Tucked in a corner...

Short story - take it for what you will.

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I turn my head, crane my neck, strain to hear the faintest music I've ever heard. Someone has to be playing it - oh - maybe it's just the church bells down the street.

It's ironic - if it's the church bells, that is. I was there last week...I'm not sure why. It had been a while, and I remembered why it had been that long. No one notices when you never come. Well, until you come back, anyway. I had wandered through the doors the day before I came to the church service - had found them open and walked into the sanctuary. Light was streaming through the windows, but it was empty. Totally devoid of life - and something in that image reverberated so deeply through my own body that I felt I had to return the next day. Any attachment I had ever felt to that building and its people had disappeared years ago. But I still came back...

People don't care when you leave - I don't think they ever really saw anything in me anyhow. Just some less than well dressed throwback. They all tried so hard - well, some of them did - to hide the stares that burned into the back of my head. I saw.

But no one ever asks questions. They just assume. No one cares about history - life stories - failed attempts at love - failed attempts at life. I wasn't always like this - but life really doesn't care about the before, about the once was, about the used to be. Only people do.

I came back, stood, watched people smiling around me. It's just as well - the only story people ever want to hear is their own. I wish I could hear mine - it's been a while. Instead, it remains trapped inside my head - the only place it's ever known - the one place I wish it would leave. I sit here at my desk - yeah, I do have one.

But you wouldn't know that. It's not part of your story. The church bells are gone now - or whatever music it was. Maybe I was imagining it. Or maybe I just really wanted to have heard it...