Lonely Drifters

Mimi Eysher

Description

We often pass our lives concentrated on the routine and on the achievement of individual plans. In the midst of scoring points or the ticking of the to-do list, we do not notice how life has a pace of its own around us, completely indifferent to us. However, once we learn how to notice more and care less for what does not matter as much, life begins to entertain us. The young man, close to the end of teenagehood, feels bored in each passing day, but with one unprecedented encounter with a creative young girl, he changes his disappointed and apathetic outlooks on things, and realizes that actually life has more reasons to be bored of us...

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 28 juin 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528963725
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Lonely Drifters
Mimi Eysher
Austin Macauley Publishers
2019-06-28
The Lonely Drifters About the Author About the Book Copyright Information The Lonely Drifters
About the Author
The author began writing stories in her teenage years, a hobby which later developed into a passion of life. Upon graduation from school, the author pursued degrees in international relations and journalism to tie her life closer to writing. Mimi Eysher is the author’s pen name which she created after completing her work ‘The Lonely Drifters’. The author has other written stories for teenage readers and adults, ranging from thrillers and science fiction to historic dramas and novels. Mimi Eysher lived in six different countries during her youth years, and parallel to writing books, she is an active collector of handcrafted statues of hedgehogs and mice.
About the Book
We often pass our lives concentrated on the routine and on the achievement of individual plans. In the midst of scoring points or the ticking of the to-do list, we do not notice how life has a pace of its own around us, completely indifferent to us. However, once we learn how to notice more and care less for what does not matter as much, life begins to entertain us.
The young man, close to the end of teenagehood, feels bored in each passing day, but with one unprecedented encounter with a creative young girl, he changes his disappointed and apathetic outlooks on things, and realizes that actually life has more reasons to be bored of us…
Copyright Information
Copyright © Mimi Eysher (2019)
The right of Mimi Eysher to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528922234 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528922241 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781528963725 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
The Lonely Drifters
The taste of smoke had started to act on my nerves. I never actually liked smoking but smoked nonetheless because that’s what a guy has to do—what a creepy rule of my youth culture.
The light of my cigarette was the only lantern in the darkness I observed with my silenced mind. I was sitting on the top of a tall city building, and that was a very cool sensation. Up high, you could see the whole city beneath you. You would feel like the master of the world; everything is moving while you are just watching and spitting down. How independent you feel up in the air, hidden in the dark from everyone you watch.
I took another drag of my cigarette, it was midnight, but I did not feel like going home at all. However, there was a time limit: people want to sleep and are not in the mood to drive buses at such a late hour. I stubbed my cigarette out on the concrete surface of the roof and headed for the short, solitary door on the rooftop. The lamps were on in the building when I opened that door and prepared to descend. In one move, I jumped on the floor from the ladder that led to the roof. It then took me about three minutes to get from the rooftop to the ground level on an elevator.
The doors of the lift opened up gently, and I walked out towards the exit at the back of the building. That exit was always open for the security to check out the territory around at night, so I easily snuck out of the building without being noticed. I headed towards the bus stop.
The air of the city was very cold outside, and the night seemed to be coloured in black with only silver lights visible in it. I reached the bus stop and stood there for a minute before I saw the bus slowly arrive. It was the last bus, and I felt relieved that I did not actually miss it. The public transport was absolutely empty as I stepped inside. The doors shut behind me, the engine was on and we hit the road—just the bus driver and I.
“Where’d ya going, kid?” asked the bus driver loudly enough for me to hear him in the passenger section. I saw him raise his eyes at me in the mirror above him. He had a cap on like most bus drivers did and looked kind of tired from being at the driving wheel for half of the day, although his voice sounded positive and full of energy. I was sitting on a seat next to the window.
“Three stops away from here,” I answered without moving my gaze away from the window and the passing figures beyond, which I attentively watched as we sped down the road.
We were speeding past the houses, past the few moving cars and bright multiple street torches. The city looks kind of attractive at night—I guess it has something to do with its mysterious appearance of hidden shapes and exposed shadows. The darkness does a lot of miracles; it hides the things that you are accustomed to seeing and shows you the things that you could have only fantasized of.
There were no people on the streets. Probably, they were all sleeping, watching TV, eating late or chatting with somebody they live with, but sooner or later they’d go to bed and wake up the next morning and live the same day they had lived yesterday. I am not a pessimist. I am only convinced that a set routine is another kind of force—our lives are so scheduled.
When I was a kid, I always wanted to see something weird outside my window in the morning. I wanted to see houses with different roofs, exotic birds on trees and strangely dressed people around, but the only difference I would feel was that, on the new day, the weather would either be colder or hotter.
The bus stopped and I got off my seat. “Thank you,” I said to the bus driver.
“Take care, mate,” said he in reply and closed the doors behind me.
I was walking on a narrow road with loads of advertisements. It is incredible how advertisements must compose at least 30 per cent of what surrounds us in our reality. It is a trend that never gets out of fashion—something that modifies itself and grows, forever in our face no matter where we are and what we do. Personally, advertisements do not work on me because I do not remember them once I’ve relocated my attention, and if I do manage to recognize a product in the store, it doesn’t make me do anything—I am annoyed by ads—I hate them. I increased my pace to pass all of the posters which were visible even in the dark and within a short period of time I approached my house.
My parents were probably sitting in the kitchen and discussing something interesting for their age, I assumed, when I opened the door and shut it behind me. They heard me enter. I took off my shoes and walked into the kitchen, where they were sitting at our round table with a dim light on, drinking hot tea from their mugs.
“Here you are. We thought you got lost somewhere on your way,” said my dad smiling to me like he always did. I must add that it was never a problem for my parents if I got home late at night because they just never stressed about it.
My parents are very different. My father is always in a good and high-spirited mood which must not be very common among dads, I think, and he always makes jokes. Basically, he is unique in that sense because that is the only mood I have witnessed in him since I can remember remembering things. I must say, however, my dad’s jokes are not often funny but I think their point is not to make you laugh, but to show you what a smiley guy he is. However, my mum is completely opposite to him.
My parents started dating when they were seventeen years old. My mum is very emotional and she can sometimes even be slightly aggressive. One day, a long time ago, my dad came to her house. They were in a fight because my mum thought he’ll dump her over some sexy girl in their neighbourhood with whom my dad was very cheerful, frivolous and constantly in contact with. That made my mum suspicious and she openly reacted to what she had concluded in her mind. So my dad went to my mum’s house to talk things out. At the time he arrived, according to his narration of the story, my mum was in the kitchen wearing a short red dress with a print of small white blocks and was cutting vegetables for a salad. Usually, whenever I’d hear this story, my mum wouldn’t object to this precise statement, but she would argue that she was not crying when my dad arrived—those were just the onions. What difference does that make, I don’t quite understand.
Anyway, Dad says that when he walked into the kitchen where my mum was cooking, he saw that her eyes were filled with black tears from her make-up when she strikingly looked at him. As a guy, I assume that at this moment my dad must have felt very bad about himself while also feeling the whole weight of awkwardness of this situation.
Regardless of everything, my father started to negotiate with my mum. That was really difficult to do because my mum didn’t want to talk to him at all and my dad just kept chasing her round the apartment until he eventually caught her by the arm. My dad told Mum that he loves her, obviously, that she’s the best girl ever, and probably something else to reassure her of their relationship, but what happened next was just unbelievable, and I wish I’d seen that myself. According to this true love story, my mum was so emotional at the moment that she agilely slipped her arm out of my dad’s grip, grabbed the small modern (at their time) TV kept on a wooden stand and, with a cry, she impulsively threw it out the closed window in the living room. There was a tumultuous cracking noise of glass and a view of a broken window