3Into the Morning, Out of the Night
By Marley Townsend
Manny liked to read the paper in the bright hours of the morning. He would shut the kitchen door behind him with a bang and the musty smell of wet wood, as he got back from his shift, and sit himself at the little metal table draped with a paisley cloth (threadbare) and two placemats (dirty).
He opened the paper, upside down, and quickly. The date at the top of the gray columns was seven months late. Manny sipped his teacup, savoring the taste of the dry absence of coffee, and the feeling of the deliciously clean porcelain on his cracked lips.
At six o' clock he took a short shower, and searched his hall closet briefly for his trusty flashlight. He was momentarily afraid that the dark would swallow him whole, and the mysterious shapes in the square space would come alive. Nothing moved in the shadows, and he snatched the flashlight quickly from the piles of cardboard boxes, which had grown flimsy from their imprisonment in the dead damp dark of the closet.
Manny walked slowly down the street. A garbage truck hovered in the center of the road, the long yellow paint line pointing obliviously into the gathering fog.
A red coat hung from a clothesline, flapping and flapping, like some lost cape of a long-gone superhero. Manny watched the blood fabric tear from the plastic rope, and flutter over the roof.
When he arrived at the department store for his shift, he could already feel the open gazes of the mannequins, questioning.
He flicked on the light, humming a song happily.
"Afternoon," He said politely to the first mannequin. "Bloody cold, isn't it?"
She only smiled coldly back, her hand outstretched, and adorned with a fluffy mitten. It was winter in the store, and heavy trees blocked the windows, decorated with smarmy things like plush reindeer and creamy candles, filling the welcome dark with a blast of white light.
Manny patted the plastic hand comfortingly.
"I know," he whispered sympathetically, licking his chapped lips. "I know."
He continued on his rounds of the store, occasionally stopping to babble at a mannequin. They were good listeners, the mannequins. They tilted their head perfectly, and waited patiently as Manny finished his conversation, his thumb pressing into the velveteen rubber flashlight.
The mannequins were much better then the old people, yes. The chaotic and drab folk, who had yelled at Manny, spit flying from their cavernous mouths. The doctors were the worst, with their accusing syndromes and darting eyes; their white starched coats flapping in the wind, the heavy coats of the villains from Batman and X-men.
"Yer crazy!" They shouted, guns screaming in the windows. "Jus' like the enemy,"
Manny yawned, and stretched his arms upward. He leaned comfortably against the gum-plastered walls, and allowed the flashlight's timid balloon of light to slide to the floor.
Morning dawned early and invasive. Manny collected his goods, and said one last goodbye to his companions, his sneakers slipping on the dusty floor. The tiles reminded him of a chessboard, black and white and black and white, stretching like fingers towards the exit.
A dead bird lay by a car. Its wings curled around its head, and the feathers slithered sleepily in the wind. Its eyes were windows, blank and dead. A curtain had closed over those windows; it trapped the dim light within the house.
In the coffee shop across the street, a businessman was slumped across the doorframe, his hands rigidly holding on to the cardboard-covered beverage in his grasp. His mouth open slightly, Manny could see the coffee-stained teeth and the still smile.
The fog had gathered desperately around the trees, and the last bit of darkness dribbled into the faraway mountains. A plastic bag rattled on the end of a rusty rod, struggling to escape. The graffiti on the walls was dull, an afterthought of something big.
"Yer crazy," Whispered Manny to himself, smiling, and running a hand over his scabbed bald spot. "Jus' like the enemy."