It's Still Life

Previous instalments of this story: Part 1: The Pull Back   Part 2: The Measure of Her    Part 2: The Gatekeeper’s Response  Part 3: The Colour of Walls   Part 4: Tectonic Shifts  Part 5: Out of the Frying Pan  Part 6: How to Break Eggs Part 7: A Moon River  Part 8: Starlight Shines on the Roof  Part 9: Before When   Part: 9.1 Flower Power

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At the Intersection of an English King and a Saint
Part 1: The Pull Back

I left home at 18 … the same month that Woodstock happened – moved into a studio flat with two sash windows painted shut, room dimensions only slightly smaller than a chicken coop, and after paying the first month’s rent, I bought an electric fan that hummed like the sound of low flying aircraft.

I kept the fan turned on my face during the day while I practised typing, reproducing page after page of shorthand, and come night I aimed the fan at my bed … as I recall it was considered the hottest August on record.

My room was on the 2nd floor above a busy intersection named after an English king and a saint — there was a convenience store on the north corner where I was never asked for ID when I bought wine, a dry cleaner-shoe repair-key cutter on the east corner (I never went in that shop because I had no money for dry cleaning), and Bumpers Pool Hall on the south corner that I’d only been in once when I was bursting for a wee – it was the only place open after 4am at night, the alternative being to empty myself in the alley behind the bank, which was on the west corner.

Perhaps I should admit that a girl friend and I had consumed several bottles of wine that night, or maybe we were just carrying around someone else’s empty bottles — my memory is weak on this point, but she was laughing so hard that she didn’t need a toilet anymore – but I did – I was sober enough to laugh and not wet myself.

And the only other thing I remember about my first flat was the trail of black ants on the wall and across the kitchen countertop every morning, which I kept moderately under control with boric acid, and my goodness … I loved that flat — it was mine.

Something’s pulled me back here, maybe celestial cues, the Sun and stars, or Earth’s magnetic fields … whatever, but here I am standing on the intersection named after an English king and a saint, and I’m looking up at a For Sale sign in the window of my old flat.

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Written for Denise’s Sunday Six Sentence Story prompt, including the word ‘bank’. Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Images are copyright and not to used without permission, which I willingly give when asked, and when not for commercial use. Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2024.