The one good thing about no one being at the office was that Carl got a parking spot close to the door. He no longer had to use the auxiliary parking lot even if he got in late.
He didn't have to cross the busy street on the way out to get to his car anymore. Not that the roads were busy the way they were anymore.
His drive home was a lot more leisurely than it used to be. No one honked at him for stopping at yellow lights. No one cut him off anymore.
He stopped at a light and looked around. This had used to be his favourite intersection. On Friday evenings it would be crowded with people going to the restaurants and coffee shops in the area. Sometimes he was one of those people. Now there were only two restaurants left. Everything else was boarded up.
He thought about Emily who used to work at Panini Plus and wondered if she was working somewhere else or if she was out of work.
Or if she was dead.
Carl had expected that he would share stories about fighting for toilet paper and making sourdough bread with the staff at all his favourite coffee shops and restaurants after the pandemic. But instead he had returned to find that the few places that were still open had all new faces working in them.
None of the new staff knew what had happened to the old staff.
YOU ARE READING
Missing Things - FIRST DRAFT
Ficción GeneralA first draft of a mess about a guy, a pandemic, and an empty office. It's about missing things. One of the things that's missing is a plot. As I said, this is a first draft and it's here for funsies. At some point it'll be taken down because I'll w...
