Weekly exercise

An Evening

The man turned his head and died.

There was a light shining high above his head.

The lights buzzed in the empty halls that echoed with silence.

A shot broke out, throwing off the tranquility into chaos.

A breeze blew into a room.

A door opened at the end of the hallway, around the corner, where the darkness outside
didn’t show who was entering.

The sky outside was blackened by gray clouds that obscured the sliver of moon.

The leaves blew in the trees, while the wind made a low, whistling moan.

The sidewalks were all empty, except for the man walking towards the building.

A man was walking by himself down the walks amidst the trees.

The street lamps were mutedly shining through – or rather against – the night sky.

The yellow glow against the darkening bluish-black sky added to the wind’s coolness in
making the night have a sense of anticipation – a feeling that something was about
to happen, on the brink, but just out of reach, being brushed forward by the wind’s
fluid fingertips.

Back on the streets, the black streetcars sat motionless, sleeping along with their owners
that slept behind hushed, clouded windows.

A dark red truck made its way through the slowly blinking orange-yellow lights at the
edge of town, creeping around the curb to take a turn onto the hard earthen road
that faded into the clouds of darkness, swallowing the truck as it ambled up to a
house with darkened windows and black shadows gracing its porch chairs and
corners.

Down another road, coming from the west, a car disguised as ordinary rolls towards the
blinking red light that marks the turn towards the inner portion of town.

No one is out tonight.

Trouble seems as far from the landscapes and dozing buildings as the snow that covers
the footsteps of a stalking Indian in the native lands across the prairie.

The soft wings of moths grace the lampposts, brushing them with dust that sticks to the
textured, gray poles that will feel hard and cold in the dusk’s freezing chill when
winter comes, but now, graced with the moth’s gift, they are soft and subtly drawn into the muted, gray, embracing atmosphere.

A single bat kisses the horizon with its swooping circles and erratic wing-beats.

The empty, calm evening is hushed by the clouds gently hugging the edges of the town,
hills, and protecting it from the chilling night sky.

His wife lies in his bed, smiling in her sleep to think that he is hers and she is his, and that
he is next to her in this life and love and wondrously comforting, soothing, balmy
summer’s eve.

The empty space next to her is filled with blankets and pillows to fill his absence till he
should return.

She rolls over in her reverie, and sighs with content.