15.1.07

She stumbled on a well worn path


This was the second time in the past week she had walked these empty hallways aching of memory. Whispers and screams echoed in her ears, clicking and scratching at her mind. She took her time, each step slow to the beat. Her hips stuck forward too much when she walked, but there was little she could do to correct this. She had photographic evidence of friends making fun of her for this, but she threw those away.
She walked free of these barren hallways, and out into the cold and the sun. Tales of murders were being sung to her, and she payed more attention to them than they were due. The cold nipped at her, and the sun shone in her eyes, but she remained on her slow strut and stumble down the street. She looked to the ground and in the snow were scratches. It looked like someone had dug their fingers into the snow and been dragged away, leaving nothing but scratch marks along the snow that would eventually melt, leaving no other trace of their abduction. She found this an odd thing to consider, and she looked up and walked away.
She took the same route she took three days earlier, and that she had taken many other times. Cars criss-crossed in front of her, doing that ballet they always do. She wondered how many times she had escaped being hit by a car, and then she walked on. She entered the same building she enters every week and ordered the same thing she orders every time. She left immediately, with a free muffin in her purse, and when taking a sip of her drink she had a ridiculous thought. "Chai Tea reminds me of gay men," she mumbled to herself, then laughed at her own ridiculousness.
She walked 10 feet in the wrong direction, then turned around, as she often does. She crossed the street, and when she got to the other side, a man in a parked car facing the opposite direction of her honked his horn loudly and looked at her. She took two steps towards his car, then realized she had no reason to, and kept walking towards her home.
As she walked over the short hills and through the snow she thought that maybe this was the man's poor attempt at an abduction. She wondered that if it was, how many times he had actually gotten a girl to come to his car by continuously honking at her, and if he had ever managed to take any of the girls away. She wondered if he had a farm with the bodies of all his victims buried in fields. It seemed to be the trend these days. Then she wondered how many people had ever thought about taking her away and chopping her up into little bits. She hoped none, or very few, but her lack of faith in humanity told her it was otherwise, and she felt lucky to be alive.

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