A day in the life of
an unburdened free-thinker of independent means Archie Gault Day dawned for Fragrance McMillian far earlier than he’d have liked. He wasn’t sleeping of course - sleep was far too mainstream - but occasionally he would rest his eyes a little, always making sure to get up early enough to be sure no one saw him at it. Most of the nights were spent sitting in his genuine 1900’s ol’ Western rocking chair listening to genuine 70’s prog rock vinyl records on his genuine mahogany record player which, he’d been led to believe, predated the birth of Christ. It was quiet in the hours between 3 and 4; he liked that, even if it meant there was no one else to hear that he was listening to music that they’d probably never heard of. Oh well, sighed Fragrance; he could always tell people about it later on. For the next track he’d selected something a little alternative. Nursing the mug in his hands, he lay back into the shroud of the chair, sighing distantly as the subtle tones of the Lumen Drones washed over him. It wasn’t that he liked the Lumen Drones, in fact quite the opposite, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that, by listening to Swedish drone music which none of his peers had even heard of, he was cultivating that cool, laid back, alternative image that deep down he felt he deserved. That’s what he thought at least. In actual fact it merely gave the impression that he had a weird, mushroomaddled taste in music, meaning that when his group of friends (or at least close associates) went out to concerts and such he was never invited. Ever. Not even when they’d all gone to see that all-transgender Abba tribute band in a club near Camden, which was a shame really, because if Fragrance had one secret love, it was definitely either Abba or Transgender people - but they weren’t to know that as he’d never voiced his affection for anything remotely mainstream like that ever. It wasn’t that he was some kind of slave to his own image or something, perish the thought; he just lived in constant fear of being seen as basic or weird, or, even worse, a strange combination of the two in which he was so mundane to the extent that it became creepy. The sudden noise of a car backfiring somewhere in the neighbourhood brought Fragrance back to his senses. He glanced around for a second, certain that someone was stealing his collection of vintage records. A couple of years back, somebody had told him that, to the thieves of the East End, vintage vinyl was like gold dust and that he should be on his guard at all times. He’d never quite made up his mind whether said person had been serious or not but, ever since, his nightmares had been plagued with images of balaclavaed youths, parachuting out of the window of his first floor apartment, an LP under each arm and presumably a malicious grin under all those layers of knitwear.
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