Burn Long, Burn Bright

Chapter Five

          Chapter Five

          I've sat in the park again for two days. That means today is? I dont want to find out. For some reason, the park is empty. So cold, where it wasnt cold before, so worn and bitter, where i felt the peace before. I look around and still see sunlight around, and little breeze. I notice more people. i'm sitting on the bench again, with my hands shoved in my jacket pockets. Sulking almost, like i havent done in a while.

        There is someone walking behind me down the path. Two people. They are laughing and i can hear her sweet, light laugh and if i turned, i would see her smiling, i knew. Against the flickering sun amongst tree branches, their faces glowed golden, a disrupted outline and dancing curls of the girl's long, blonde hair. I smiled weakly and stood up as they approached, my eyes down and pretending to check the my camera for something. As they passed, I took a step in front and let the camera fall to my side, clicking the shutter and as I brought it back to see, catching the perfect picture of their laughter. The guy had his eyes focused on his partner, who shyly smiled into his body.

         I brought out the scrap of paper from my pocket, one I probably shouldn't have, but may have taken anyway.  It's a photo of Rose. Polaroid, tattered and creased until one shoulder is just a patch of grey paoer, and the same arm is thrown around an older woman. Her Mom, I guessed. They look so similiar- the same open eyes, freckled nose and smile. I blinked and folded it carefully, slotting it back into my pocket and taking a breath.

          I shrugged, took a slight skip and began to jog back along the path, heading the way I walked with Rose and carrying on past and on into the streets. It took less then an hour, three buses and several miles walking before I stood at the foot of one of the first buildings I bothered to visit in this city. A library, old and traditional, the sort with rows and stacks and shelves as high as the two story roof, smelling of old pages and ancient wood. I held my breath past some sulky kid smoking a cigarette, who barely looked thirteen. I glared at him coldly, and leaned into the double doors, re-adjusting my bag on my shoulder.

         "Can I help you?" Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and it took a second to register before I realised I had hovered on the threshold longer than necessary. The woman had the tense expression that beheld traditional librarians in cheap movies, a greying, wispy bun and nondescript, pale eyes. I hesitated.

       'Ah, I'm good," I nodded and edged past, down the thin corridor and to the set of creaky stairs resting in the corner. She held my gaze for a second before moving on. The door at the top of the stairs was never locked. Despite the heavy, if rusted padlock.

       It took a while to jerk open, but the next cupboard, and ladder up to the second floor, was empty. The store room above too, except the infinite piles and rows and boxes of books, musty and decayed. A square, turned staircase at the end of the hall lead upwards, a rickety ten-or-so story block of apartments, a barely half-existing fire escape and each level growing steadily more teetering as it rose skywards.  A long trip up, and another metal stepladder, and the roof opened out around me. 

      It was easily as wide as the bottom floor, the library stretching on, but limited by a knackered air-con box, its ongoing hum barely audible over the throbbing the traffic. Stacked in one corner lay a pallet of bricks and wooden scaffolding planks. And across a length, some long-gone tenant had discarded his crumbling pigeon-house. It was calm. Serene and emotionless. Two things that sounded ideal right now.

            I took the apple I'd taken from a shop display out my pocket and tossed it lightly up, letting it fall back into my palm. Rose had said same time, the afternoon, and I almost checked my wrist for a time, before realising I never had a watch. I wondered why, after a year and a half, I was remembering again. I took a bite out of the apple, to see if anything had changed. It felt like it had, like something was so totally different, that I couldn't pin down. The apple tasted like an apple. A dry, cheap one at that. In a rush of anger, I hurled the apple as far as I could, watching it tumble and fall away through the white-grey morning. I spat the rest out in haste, but the taste lingered.

          If I cared, I knew it was illegal to throw something off a roof, in case it hit someone. I smirked with a touch of dark humour as I imagined some poor doctor giving me the death penalty if I ever went to far and really hurt someone. It may be an end to the suffering of the guilty, and some strange revenge of those they wronged in this place of religion based law, but death is no punishment. Death is peace. And calm and infinite, nonexistent sleep. Criminals would only spend the rest of their lives living off taxes and the government. I return my thoughts to sleep, and nothingness.

         

        Sunday evening. Sunday evening n the park, unless I found her first.