Here is a brand
new story, inspired by a photographic prompt on the Flash Fiction Friday blog.
A Walk in the
Park
It was dark
when Samuel left for work, and dark when he got home.
At least for six months of the year, between October
and March, when the long dark nights set in and you
were lucky to get five or six hours of greyish
daylight underneath the clouds.
Samuel caught
the bus at half past six. It got him to work too
soon, but if he left it any later the bus sat in the
rush hour traffic like a bug in lard, and hardly
moved. He'd tried it once or twice, sick of the early
start, but turned up so late his colleagues had given
up on him.
His colleagues
were always giving up on him. They thought he was old
and past it, he could tell. Most of them were under
thirty and wore sharp suits and sharper shoes,
looking down their noses at his sports jacket with
the leather elbow patches and comfy brogues.
Theycouldn't do much about it, though, because the
office rules said 'jacket and tie', and that's what
he wore.
Samuel hated
work. Thirty years ago he'd enjoyed the buzz, talking
to the customers and feeling that he was helping
someone live a better life. Now everything was
computers and cell phones and he never spoke to
anyone face to face. He worked in a back room,
shuffling bits of paper round and round his desk and
contacting faceless voices who rarely called him
back. Thirty years ago he'd worked shorter hours as
well - nine to five thirty with an hour off for lunch
- but now everything was 'meeting targets' and 'being
a good team player' and they expected you to work
straight through. Samuel couldn't remember the last
time he'd left his desk for lunch, or to walk to the
local deli or feel the fresh air on his face. The air
in the office was stale, recycled so often that every
atom had died. Samuel's eyes were always red and
tired, his nose and throat itched. He missed the
sunlight on the trees, and the simple joy of walking
through the streets.
"Go out
somewhere at the weekends," his brother said
once when Samuel grumbled to him. "It's not as
though you have to go to work then."
Samuel tried
that, but found he had no time for the chores. It was
all right for Al, who had a wife to do his washing
and cooking while he went to work. Samuel had been
married once as well, but Ellie had run off years
ago, saying he was conventional and dull.
"You're no fun," she'd screech at
him, when he didn't want to dance naked after dark or
swap wives or whatever her latest fad was. She'd
married a travelling actor instead, and he'd last
heard of her in a trailer with six kids and a seventh
on the way. He wasn't normally a vindictive man, but
he'd hoped she was having fun now.
One day the
loudest sharp-suit had a go at Samuel. "You old
fogeys are holding the company back. We should fire
the lot of you and go for young blood instead. New
ideas, new energy, new direction. You should do the
decent thing, Grandpa, and retire."
Samuel didn't
say much back but he'd seen that happen before. His
uncle's company had booted out everyone over the age
of forty-five, and replaced them with Young Blood.
For six months everything had been fine, and then the
company had started to go downhill. The Young Bloods
had no experience and couldn't work out what was
wrong, and the company had to re-hire the old hands
(at a higher wage than before) to come and fix the
mess.
Samuel knew the
sharp-suit was wrong, but that didn't stop the words
from cutting deep. He'd given the company
thirty-eight years of his life and this was the
thanks he got. He'd not taken a day off in all that
time, but the next day he phoned in sick. His head
hurt, his vision swam, and the thought of buses and
ties and being indoors with people in suits nearly
made him heave. Even though it was November and
raining hard he put on his oldest clothes - sandals
and T-shirt and baggy cotton pants - and didn't
bother to comb his beard. There was a park he
remembered, that his mother used to wheel him to when
he was still in his pram. The neighbourhood had
changed, of course, but the park was still there, if
overgrown, and there was a subway station close by.
When the train stopped there he got out, climbed the
stairs and stood outside breathing in the air. It
smelled of diesel and fries, but it was still air -
not something recycled out of a tube.
The park was
full of wet leaves that swirled round his ankles and
stuck to his legs. There were discarded needles, too,
and the usual flotsam of empty bottles and spoiling
food, including half a pie the pigeons were battling
for. Samuel ignored the mess and headed off the path.
The grass hadn't been cut in a while and was half
buried in leaves, but he didn't care. He took off his
sandals and wriggled his toes in the long wet stems.
The rain still pelted down, soaking him from head to
foot, and he was cold. But the earth felt good
beneath his feet and the air smelled of leaves and
the promise of next year's growth, and Samuel was
happy for the first time in years.
That's it,
he thought. I'm never going back indoors. He
found a bench and a newspaper someone had thrown
away, and settled himself down. The ranger found him
next morning, where he'd quietly frozen to sleep.
