One From the Vaults

It was a mercy killing...

Dicking around in the depths of my harddrives, I found this little gem. I wrote this in 1998, while I was finishing up my culinary externship in Ann Arbor, MI. It was, in fact, three o'clock in the morning. It was foggy. Early spring. I lived in a big-arsed house with a bunch of other dudes across the street from the copshop, and was just learning how to operate as an adult (and failing miserably). God only knows what I was writing, probably some Star Wars fanfic or something that was only a thinly veiled copy of something by William Gibson. Anyway, here it is, unmolested, in all its over-written new writer glory. Enjoy.

Distraction creeps up to my window like a thief and knocks with quiet insistence. I try not to look up, knowing that if my eyes break contact with the unblinking eye of my monitor I will surely be lost. the knocking is louder now, with a sense of urgency that I simply cannot resist. My will is broken. Like a fool I look up and out of the window. He has me now. He gestures like a circus hawker at the wonders of the world revealed to me behind panes of glass. A car! There is a lovely car parked at the curb. Lights! Street lights float like tiny suns in the early morning mist. A tree! The tree in my front yard spreads its crooked, spidery fingers and reaches out to the orange-gray sky. Distraction rubs his thin, dry hands together and cackles a sound like rustling paper. I try vainly to return to the job at hand, then a car passes and I am gone again. Where could they be going at three am? Is someone hurt? Lonely? Hungry? I have but one recourse now. I must draw the blinds, turn off the lights, and be quit with this day.....but first...just one more look.