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It was never going to be an ordinary day. When I awoke the clock had slipped past 9:30. I did not awake to the woman above me singing along with the scrape of her shoes on the flagstone pavement outside of my window, or the sounds of traffic on the streets. The room seemed curiously silent. Josh had already gone off to work. Although the overpowering smell of his coffee still lingered from the saucepan on the stove. A yellow ray from the risen sun fell across the foot of the bed and lightened up the room. I pulled on my robe and treaded across the rich, soundless dark blue carpet towards the television at the end of the room. No signal as I attempted to turn on the morning newscast. No electricity, I would have thought if I had not bothered at that moment to look up and notice the light shining underneath the green-shaded lamp over Josh’s work desk. Which he normally kept in an obsessive order of cleanliness, always organized in such a way I dare not touch it. This morning it was covered with a mass of papers as though he left in a hurry. No radio alarm clock to wake me this morning, along with the telephone held no dial tone to phone him at work. I peered down at Zorro who sat at my feet, his tail wagging. He was an all white Border collie puppy with distinctive black markings which formed like the mask of Zorro across his adoring face that peered up at me with eager eyes. I decided to take him by means of a walk via the town.
The apartment corridor held an unusually dead silence. No one walked along its softly carpeted, cream-papered walls, all exquisitely clean compared to the world outside of our complex. I ought to have missed the morning crowd. As I stepped out into the street the air smelled of the fresh lilacs that grew along the wall of the lobby entrance. We walked down the cobbled streets of the little two story houses fenced with care. Turning left down a narrow street the pavement became lined with houses with battered doorways, neglectfully unkempt. Cars lined the street even though oddly sufficient were not occupied with the usual angry passengers in the city’s overbearing heat. It was a narrow street, with a couple of small dark little shops interspersed among the dwelling houses. Many of the little Mom and Pop shops around here had closed and gone out of business. Maybe a quarter of the windows had been broken and boarded up. My thoughts shifted from curiosity of the eerie silence. I halted and looked up at one of the shops which caught my interest. In the street in front of it there was a statue of a man on horse back. Although, it had become noticeably rusted and tarnished over time it held an alluring sense of beauty. What appealed to me about it was not so significantly beauty as the air it seemed to posses of belonging to an age really various from the present day. A black cloud of filth lined the windows of the shop, although it still stood out from the rest. I took the sleeve of my coat and wiped a section of the glass so I could peer inside. An old-fashioned money register, with big brass buttons was all that sat on the counter. Its drawer hung open emptied of any previous earnings. The tiny interior of the shop was empty other that a little table at the corner which held a litter of odds and ends which appeared to hold no material value. Next to it was a tiny stairway leading up to the second story of the old shop. The walls had been empty besides the oil painting placed in a dusty old picture frame that hung against the far wall and next to it, a broken clock which didn’t even pretend to tell the correct time. There no sign of telling what had been sold here in an earlier time. I tied Zorro leash around the fire hydrant on the street so I could cup both hands around my eyes to get a clearer view of the lady within the portrait. With out the glare of the sun against the glass and Zorro anxiously tugging at his leash, I could make out the lady in the picture. A twinge of fear went by means of me as I noticed I was staring at myself. Wearing a dress I had never seen prior to and my hair neatly curled up upon my head. I stood for a moment in shock. Frozen, as if that moment in time had been not reality but that of a crazy dream. The loud pitch of Zorro’s bark snapped me out of my gaze. I just wanted to get property and sit inside the quiet with my thoughts.
Entering the kitchen frantic and out of breath, I swallowed nearly half a bottle of wine from the cupboard. I sat on the empty bed, staring at the ceiling. Zorro’s head on my lap was the only sense of comfort in that moment. I had to come across out who owned that shop and get a hold of that painting. I had so several questions. I waited for Josh, as seconds turned into minutes, which turned into hours. I paced the soundless carpet in such a frantic it was as if my mind and body were afflicted with an unbearable sensitivity, a sort of transparency, which made every single minute pure agony. After finishing two bottles of wine, I fell to my knees, o
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