From the archives (2)

this is a complete mess, but i'm sticking it here for the moment whilst i wonder what to do with it.

It’s difficult to know where to start a tale like this – at the beginning before I owned the café and knew Jack’s name or at the end when they finally found him and fed him to the lions.

So let’s start in the middle.

Winter.

It was dark, but still early. Through the steamed up window I watched the snow softly settling on the cars waiting at the traffic lights, people hurrying past under the soft yellow glow of the street lamp at the corner and the icicles forming on our sign outside.

Home Brew.

That was the name when I had bought the place and I hadn’t had the heart to change it yet, some of the customers thought it was funny – I was not so sure. The interior was all new, well old but new, as I had used pine from an old boat to build intimate corner benches. This was a café where you could rest, hide if need be but above all feel at home.

I saw his car stop at the lights and she got out – young, Asian I think. She wasn’t wearing a hat so I could see she had black bobbed hair, blacker than the winter night she had stepped into.

“Fuck you”, she screamed and slammed the door. Then she turned away I caught just the fleeting flash of her angry wolven grey eyes. I wouldn’t forget them in a hurry.

I was serving myself a cappuccino when he entered, the bell above the door causing me to look up.

“You open?”

“I am now.”

He was tall, skinny with grey hair. His skin was grey. He looked like someone had thrown dust all over him. His skin, what I could see of his face and arms was tightly drawn in ridges and folds. He resembled a walnut – albeit a grey one. He was wearing a green pullover and faded, almost grey jeans. Specks of snow were melting on his black shoes.

He sat in the corner booth and stared out the window.

from the Bitsnbobs unpublished archives Oct 2010.

from the archives (1) here.