Next Stop, Please

The sketchbook is crinkled and browning from use, its covers are in tatters and the gold writing is too far away to decipher. The pages are not used in order but opened at random and spattered with ink.

He uses a brush tipped pen and his eyes never leave their target; his strokes are strong, swift, decisive and taken in with that eye. The eye that he tries to hide from the people around him. That eye, his eye.

He wears no bright colours, nor dark. Khaki greens and washed out greys and the kind of shoes favoured by those who take long walks, an inconspicuous coat and the startings of a beard. He is ordinary, time has etched premature lines in his face. He has the expression of one that does all the watching, he sinks into his sketches as he sinks into the surroundings; no one would watch him, he isn't there. He is colourless. He sees everything.

And yet, in his periphery he is being watched. Blue eyes follow his pen and his face and wish that they too had a note book to scrawl in. Both observers look now to the same face, just woken up and tilting the corners of his mouth downwards. The bottle in his hands is bent and almost empty but he still drinks from it, as if it is a lifeline. Perhaps, it is.

The invisible man stands, it's his stop.

And mine.

Waiting Room

There's barely anyone here as I wait and the sky applauds the rain outside. I watch it from my seat, here, by the window. Pathetic Fallacy, they call it. Pathetic.

They've started to turn the lights off and everything is slowly falling into shadows, heightened by the storm clouds outside. People come and go, never talking to anyone else. Except that one. He's strange, the one to my left, he's talking to himself and everyone else and he keeps dropping the phone in his hand as if unaware that it is there at all.

He wasn't alone when he entered, the other left his side and is yet to leave the bathroom. They look like the kind of people you stay away from but want to watch to see what they'll do and how. They have a danger about them that you can't tear away from.

"Who is it this time?" His too loud voice makes me jump, I glance towards him but quickly look away.

"Christine, the grey haired lady."

"Oh, I like her. She's good. She doesn't hurt me."

The receptionist laughs, it's a nervous sound that resonates through the room. I don't move until they call my name.

Room five.

Brass

"Rats!"

"What?"

"There are rats on the chimney!"

Ah, yes. The brass winks in the sunset, smiling as it glows in the autumn-coloured light like something out of a Gaiman novel. Pretty but decidedly Gothic, sat atop the old building. Perhaps, they guard. Perhaps, they curse.

The house below is nothing out of the ordinary, it sits within view from the wall. There are no conspicuously closed curtains or signs of oddity. It is perfectly ordinary.

But once again, my eyes are drawn to the highest point, to the tails that curl around the terracotta. A pigeon sits behind, two houses away. It watches as my eyes pass over the neighbouring buildings.

Tilting my head slightly, I scrutinise them further, "Odd."

Smoke

Each voice is loud and each conversation drifts in and out of not-so attentive ears - it is the eyes that are captivated, roaming the fence-bound land in front, picking up specks of a forbidden language. A hand brushes, eyes sweep and linger, backs turn and shoulders hunch. Their voices are piercing but their actions deafen. Each one of them a world of reaction and a husky whisper in a foreign tongue. In their pairs, they make a universe, full of words unsaid through tongue and lips. For hours, they could be watched and catalogued, each movement, each subtle wave of feeling placed in the pages of an empty book - though it would be full within minutes.

They stop. Heads turn in one direction and there is unity for a moment -

It's bright, so bright that their faces glow and their eyes reflect an off colour, an inhuman colour. It starts small, then grows with the breaking of wood and the ripping of unread newspapers. Language is lost and all falls silent as eyes focus and stare, nothing moves but the curling of the flames.

But with each stare, a different whisper comes, growing louder as the smoke makes circles in the air and the floating black of burnt paper spirals upwards with the wind. The bodies shift away from the light as it licks towards them, begging and pleading for them to come closer. But they know to step back, every movement mutters a tense curse - some so loud they're shouting.

But they do not hear it with their ears, they just stand and watch the smoke as it mates with the air. Unaware of their screaming, their yelling in the language only the eyes can decipher.

Their eyes stare at the light, reflecting an inhuman colour and the smoke drifts.

Summer

The shine pools in through the window warming bare shoulders and gently caressing a brighter mood. Everything feels better in the sunshine. The hills roll in the distance, like painted clouds, fallen and anchored to the ground.

From the old weather-worn and warped windows miles can be seen, the sleepy villages bedded on the hillside waking with the sunlight and the heat and playing beneath the cloudless blue.

And as the sun begins its slow descent beneath the horizon, the trees sway, dancing to the tune of the birds.

Performance

Coloured lights diffuse through smoke as a lilting acoustic drifts, the room is calm. Crowded. We sit on steps aware of each note and cadence, comparing notes in our minds.

We could do it better, if only we tried.

But instead we sit on steps, comparing notes in our minds.

Anon

So many faces, blinking, speaking, screeching. Passing by and living their lives, as you'd expect it. Crowded streets are always so fascinating, so indescribably full of ideas and moments that you could get lost just looking at them. And you do. I see it in your face and I watch it as it grips you, takes you in and drags you under.

It is a happy coincidence that you and I are to be sat here on the same day, watching the street and cataloguing the faces. Your face in mine and mine in yours. The anonymous stranger sat two tables away, wondering what it is you could be thinking.