I was walking down the street in the dreary rain. I pulled up the collar of my coat to keep my clothes dry. I saw a sheltered stand ahead and walked up to it, but by the time I had gotten to it there were already a few people there. I picked up a newspaper and joined the line. While I waited I took a look around me.
This city could have once been beautiful, I thought. But now everything is as worn down as the people here,
I looked down at the pavement. No, not really pavement anymore; now it was pebbles mixed with leaves, dirt, litter, and another brownish substance I would rather not mention. I looked over at the swirling grey and black clouds hiding the tops of the rusty skeletons of centuries-old relics the Ancient Ones once called “sky-scrapers”. Some of the buildings already have fallen down while others barely keep on winning the fight against gravity. Some odd centuries ago, before the earthquakes, land-mass shifts, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, and ensuing wars over the remaining resources; these rusting heaps once housed the business and financial institutions of the world. Wealth flowed thru them. Now the only thing flowing through them is the acidic rain and wind, and the only fortunes to be made were temporary, if a beam fell down beside you, or permanent, if the beam fell on you. The slips of paper the Ancient Ones used, their "Money", would be useless now days. The only things worth something were precious metals or items that someone could use for trading. I looked down at the huddled little wooden shacks in the shadows of the towers. Their roofs of tarp, cardboard or salvaged scrap metal were soaked in the rain.
And to think, I scoffed silently, that this was once a great city. If one of the Ancient Ones were to come back, they probably wouldn’t recognize their own city,
The man ahead of me in the line walked up to the clerk's counter, newspaper in hand. It was clear that he was not from the Nothingness. He looked about forty and his form was too well filled; evidence of the famous Portex feasts, the ones where they would eat so much they would vomit and eat again. I looked at his feet and nearly smirked. His once well polished shoes had a lair of grime on them, and the “mud” continued up the back of his leg, apparently from where he had stepped in a puddle. I laughed to myself seeing that a Portesian (someone from Portex) had more trouble keeping clean than we Nothings did. The clerk finished ringing up the man's order and the man took out his wallet and drew out a small gold coin in payment.
"Have a nice day," The clerk said, her aged face beaming with kindness.
"How can it be nice?!" the man snapped (in more ways than one apparently). "While I am here, in the Nothingness, buying a newspaper from a nutcase; my wife is in Saibhir with my business partner, doing Ancients ones-know-what and racking up a huge bill while doing it. But the afore-mentioned Fruitcake is telling me to have a good day. So, to answer your statement: No, I shall NOT 'Have a nice day'!"
The man stormed away, leaving his newspaper on the counter and the clerk quite shaken and red faced. He had gotten about ten feet away before he stepped in another puddle. His swearing was so bad and loud that it would have made the toughest sailor blush like an innocent young maid and a lesser man faint. He swore to and about anything that he could think of. Not even the Ancients were safe.
I stepped up to the counter to make a purchase. The clerk looked quite reserved as she rang up my newspaper. "If you ask me," I said, to break the silence. "He was the crazy one, not you." A look of befuddlement crossed her face. "Was it something I said?"
"Nah," I said, with a wave of my hand. "He's just crazy." "Oh," I added. "How much do I owe you?"
"The man forgot his change, so not a coin." The clerk said with a wink.
