Wolvesmont Av.

     It was a poor excuse for an avanue really, only a small strip of pavement ending at the red brick back of an old library. Along Wolvesmont there was four doors in total. The first, on the right side of the avenue had no windows. Simply a disheveled wooden door with one musty stained glass window. This was a side entrance for the long ago closed down theater. The next door which was  directly across the street belonged to Mss. May's Postcard & Souvenir Shop. The last door on the left was a bait shop in the back of the theater. Yes, it was a very odd place for a tack & bait shop, but that was exactly the intention. Mr. Raymond was a former fisherman, whose 'unhealthy fascination with marine life' disgusted his nagging wife. So Millie Raymond packed their belongings and set of to the city. Mr. Raymond, who had never really been a man of strong will followed. When he arrived in the city he became overwhelmed with a homesickness that could not be remedied. His wife could not handle him in their apartment any longer. So she reluctantly gave in to her husbands scheme to open a bait shop. It turns out that Mr. Raymond's years as a Fisherman were not the most lucrative, resulting in the small shop space in the back of the old Grand Avenue Theater. This also pleased his wife a great deal and raised her Hope's that the shop would soon fail. However she was quite wrong, infact the Reymond's Tack & Bait outlived her. If you came to the very last building on Wolvesmont Av. you would see a skinny building jammed in a space that seems just a tad to small for it. And old red door with the paint chipping away paired tightly with a large glass window with the words 'Wolvesmont Books and Records' some what faded at the top. There are two sets of windows above this, each with 2 small windows, each crammed between a pair of old green shutters that were barely hanging on. This is the home, of shell I say part time home of Miss. Brier Florance.
     I struggled in my worn pocket of my slightly too long wind breaker. It had been my fathers and had so many pockets that I sware I found a new hidden idam of his each time I took it out to wear. I finally grasped they key in my hand along with a stray slip of paper and a gum wrapper. I laughed reading the paper in my hand. It had a word on it, apologia, my father loved words. Everytime he heard a new one he would write it down. This continued until we had words written everywhere imaginable in our house.      I felt it hanging in my heart and for a    moment I felt empty. All feelings had been numbed like a patient after a drug. Except this was a much more powerful drug, it was lose, and it had the power to dull all other sense with a mere thought. And then it was gone. Like that I could hear the cars again and the cool late autom breeze brush my hair against my face. It had been 3 years. It was hard to explain, I had stopped crying, but the pain had just taken a different form. One that I would carry with me the rest of my life.                                                                    I opened the door to the musty yet comforting smell of books. They were everywhere, up all the walls, on the tables, even the circular stair case held its fair share. I smiled to myself, books always knew how to comfort me. I set down my bag full of groceries on what might have been one of the few spaces free of all books in the entire house. I turned on the book stores sign to see it half heartedly flicker on. I didn't have any hopes of someone stumbling upon the shop tonight. It was a brisk evening and there was bite in the air. Winters first signs. Not even the lost pedestrian would be out tonight.                             I wasn't home much and when I was the guilt ate away at me. The disrespect of leaving my father's most beloved spot in the world to ruin. I couldn't do that to him. It's what my mother had done. Just left and yet I was too much like her for my own liking. A vagabond, my father would more kindly reference it as a free spirit. I never new if that was because he was trying not to liken me to my mother, or that was just how he thought of it. The truth is my mother could never be pinned down and she had married someone that wanted nothing else but to be pinned down. Opposites do attract, however they don't always work. At least not in this case.
The neighbors, the few that there were, were used to be turning on the shop sign at odd hours. I smiled and waved back across the street to Mr. Raymond. He had lived at the shop ever sense his wife's passing. However he really started living there long before.
I faced my reflection in the full length mirror across the room from my bed. It was dirty and skirted by a series of large spider webs. I could see my father in me, but as much as I tried to deny it I saw more of my mother. My hair hadn't been cut in over a year aside from the occasional trim of the ends every so often. It was a mix of blonde, chestnut brown, and hints of red. As disfunctional as that may sound it actually blended together quite well. It was rough and had partially curly partially wavy texture. My eyes however were a blue that could almost be mistaken for a seafoam green depending on the lighting. They were my mothers eyes.
I sat looking at the ceiling and listening to the rain drops in their graceful dance on the roof. I tried to close my eyes and be enveloped by the serounding sounds, but I couldn't. There was something about the night, the darkness that unsettled me. I felt as if the world belonged to the darkness and I was an intruder. Always traveling the way I did frequently made me the intruder. Sometime I wished I could stop being the guest and be the host. But the feeling soon left me, I valued my freedom. I could not be free if I semented myself to one place. Could I? My restless thoughts were interrupted by one solid nock at the door.