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Something About the Rain
It was like something out of an old 80s pop song. And not those ones with the bleeping and blooping that were basically remixes of the PacMac(tm) soundtrack.
The rain kind of tapped on the window and it slowly got darker outside.
I was sitting on my couch, enjoying a book and a cup of tea, lounging like you'd imagine a sloth would, if it decided one day to give up the trees and get an apartment on the south side of the City.
Once upon a time, I'd had a cat. Or, rather, the people who had the apartment before me had had a cat, and it seemed to not get that they'd left months ago. Possibly it was more a property-based cat than a people-based cat. Either way, I was stuck with this cat. Well, was. Because the cat wasn't so property-based that he stuck around even lacking the prospect of getting fed. You see, I hadn't much of an idea of what cats ate, and so decided not to leave anything out. In fact, I'd gotten rid of all my plants, as well, just in case it started in on those.
So the cat left. And I had no plants to take care of, which made sitting around the apartment almost completely guilt-free, which may have been the actual reason for getting rid of the plants and everything in the first place.
The point about the cat was not to highlight my cleansing experience of getting rid of all of my plants and banishing all potential cat foods from any surface in the place. The point I was making about the cat was that if the cat had been around what happened on that Monday probably could have been avoided. Or at least I would have been able to escape while the cat was providing my first line of defense.
The first I noticed that something was out of the ordinary was about noon time.
I'd occasionally mused, throughout the morning, on the 80s-ness of the rain against the windows, and wondered just why it was I wasn't at work.
I could hear, in the bedroom, the phone ringing, which was probably related to the aforementioned work. It might have been my boss, it might have been the other guy on the twisting floor with me. We'd been twisting string together at Harways Hand-Spun String for something like five, six years together. Now, when you spend that much time doing something like that with someone, you tend to strike up a friendship, if only because otherwise you'd just be looking around the room awkwardly as you try not to stare at the minute strands of string you're twisting together, which would, I'm told, make you blind if you did stare at them for too long.
But I had no idea why I wasn't at work. That wasn't the thing that was out of the ordinary. The thing was, and possibly this was out of the ordinary, I didn't spare it a second thought, even as I heard the phone ringing and thought to myself, "I'm not at work today."
No, the out of the ordinary thing all started with the knocking at the window.
To be continued next week...
disclaimer:
This issue is dedicated to a shiney piece of tinfoil in an otherwise dark world.
That dedication is mailed in from the Head Editor, sequestered away in his secret Bahamas bunker.
Mind the dust while we redecorate.
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