The Clacking Keys

August 29th, 2010

Charlie was not late.  Though his lonely feet dragged one after another in an endless motion towards the rail station, he was early.  His hat fell down his forehead a bit, and the dust from the road rose and fell with every forward stomp.  No longer did the pretty girls on arms of other fellows catch his eyes.  Lovely ladies such as those were not interested in any beau besides their own.  Not to mention that any gal who peered his sweat laced face would find the piercing loyalty of her brother’s border collie, which was intense even when he was not longing for her in particular.

No one noticed Charlie these days anyhow.  His eyes naturally spilled down onto the floor, very rarely looking up to check that he might be en route to crashing into someone.  He was a fish fighting the current of pedestrian traffic, and as it happened every time he walked through the crowded sidewalks, other people moved aside without noticing him, even ever so slightly.

At the ticket booth, Charlie stopped, and stood in front of its glass, staring at the chipped blue fingernails of the woman working the register.  Her fingers poked spastically on her clacking keys, with the bustle of chaotic rooster claws, while she cackled over her shoulder at the girl working the register two windows down.  “Bawk, squeal, did you hear what she did then?” she went on, as everyone did, not seeing Charlie.

“Bawk, that girl went cackle cackle squawk squawk and I just don’t know that she was thinking at all!” Charlie’s eyes lifted in confusion at the woman’s words, settling at her ruby colored mouth and lipstick stained teeth.  Words tumbled out of her throat, over her teeth, and past her lips.  Guttural cawing flung itself from beyond the fleshy conical stalactite in the back of her throat as she went on with emphatic movements ,  “Cockadoodle, yes she did, can you believe it?” The chicken woman, realizing her gossip had been served to a man standing before her, turned her face to him.  Without waiting for him to tell her his destination, she forced a ticket into his hands, and demanded, “Eleven peckles.”

Charlie’s hand, of its own volition, reached into his pocket, pulled out a few bills, and handed them to the woman.  She took his money, folded it into the drawer of the register, and promptly set to clacking her claws against the register keys, cackling away at anybody but Charlie.

Tags: playing with imagery
Posted in I Made This Stuff Up, People Watching | 2 Comments »