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2005-09-22 16:13:42 ET The day was a solitary, lonesome realization to what his life was about. Each day, the strange man claimed his foretold seat on the bus. The ride was close enough to death. The man did not have a job, nor did he have a destination. Day after day, he rode the bus from its first stop to its last, back to his point origin again. The man continued this pattern every day for almost eight years. There was not a soul who knew where the man was going, or where he had been. Not even the bus driver dared to question his strange inhabitants. He wore a black fedora worn through with holes on top; a crisp black t-shirt, new each day; an old pair of denim jeans with the oddest patching job ever witnessed. On his feet rested a deep black pair of sneakers. The laces were a putrid shade of violet. Wrapped around the man’s wrist was a stained gray shoelace in a knot at the tips. His alarm permeated his mind as it screamed for him to wake up. Its face read exactly 4:38 am. The man would never set his alarm at an even number; it always had to be off somehow. Again, he did not have a reason for the peculiarity. It just was. As the alarm clock sung its sweet repercussions, the man flopped his damaged hand on the old mahogany night table searching for the snooze button. In a failure, the man lifted his heavy blankets from his body and floated out of bed. The alarm still sounding; it was not 4:42 am exactly. He finally turned off the pulsating noise. Across from the mans bed stood a metal clothes rack holding his black hat, wrinkled jeans, and a smooth plastic bag protecting his perfectly pressed black t-shirt. Stripping his pale white body of only a wrinkled t-shirt, the man stood naked before the clothes rack. He turned to his left where a dresser no taller than his hip sat against the wall. Pulling open the top drawer, he revealed a neat pile of black boxers. Each was folded to symmetrical perfection side by side. The man stood in front of the dresser staring into the open drawer. He rested one hand upon the ledge of the drawer, and the other, he launched into the open casket of boxers. He pulled out a pair and slid them. The man then replaced the captured with a yellow sticky note from the stack on his dresser. The man closed the drawer and returned to his post in front of the metal clothes rack. With his left hand grasping onto the silver bar above him, he placed his right hand onto the hangar that held his jeans. The man pulled them off the hangar and slid them up his stark white legs. He continues with each garment consecutively. Last in the order was the destroyed black fedora, which he kept on a shelf on the chipped painted walls next to him. |
