of fog, fishermen, short
written and illustrated The bench planks dug into her ribs and bruised her pale skin. If you walked past her you might not notice her thin form on the bench, few people ever did. At some point, she stopped noticing you as well; you in your smart clean coat and polished shoes that clacked against the ground, expensive coffee in one hand and expensive phone in the other. Her hair was damp and dirty, hanging in matted strings around her thin face. She may have been pretty when her cheeks were full and rosy and when her watery eyes weren’t so bloodshot, but the world had a weird way of destroying beautiful things.
th e m o pe n . S u s pi c i ou s s ta i n s covered the stairs and walls, and a sulphurous smell seeped down the stairs. Shaking, she brought out another key. The doorknob was covered in rust, though the lock mechanism inside was still sound. She paused, listening. The hum of a radio disguised any other sounds that may have been made by the man inside. Steeling her nerves, she twisted the key in the lock and slowly pushed the door open, the hinges silent. The apartment was dark, the only light coming from the glow of the old box tv in the corner. A radio commentated the baseball game unfolding on the sil ent screen.
***
She closed the door quietly, though she knew he knew she was there. He always knew.
She walked through the park down to Pier 45 silently. The weather warmed by mid-morning, evaporating the fog. She would be gone by then, almost like a ghost, or maybe an angel. Her feet seemed to know something she didn’t and by late afternoon she was standing in front of a maroon brick building on a quiet street. The salt from the ocean was no longer enough to mask the smell of filth. A warm breeze tossed a plastic bag against the wall and over the gutters but it did nothing to settle the chill she felt under her large jacket. Her hand was steady even as she extracted a brass key from her pocket and fit it into the rusted gate. The groan from the hinges hardly affected her as she pushed 022
“So you finally came crawling back,” his voice was deep and gravely, an after effect of a lifetime nicotine addiction. “Yes sir.” “Humph.” He was silent for what felt like hours and when her breathing finall y evened out, she made her escape to her small room in the back. The door scraped against the floor as she opened it, the after-effects of the last time it rained when the roof sprung a leak. Her space inside was small and bare. A glass jar on the windowsill contained a dried rose from her last birthday but there was little else. The old wooden floors were poorly fitted and allowed for cold wind to wreak havoc in the winter.
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