The Stranger

The clouds were drenched with degrees of grey; the moon with cold silver, all were scattered across a black sky. Silence echoed everywhere, them, in the inscrutable horizon of ethereal figures, could hear it. Behind the closed windows, life lay.

   A pair of varnished shoes trod the ground. Wearing them, a man wrapped in a black coat the same texture as night.

   She looked like ice before melting. Her lips were painted in cheap red, her eyes in blue. Her body was easily traceable in the clothes she wore. She was old, and yet, young. Sitting beside her, was a bald man in his late fifties struggling to keep his eyelids open enough to make a person think he is alert.  The air in the bar was stale, was heavy.

    “They call us cheap,” her lips parted to say. “They call us cheap those women in fancy clothes.”

  “Yeah,” the bald man answered while resting his head on the table. He took another gulp of the beer.

    “They, those women I mean, got everything and are happy with it and we got nothing and are happy with it. Why won’t they just leave us alone? They and their stupid pride! I hate them.”

   The door of the bar opened. A man in varnished shoes and a black coat entered. There were only two people in the bar beside himself.

   “Aren’t we gonnaــ” the bald man halted, searching for air. “go?” he finally said.

  “No, not know. I mean, I dunno what else I’d like to be if I wasn’t here,” she continued.

  “What did you say? I didn’t hear that. I wanna go.”

     The man in black coat caught sight of the woman. He looked intently at her, confusion coloring his features.

   “I saidــ,”she trailed off, “Oh just forget about it. You know, I wouldn’t like to have their lives. I knew someone many years ago I can hardly remember her anymore.  She  had it and she just didn’t want it. It was all too heavy, owning everything and losing yourself in between… that’s what she said.”  She saw a man in black coat, his eyes fixed on her. She was used to men looking at her. She tilted her head the other way.

   “Did you say we are gonna go now?” the bald man asked, breathing heavily between the words.

    “No. No, I didn’t say that. That woman, she reminded me of something, we are all suffering. We ,all of us, are the same. Running away is sometimes inevitable for you to believe it” She looked at the bald man, caring for nothing more than the cup of beer he clutched. She smiled. Bitterly.  “And why am I telling all of this to you?  These are not secrets. I guess confessions also count even when the person you are talking to won’t understand a thing. So now, I am making confessions, that’s what I’m doing.” She laughed, a sick laugh, chocking on tears. Her eyes then fell on the man in black coat. He was still looking at her. She let her eyes search his face and was swept by an eerie sense of déjà vu.

   The man in black coat saw that the woman was too looking at him. He took that chance and advanced towards her.

   The woman saw the man coming her way. She looked away nervously. He lifted her face in his hands and bent to have a closer look at it. It felt like oxygen had totally escaped the bar. He let go of her face in embarrassment.

  “I am very sorry,” he said, “ you look a lot like someone I used to know…but you couldn’t be her.”

   He turned away heading for the door, the weight of disappointment obvious in the way his shoulders hunched.

   “But what if I am her?” the woman abruptly said, resting her head on one hand in a reckless manner. Challenge colored her tone

   The man stopped. “No,” he murmured as though to himself, “ You are  not her. Nothing can ever happen to change someone so much.”

      “You are quite wrong,” her face went very stern, “Life happens.” She let out another sick laugh.

     He looked at the woman in front of him and forced his memory to recollect shreds of what she looked like. There was a great similarity between the two faces but, no, she couldn’t be her. She, who owned everything could never one day be so cheap. He went away, the thudding of his varnished shoes no longer to be heard.

    She looked at the man, tracing his every step to the door. And when the door was slammed, she watched as he slowly faded into an ethereal silhouette of black in the horizon.Her eyes could no longer see him, and out of them, tears were spilled