Just Another Story

Another puff of smoke from his half smoked cigarette and still no ideas in his muffled mind. He had spent almost an hour thinking yet nothing seemed so intriguing as to become his story’s subject. If it had been any other day he would have spent it snuggling in his fox fur blanket at home, not bothering to get up from his messy bedroom the whole day just puffing cigarettes and making the room more stuffy with the smoke. But this was not just another day. He needed a story and needed it soon.

Why? He had a job. Why would not he bother to write any other day? He was a lazy fellow. The kind you see standing at the corners of a street staring at the ground and indulging in the wisps of smoke. Why the urging need to write? Hell you need to keep showing the boss your work now and then to get the money. What magazine was it? Some insignificant name, read by insignificant people. He did not care about the people. He needed the money. Cigarette costs a lot too you know, he’d tell his neighbour’s cat. He didn’t really talk to people yet he wrote about them. He could look at a face and formulate it’s story.

That was exactly what he was doing at the coffee shop at seven in the morning that day. His last pack of cigarettes was running out meaning he needed a story, fast.
The jingly shiny sticks hanging at the shops door shook made his eyes turn to the door. In walked an old man. A beggar, as he seemed from his appearance. In a broken accent he asked for a doughnut and a glass of milk at the counter. He looked around and saw the writer looking at him. He smiled revealing his decayed and chipped off teeth.

The writer kept looking at him intently from head to toe, his mind occupied with all sorts of ideas about the beggar’s life. Maybe he was an old soldier who fought during world war II and lost his teeth in some battle. Rescued dozens of people but was left behind by the battalion and his efforts never acknowledged. Disheartened he must have tried to reach back home but he didn’t have the sources to so here he was, a beggar. Or maybe he was a born poor, knew nothing of his parents who deserted him as a child, probably the same old story of desertion resulting from illegitimate and rash giving in to temptations of some teenage poor girl. So here he was again, spent an entire lifetime as a beggar. Lived from day to day, eating on whatever his daily earnings allowed him too. Sometimes went to sleep hungry. Sometimes fed off dumps of stale food people threw away so ruthlessly everyday. He must have had aspirations, of starting a family, getting a good education, making a difference amongst the sea of poverty. Maybe he was a retard, because that’s what he seemed by the looks of the smug way he smiled at him. Maybe an old man abandoned by his family, registered in an old home but ran away from there and now was waiting for his death, gathering pennies to get buried in some decent poor graveyard.

“ Would you like some breakfast sir?”, asked the fat waitress banging a glass of juice behind the counter.
Startled and annoyed to be addressed so bluntly from his fantasies he glared at her firmly and managed to blurt a stiff ‘no’ at her who shrugged her shoulders as if to gesture ‘ its my job dude, I had to ask’. Looking away he saw that the old beggar had left and once again the coffee shop was deserted with him and the waitress.
On second thoughts, the waitress didn’t seem like such a bad option for a story either.

Draped in a skin tight light blue blouse and skirt and mini-apron she seemed to be bulging out of every corner of her scanty uniform thanks to her plump figure. Chewing what most likely seemed to be a chewing gum early morning she seemed lost quite busy while cleaning the counter and humming some song’s tune. So who was she? How did she land in this shop? How did she manage to get so corpulent? This was easy, by working in coffee shops. He smiled wickedly at his own thoughts. She must have had a rough childhood. Criminal daddy and mommy living on crack. A long line of siblings. She being a high school drop out, fallen prey to the wrong friends’ circle and drowned in debts of her stuffy apartment and its bills located in some dilapidated part of the city. Her day started off with barking away at the milkman who never cared about the neighbourhood dog spilling the milk bottles all over her doorstep and left the bottles at the same place everyday despite her constant carping and reminding. Then she would hurriedly get dressed and catch her six o clock bus to the coffee shop and here she was, dealing with customers like him and various other kinds daily going off to bed late at night with her head bursting with pain and her body aching with exhaustion.

Maybe one day, she would hope everyday, she would be able to live and take a leave from work knowing she wouldn’t have to pay any more debts and take out time to shop for some decent clothing and replace the patched socks she had to wear everyday and replace her worn out shoes she must have been wearing since at least ten to twelve years. Just then he realized he had been gazing at her shoes to an extent it had made her self conscious. She adjusted her tangled knot of tinted brown hair and came up to him. Again she boomed in her manly voice, “May I help you sir,” she seemed to press the ‘sir’ harder than normal.

“Uhhhh..yes I’d like another clean ash tray,” he said quite nervously. She nodded and brought him another one shortly. Just then he noticed another customer, in fact two, sitting across the tables in front of him. He had been so busy visualizing the waitress’s days’ events that he hadn’t looked around. Time to switch his attention on customer number one who naturally happened to be a young woman dressed in a crisp cotton long skirt and new white office shirt. Clutching at her purse with all her might she was hurriedly sipping at her coffee and glancing at her watch intermittently. A young lady graduated from a renowned college and probably valedictorian of her class, an apprentice to a great firm. She probably got a job on her own now after exasperating efforts of finding a job she’s finally succeeded and today was one of her early days but she got late because she was up celebrating with her friends late at night.

So here she was, worried her new boss may consider firing her and she the mere thought of starting a professional life all over again was killing her. Or maybe she was just worried about getting late competing with another hot shot colleague. He could see the lines on her forehead spreading more as time kept passing and her sizzling coffee refused to cool down quicker than she wanted it to. Or another quite a reasonable possibility was she having had a break up last night and was still hung over with whatever crap her boyfriend had put on her making it seem all her fault, screaming his lungs out and storming out of the house leaving her alone to go through the night’s discourse.

The woman scurried out of the shop after handing over hastily the money at the counter. As she was leaving, his cell phone rang in his pocket and woke him up from his dreamland. Hurriedly he reached for it in his jeans’ pocket and switched it on. On the other end was his boss’s voice booming, “ where are you? I am waiting for you here..hurry up your lazy butt and be here in 20 minutes!!”

Without any story in hand or even a vague plot, he wearily got up from his seat, paid his bill and headed out. As soon as he stepped afoot on the road and crossed it half way, a speedy truck zoomed by and smashed him to pieces. Next day, the papers read in bold letters: Young writer wasted in accident.