In Parades, Pt. 1

While walking through the city square, Alan felt that something was different, something had changed. He stopped and looked around but could not tell what made him feel uncomfortable. The air was cold, and he shivered slightly even under a thick winter coat which was ostensibly filled with duck down. Alan curled his hands into balls and screwed them further into his pockets before he continued walking.

Later, when standing in line to purchase a cup of coffee, Alan realized what was different with his daily walk. For the past few months there had been heavy construction on a few buildings that were undergoing renovation. While in the process of being renovated, the buildings had become steel skeletons, their innards in plain view of the world. Alan never looked at them while passing. He felt a sense of shame, a slight connection to the voyeur for whom nakedness means ownership. Instead, as he walked along the same route every morning on his way to work, he would read the signs proclaiming low rates per square foot, the signs claiming with forceful agression that the restaurant soon to be on the ground floor of this particular building would satisfy all of the diner's desires. The buildings themselves were not seen, the people that worked on them disappeared into a fog of apathy as soon as they began to work. Alan was not interested in any of it.

The only thing which Alan had come to recognize was the cacaphony of birdcalls that echoed through those steel ribs. Hundreds of birds had come to roost in the upper, unfinished floors where steel spars hung bone dry. Every morning when Alan walked to work he would hear that song - at first it was faint, a mild sound that reminded him of playing with other children, fighting over a ball. The closer he walked to the square, the louder the sound became until it was an orchestra playing in his ear, it was a dog laughing in the night outside of his window. Alan hated the sound of animals and his steps quickened without fail through the square until he was safely ensconced in the lobby of his workplace, glass doors a mirror through which that grating sound found only reflection.

The next morning, Alan woke with a start from a dream only half remembered, where a blank moon had pulled him across the sky as if he were chained to her. He dressed with the prim perfection of absentmindedness, and turned once to look at his apartment before leaving. With the lights off(for he always turned off the lights before leaving to save money on his energy bill) the room looked like a landscape painting, all hard curves and edges hidden under the blanket of nightfall. He closed the door and locked it, and made his way outside, still thinking with some confusion about his dream from the night before.

-Rich

something is in the air