Thursday, December 8, 2011
and it begins
He looked around and was pleasantly surprised. Nobody was there. Not a single soul. He was all alone.
While this unexpected pocket of solitude appealed to his quiet nature, he knew it did not really make a difference to what he was going to do. You see, this was a man that lived exactly the same way on a Monday as he would on a Sunday. He walked the same walk and paid almost no attention to the possibility of an audience. He would go about his business the exact same way whether anyone noticed or not. To him, pretense was something foreign. This was a simple man who believed that while people are prone to making mistakes and giving in to their emotions, if the intention was an honourable one (and you can find honour in every little thing - his father used to tell him), that was all that could be asked of an individual.
Maybe he wasn't as simple as he would like people to believe.
He picked up the suitcase that was left in the middle of the fancily named, "Smoking Room" and opened it in between puffs of his filtered menthol cigarette, his only worldly vice (so his mother used to lament). Now, he knew it did not belong to him, and he knew that he really shouldn't be going through other people's things but this suitcase had been there for over a week, untouched, almost purposefully ignored by the throngs of people who came to this small dingy room to smoke. He didn't have the heart to let its owner be without his suitcase any longer. He had lost his pet cat once when he was six, it never returned. The thought of Snowflake still brings a tear to his eyes even now, almost twenty years later. He could never knowingly put anyone else through the same experience, even if it was a suitcase.
"Maybe if there was some form of identification in the suitcase, I could return it to the owner", he thought to himself as earnestly as anyone could have thought so. He clicked open the two clasps that held the suitcase closed. Without wasting a breath, he opened it up and searched for anything that might reveal its owners identity. Not noticing the bundles of money, the frilly pieces of clothing and the wonderful perfume scent that wafted out of the open suitcase, a scent he would come to crave in the weeks to come, he reached for a card at the bottom of the case.
It read -
Serenity
No. 19 Jellico Road
"Serenity, that's a nice name. I'll drop this there after work I guess", he thought as he clasped the suitcase shut while dragging out the last few puffs from his cigarette. His regular Monday dinner of soup and bread would just have to wait. Serenity needed her suitcase.
He picked up the suitcase, dusted off the stray ash that had begun to gather on it and made his way to his small cubicle on the 13th floor. Now, he had Serenity to look forward to after work. Nothing could have prepared him for the wanderlust that would follow. One that he could not control and would initially, at least, come to resent.
to be continued
-dib- at 10:10 PM