The Cobbler

~2~

I could think of nothing else to do. All I wanted to do was not stand still; it only elevated the severity of the darkness around me. However, I did not wish to pick up the business card again. I swallowed once and decided to run, anywhere and everywhere. It did not even matter.

If this were a dream, I would prefer to awaken, but that did not seem to work no matter how many times I pinched myself. Finally, my body could no longer endure the work out and it collapsed easily.

And I slept a dreamless sleep.

When my eyes opened next, I expected to hear the usual morning clamour of the streets, the honking of the cars and motorbikes of the early shift workers en route to work or of the night shift workers returning home; the holler of the morning fish sellers, trying to get their stock sold out within the hour; the neighbourly loud exchanges of greetings of the nearby flats; and without fail, a mother bidding her two-year old kid to recite either the alphabets or the numbers.

However, the only sound my brain processed was silence.

I sat up suddenly and looked around the brightly lit room in confusion. Yes, this was my room indeed. First thing I noticed was the darkened atmosphere outside my windows, followed immediately by a sensation of a weight on my right hand. I turned my head to discover my phone in the clutch of the fingers and tentatively unlocked its screen.

02:08 a.m.

"Wow," I murmured, shutting my eyes tightly and shaking my head. I must have taken an unwilling nap, I concluded as I swiped up the home screen of the phone while yawning and the last opened page on the phone filled the rectangular space. I rubbed my eyes with the left hand and blinked till my vision cleared before I indifferently checked for the thing that made me sleep.

It was the definition of the word "cordwainer".

"A person who makes shoes from cordovan leather. A cobbler," I read under my breath. Why had I looked it up again? Oh right, I tore my sneakers today. I had been looking up the addresses for nearby cobbler shops when I had come across a strange name.

I switched the tabs on the browser to look at the address of the shop called Cordwainer again. Whoever they were, they had a whole website made for themselves. Odd.

I would have written off that word as something pertaining to someone's surname perhaps, but their tagline got me curious and that is why I had bothered to look up the meaning at all.

Cordwainer – Fixer of anything, everything. Do not be fooled by the name.

"If you had not mentioned that, I would not have even cared," I murmured to no one as I scanned the address once more. An evitable yawn escaped my lips and I closed the screen. I reached over my bedpost to the wall behind and hit the switch to turn off the lights.

I drifted quickly into a deep sleep and returned into the realm of the pitch black darkness with that crumpled piece of paper three feet away from me. This time, well aware of how futile it was to try and wake myself up, I sat down cross-legged by the disfigured business card and unravelled it once more. To my surprise, the words within had changed.

Cordwainer

No stalking involved.

I nearly shrieked and threw it away again.

~

A/N: How does it seem to be turning out? Is the Cordwainer a freak of nature, like the green monster from before?

Let me know your thoughts through your comments, votes and shares!

See you in the next chapter! <3