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Corner bar philosophers have intoned that one can experience the most intense loneliness in the most crowded of cities. Let this week’s challenge image of one piece of glitter among the concrete lead you – into the light or into the dark. Your choice of 100 words.
I’ll start with a story …
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Pray for me.
This city is a stone bitch. Sun-bleached promises by day, gunmetal blue betrayals by night. Even the neon mocks you – advertised good-times no more than stage lights and Styrofoam columns.
I’ve been a sheepdog too long. More muscle memory now than passion. Memories of every case, every tear-streaked face, every broken body like a million pages weighting down my soul.
I wear my wolf well among the predators. I laugh and listen, throw down the booze and still …
Tonight? Blood for territory. I’m supposed to stop this?
Not this time. Walking away.
Pray for me.
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Now, it’s your turn …
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featured image, cropped, by Caroline Cagnin, Pexel’s license
Cameron says: “Dammit,” the keyboardist snarled. “He’s passed out and won’t be in.”
The band look startled. “So what are we going to do?” the drummer replied. “All instrumental? Someone else sings?”
The bassist saw me walk up. They recognized me as this was their fourth show I’d caught. “How well do you know our songs?”
I looked a bit sheepish. “I pretty much know your CD.”
The drummer nodded. “I’ve heard him sing. He’s better than our current guy.”
The bassist nodded. “You OK with crowds?”
“Let’s find out,” I answered. And that’s how my music career got started at eighteen.
Fletch says: “Kingpin,” that’s what they called him. Used to come in with his arm ‘round two girls. Liked to get ‘em in different colors. His rainbow collection he called ‘em.
Used to brag that the cops would never take him. He was too powerful, too smart. He had an informant.
But, wasn’t like that. First I knowed anything was wrong, smoke filled up the room. Then something hard hit me across the face. Ten seconds flat wasn’t nobody left standing.
They dragged them out like an animal, him crying, praying, calling for his mommy. They wrote a song about him, “Tommy McLean Down under at the Down under.” Didn’t nobody listen. Guess he wasn’t as powerful as he thought.
Jake says: Like clockwork, every fifteen minutes on the dot, you lift your eyes from your Cuba libre and gaze around the room and wonder what you’re doing here. The band is massacring April Wine with riffs distorted by bad speakers, but nobody else seems to notice. They’re all busy talking, laughing, drinking. Circling each other, seemingly, like anxious sharks.
There’s an agonizing tension in the atmosphere. Everyone here, including you, is looking for something they can’t find elsewhere – and it isn’t here, either. You’re beginning to realize that. But you stay anyway… because where else have you got to be tonight?
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