#39 - Time to Escape

Today’s words: Futuristic, Ill-informed, Sluggard, Localize 

Word count: 408

Completion time: 1 hour 20 mins (ish)

Summary: Sometimes you just need to escape your boring, co-ordinated, black and white life

~

Sitting in a quiet pub on the corner of Hawley Crescent, I would often imagine that I was in a time capsule and had travelled to the future. Inside was old, brown, mustard and grey, but one look out of the window would present a fresh kaleidoscope of colours from purple to neon green to pink and everything in-between. I hadn’t decided what year myself, the lady behind the bar, and the sluggard mid-afternoon drunkard always travelled to but it was far, far enough that the pub would have been long-forgotten, not even a distant memory. 

Only three rules existed in the capsule:

1. Never talk about the capsule
2. Never talk about the capsule
3. Never step outside the capsule

Of course, in this make-shift world, people from the outside would still come in but I would pretend that they were hallucinations; when people left, I imagined that the time gods smote them for breaking the rules (and if they returned, they were just clones produced to prevent their relatives from getting suspicious).
 

With my chin resting on the back of my hand, I marvelled at the citizens who walked by. People with: furry boots, multi-coloured dreadlocks, piercings aplenty, cat-eye contact-lenses, leather Matrix-like jackets, a variation of Mohawks, shaved heads, back-combed barnets, feathered crops, dyed hair everywhere...this was the world where the capsule dropped us off, the default setting that I didn’t want to change.

No-one from where I live dressed like that, no-one would. The head like to localize certain behaviours and attire: a full uniform at all times, shirts tucked in, no chewing gum, skirts below the knee, no ‘wild’ hairstyles... ‘Wild’. What did that mean, anyway? What is ‘wild’ measured in? Is it possible to be borderline ‘wild’? I tried to be wild once, but ‘wild’ pinched my skin like a pair of jeans that would look fine if not for the pesky top button. The head of the town was ill-informed anyway – kneecaps and haircuts don’t cause delinquent behaviour.

Oh how I pined for wild.

A dull sound that briefly brought me back to reality. “Oh, sorry.” The barwoman positioned my schoolbag in the upright position it was in before she must have kicked it unintentionally. “Would you like a refill?” She smiles and gestures towards my empty cup of tea that is now stained brown at the bottom.

I nodded and returned her smile. “Yeah, I’ll probably be here for a while.”