/image]Mute voices must have reached out in our small group; passing remarks, humorous jibes, sharp jokes. The cold air snaked just overheard to show recent conversation. I say mute voices as I was far away, always the observer, walking just noticeably behind - I made sure it was not so far back as to cause unwanted concern yet far enough I could be alone. Passing under the blue lamps perched over a nameless café I yawned quietly and watched my breath fade up the wall. I’m not the depressed type, honestly. My flaws: I over-explain the joke from last night’s episode in too much detail, I care about how my hair sits, I’m quietly paranoid, I’m not exactly an open book and I’m somewhat a perfectionist. A pedantic perfectionist at that. Snapping a leaf from a passing tree and ripping it apart slowly, I admired the feel of the injured thing as it tore. I know what’s wrong with me. It’s certainly not depression – just lacking lately. A pungent smell of dying, wet roses filled the air in front of a thickly painted florist we passed. A flaw I was just discovering (a requirement really) was that I need something special in my life at all points or I become disinterested.
I’d only noticed recently that I’d begun to take on a persona that was not becoming of me in the slightest. The persona had been named and was beginning to reveal itself to my worried friends. I found myself changing slowly over time; my eccentric grin replaced by a sly one, wild hair flattened into thick strands, blue, soulful eyes darkened to deep hazel. I could picture what he would look like and often did. He was my superior, but I was becoming my own creation. A friend turned round and asked me what time it was. He invited me to come out the next day for more of the same. Replying sure, I’m always up for some smoking and drinking. Handshakes, hi-five’s and hugs later they turned to leave as I leaned on an uncomfortable brick wall and flashed a furtive grin and watched them amble across the watered road.
My company made for the early-late train and I left my post on the wall. Glanced up at the clear, night sky my smiled faded as curiosity claimed my countenance. I recognised it as beautiful. Admiring the stars thinking they were always trying to outshine one another in an eternal desperation to be far more alluring to some far off soul than any of its celestial peers. I sighed, still unmoved. The feel of the cold rain on the metal railing shot up my arm purposefully. I’d like to be moved. I’d like to cry at something other than the Lion King. My body now brushed against the railing – a dragging hand caressing it absently behind me - slowing down over the river to stand and admire the sky in more detail. A car passed, slicing through the puddles. It had been raining earlier…a nice, soft haze of rain. The kind of rain you could enjoy without being noticeably drenched. You get wet slowly and gently as though the sky was breaking bad news softly. The moon shone down smoothly, gracing the roads as to make them shine. I saw his face in a puddle as I stepped in it – breaking his smirk. His smirk genuinely frightened me…his incisors were sharp and pointed, making his smile seem so demonic. The trees stood firmly, as always, but allowed the slow, deceptively strong wind to make them whisper to each other in the night. Still nothing. Not too far off, the point in the part below wherein I’d broken up with a recent ‘lover’ was visible at times as the branches would only allow the sight momentarily before swaying to block it. I didn’t feel anything then. I was very disappointed. A heart unmoved by tears…I need something to move me. This indifferent persona is killing me.
Finding little to captivate me, I gave up on the sky and became acquainted with the gutter. The inspiration of generations of tortured poets and possessed lovers was lost on me. The beauty was apparent and I admired the streams of clouds, but it vaguely affected me. I must move on.
Pushing the bridge away and a deep breath out, I made slowly for the stairs. Each step rung out into the park and my wet shoes infrequently screeched. Letting my mind wander in these small ways I had hopes of glancing upon an interesting sight in such lightless obscurity. This park was ironically assuaging; having lost the person that brought that comfort to that park. Imagine having something that gave consolation to you because you lost the creator of the consolation. You could always find me there on cold nights thinking intimately or passing by like a stranger in the day as though it were any other park. Every shadowed corner and dull lamp reminded me of a past lover. Her presence lingered softly – perhaps why I visit so often. I’d give everything I had to have things as they were in the beginning. I could feel her warmth against me in this park and I felt comforted. The incident, memory serves, broke my heart. A light flicked on in a distant flat across the park and made slivers of shadow dance across the river. I was still unfortunately attempting to move on from her, so once again I found my gaze lingering in the sky. The moon veiled its disfigured form behind a cluster of dark shapes, illuminating their edges from rust through yellows to orange. I stopped to take in the sight in all its glory. Sadly, I just noticed I could see my nose was blue from the pale light and began my familiar, conditioned saunter.
I didn’t so much start as I did stop completely.
There was a man in my park. He was a stranger to me, but something about him felt vividly familiar. He stood on the adjacent path to me, which merged with mine further on. The presence I felt from this figure was so commanding you began to question whether anyone you ever met was really all there, at least as much as this sternly shaped shadow of a man. He was facing the river silently while his hair lifted in clumps and dragged playfully across the wind.
I recognised him as he lethargically rose from his stupor over the river’s edge to face me. His cuspidate ‘fangs’ stretched out so far as to touch his bottom lip, had it not been pulled into that chilling sneer. Thick strands of hair, just longer than my own, kept his face obscured for the most part. He was looking down, but still commanded the stand off that seemed to be happening. With the angle of his face, I could just see his flashing eyes and the faint glimmer of the dim lamps behind me over his white teeth.
He was just standing there, this intensely familiar man, toying with me by standing there smiling so casually. The wind still played gently with his long hair; lifting clumps of the jet black length and waving it across his face as though reminding him, with the wide-eyed enthusiasm of a young child, it was there. He turned back absently, engrossed in the infinite shivers of the silvery waters surface. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other and sank down as far as the support of his arms would comfortably allow. A shiver raged through my body and tingled into my extremities.
This man made me frightened. He was such a vivid presence in this hollow world that my mind gave up any hopes of context. I wanted to step back away from the solitary figure, if not from fear then to shelter from an icy breeze that now seemed to emanate from him.
He spoke out so softly, but his words broke across the river and ripples emerged as though they’d skimmed across to the other bank. He spoke only idle chat, but I still feared this man. At the water’s disturbance, his upper body lifted slightly and he laughed a hollow, glassy laugh. To a stranger he could have been crying. Any concerns I had about this man were lost…this sound suspended my thoughts – its soft tone came to me forever, grasping my mind with warm fingers. The sound slithered up my neck and into my mouth before seeping into my mind in a heated gasp. I felt warm, with this noise, with this feeling, it comforted me. I staggered backwards and landed flatly on the trunk of a leaning willow tree, lulled with paternal care, long ago losing any control over my own body and placing so much faith in this man I felt part of. I was so captivated, a smile dared slash across my face, my eyes thought to dance, my veins ran warm and limp, my heartbeat softened to a slow squeeze, the leaves crunched slowly under my hair and I was happy.
When the fancy left him, the laughter, so debilitating, left me. The dying echoes rung away as some divine being lifted its finger from the rim of a pristine glass.
I straightened up slowly, the smile fading. Soft streams of smoke left the shadows at his feet. He was now leaning on the stone wall between him and the nervous river. The cuspidate teeth slid back behind his lips as a focused countenance took root in his idle stare. The wind avoided him now as the young animal retreats from an angered parent; his hair fell limp over his dark, stern features. The trees silenced their soft whispers and the defining part of his shape was now the arched shoulders – his body and head collapsed yet again onto the support of his leaning arms. He let out a deep sigh, but the air that he let out was intense red. I watched it curl slyly into the depth of the night sky – faint wisps followed, each more faint than the last. I stood up quietly and saw the water fall placid – as though a silver sheet had risen silently from the depths to cover the indecisive emotions.
Crawling up his dark form, the smoke enveloped him entirely. The presence left me again like a warm, cordial breath into the midnight sky.
Staring where he had been standing, eyes wide and lips apart for a breath or two, I could be seen emerging from the park and leaving in a more traditional fashion than my counterpart up the stairs. Slowing down, I looked over my shoulder for the last few steps from the plateau to stare blankly where ‘I’ had reclined. I ducked under an outstretched tree and disappeared into the street, pursued softly by the dying whispers of my park. I glanced at the sky and thought about my lover. I ruffled my hair into a nice mess, took out my phone and under the eternal beauty of the pale sky, apologised for everything I’d ever done, may have done or even have possibly implied. I love her so much. The wind breathed a fresh haze of water over my face. I sighed happily at the refreshing notion and broke out a warm grin.
We are very happy together.
__________________ the drugs were found at a rest stop, and that the rifle was for shooting kangaroos as I drove.
Last edited by Potatojunkie; 23rd August 2005 at 8:54am.
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