Short story

This is my first ever attempt at writing a short story - it was for skuule. Anyway, I kinda like it, so here it is.

Short_story_Ridley_Budden

The colour of the overcast sky was matched by the concrete landscape surrounding the small coffee shop. Though the area was under constant construction, it was always eerily quiet. The grey attire of the ground and buildings were like the visual equivalent to a low drone - comforting in a way, but relentless - smothering. Walking into the establishment, it seemed to me that everyone tried to avoid sitting near the western wall of the place, where the largest window was, but it may just as well have been that no one wanted to get in the way of the man behind the counter. He had spilled something and was quietly shouting at the rag he was using to pick the mess up. Despite the clean-looking man’s antagonism towards his task, and the clientele’s lack of enthusiasm to interact with him, the interior of the coffee shop wasn’t as hostile as the outside. I recognized some of the people sitting down, but I wasn’t sure whether I’d actually met any of them before or not. I was taking a seat, having decided against getting anything until the man at the counter had calmed down, when by coincidence my friend, Leung, came out of the washroom and took his place at a table facing away from me. His bag and coffee were on the table already. He was dressed for summer weather, looked like he was getting ready to go on an adventure. Watching him take in his beverage was as enjoyable to me as consuming one myself. He held his cup and stared into empty space, and turned his head when the door opened and a man walked in. He was a close friend of Leung’s whom I’d only met once before in passing, and whose name I couldn’t remember, except that it sounded Irish. He was wearing a surgical mask, since he had just come in from outside. He said hello to Leung and nodded at me. “Hey,” I said. Leung heard me greet his friend and turned around, surprised because he hadn’t noticed me before. He said hi, then turned back to the Irish man, who was still standing just inside the door. He never sat down - he just lingered next to the door, as though he had a time limit. They talked for a moment while I stared at the wooden floor - Leung was congratulating the Irish man for something or another, while the latter just kind of sloughed it off. “To tell you the truth, I’m still a bit drunk,” he said. When I looked up, he had taken his mask off, so I could see his face. As he continued talking, there was nothing about his speech or movements that seemed off, but it was in his face - he had on a cartoonish expression, and parts of his beard looked almost like it had been drawn on with crayon. He was definitely intoxicated. He looked like a beatnik. “Well, I’d better head back to work,” he said after a few minutes, replacing his mask. As he turned to go, he took a sticker out of his pocket that said “I am red” - some kind of political slogan. He tried to stick it to the inside of the window, but had forgotten to remove the backing from it. It just didn’t seem right. I stood up and took it from his hand and said, “Get out of here, you’re drunk.” He left without a fight, and I placed the sticker in my own pocket. Leung had gone back to sipping his coffee and hadn’t noticed any of this commotion, and I decided to leave him in peace. I watched the Irish man disappear around the corner before I went outside myself. I had a horrible feeling about what he might do - he had seemed harmless enough at first, but that was inside. Even stable people could do weird things outside, brought on by the way their footsteps would echo inside their own bodies. I put on my own mask as I walked down the steps of the coffee shop.

It was rare to see a car in the area, but there was one parked outside a construction site right nearby. There were two workers talking next to it. They said nothing to me, but if they had, it obviously wouldn’t have been friendly. I got the impression that the workers didn’t like being there, noiselessly shading in the skeletons of future towers each day. They existed only to work hard and hate themselves. They were known to sometimes explode with their suppressed anger, with a force as powerful as a maternally enraged gorilla.

I was walking past the side of a tall building that was usually covered in posters, but that had recently been hosed down. Without looking, I removed the “I am red” sticker from my pocket and stuck it to the wall, very casually. I had nowhere else to put it, and it would get covered up by another poster soon anyway. Half a block on, the sidewalk ended abruptly at a brick wall. Every step I took towards it, I felt it impeding me more. I wanted to walk through it, and reached out to touch it, hoping it was possible. The cold, rough surface told me to stay out. Knowing I couldn’t just made me want to embed myself in the mortar all the more. I wanted to be very small and live where derangement couldn’t follow me. But I duly continued walking down the middle of the street, and saw the Irish man turn the corner just up ahead. I ran forward and peeked around the corner at him. When I was sure he wouldn’t notice me, I crossed quickly to the other corner. He turned his head just before I was out of his line of sight, but didn’t seem to care that I was there. I was relieved by this. He was heading in the direction of his workplace, so I felt secure that he wasn’t going to do anything in bad taste. Considering my chore complete, I headed up the street. It went up a slight incline, and ran alongside a park with a single enormous tree in it - the only green space in the area. The sun was beginning to come out, and so were the people. They seemed almost to bubble over the crest of the hill and into the park - their bodies would one day sink into the grass and fertilize it. I wondered whether the park would one day be engulfed by cement, or whether reeds would penetrate the surface of the streets over the years. I guessed it had to be one or the other.