undrying the spell

You can't deny there are dry spells, droughts in a writer's life. I'm countering that. Here's something I'm working on.


Tangerine

I had to clench my eyes shut, like a fist, out of annoyance, close it long enough to see small white dots, disbelieving the film rolling from my right, and spreading around. I had to have been in a film. Or a dream. Unless streets could empty out rush hour crowds and turn pavements and buildings orange in a blink. A deep orange. I managed a small squint, a peek. Still orange. Still an empty street. Horns blowing and people elbowing to get ahead of you, the scent of car-jeep-bus-and-truck exhausts, the scene of after-work exhaustion, all suddenly not here.

I have an eye problem. That's one hypothesis among many. That explains why all is orange. Or I'm in another locale, swiftly removed from Ayala avenue on a six pm of a Friday night, and shot here, where there are no people, and, pinching my self, jumping up and down, to work up a sweat, slapping my cheek and offering the other, I don't seem to be waking up. I don't do drugs, I don't remember being drugged, maybe I am drugged.

I am hallucinating. Wide-eyed wonder! A traffic cop is adjusting his trousers to the sway of his belly, from across this street, grunting. Finally I hear sounds other than my breath, grunts, and foot falls. He hands me a ticket.

"Why?" His moustache moves. I've been standing still too long, everyone else had moved on, he said.

"Where's everyone else?" I ask, loudly, but I don't get an echo.

That's just it, he says. They've all moved on. And I shouldn't be here.

"Where's here?"

Where do you think?

"You trying to be funny, sir?"

No, 'where' do you think? That's where you are. And it's not right to stay there. I'm sorry but I'm going to have to take you for processing.

I pull away and run.