Discount Addictions
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Join Date: Jan 2014
Posts: 8,637
Discount Addictions
One foot in front of the other, he shuffled, he slogged. The rain beat down thick as tar and with the same emotional viscosity. On his back he carried that road-beaten satchel, bursting at its stitchings, repaired again and again. He walked with an apparent limp, but it wasn't a limp - just the awkwardness of the burden slung to one side, rocking to and fro, slamming its weight into the small of his back. He pretended not to notice.
Through the ****-yelllow streetlights he pulled himself wearily. The same old route, same old scene, through dingy streets he imagined were gilded with glory. Past broken-down shacks he pretended were bustling halls of gaiety and bliss. Hazy, smoke-clouded windows glowed in his mind with the gazes of admiring onlookers as he plodded on with a ghostly grimace he imagined as a smile.
Down a darkened alley crawling with vermin he turned with a practiced wobble. From the shadows came a disembodied voice making promises of This Time. He tried again - as he did every time - to see into the blackness. Who was it? Whose words were they? What did they really promise? How could this voice know just what to say, every single time? He told himself he didn't care, though the not knowing terrified him with each return.
Just like always he reached into that dark void, offering his reasons, bartering his rationale. Getting in return those rewards, those spoils to keep him going. And the satchel grew heavier as the price became cheaper, cheaper, cheaper..... all the while the cost rising.
Dragging his heels through a tepid fecal puddle as he slunk off back down the alley into the rainy night, The Voice knew he'd come again.
They can never resist these discount addictions.... as long as they don't know the cost.
Through the ****-yelllow streetlights he pulled himself wearily. The same old route, same old scene, through dingy streets he imagined were gilded with glory. Past broken-down shacks he pretended were bustling halls of gaiety and bliss. Hazy, smoke-clouded windows glowed in his mind with the gazes of admiring onlookers as he plodded on with a ghostly grimace he imagined as a smile.
Down a darkened alley crawling with vermin he turned with a practiced wobble. From the shadows came a disembodied voice making promises of This Time. He tried again - as he did every time - to see into the blackness. Who was it? Whose words were they? What did they really promise? How could this voice know just what to say, every single time? He told himself he didn't care, though the not knowing terrified him with each return.
Just like always he reached into that dark void, offering his reasons, bartering his rationale. Getting in return those rewards, those spoils to keep him going. And the satchel grew heavier as the price became cheaper, cheaper, cheaper..... all the while the cost rising.
Dragging his heels through a tepid fecal puddle as he slunk off back down the alley into the rainy night, The Voice knew he'd come again.
They can never resist these discount addictions.... as long as they don't know the cost.
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Join Date: Jan 2014
Posts: 8,637
Originally Posted by downtown3 
Fantastic descriptive writing! Thoroughly enjoyed that. Thanks for sharing. You sir or mam should write a collection of short stories or a novel if you are not already doing so.
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