Today’s words: Bedsite, Parsimonious, Occupied,
Limping
Word count: 549
Completion time: 37 minutes
Summary: You can never be too careful when helping
a stranger out
--
What a cliché. An old guy’s limping along the
pedestrian crossing, no-one else bothers to help, so you volunteer because not
doing so would cause you to feel bad. It was rush hour, so horns were blazing and
people were walking so fast it looked like they were robots trained to avoid any
collision or conflict; eyes forward, shoulders back, a parsimonious hold on
their bags and purses whenever they walked past the homeless couple on the
corner of the street, you know.
Anyway, when I walked up to this guy and took his
arm in mine, telling him that I would give him a hand, he smiled gratefully and
shifted some of his weight onto my side. He needed me, I was doing him a
favour, I was the hero...that’s what ‘selfless’ people say a lot, don’t they?
Oh, I’m doing it out of the kindles of my heart, they say. Bullshit. They’re
doing it because they all have ego trips, they want to make themselves feel
better by doing something generous. I do the same, but I like to think that I’m
a good person first and foremost.
When I looked closer at him to make sure he was
okay, he looked much younger than I had initially assumed; his attire threw me
completely – woolly bobble hat, thick brown Chelsea quilt jacket, light grey
soiled trousers that looked two sizes too big...I was sure that he was in his
late forties initially.
As we made it to the other side of the street, he
thanked me and I smiled modestly. “It’s really no problem,” I added. “You’d
probably do the same for me, right? Anyway, I’d better...”
He put a hand on my arm softly. “Are you occupied
right now at all?” A slight Scottish accent accompanied his words.
The accent took me by surprise, and he had such a
kind look in his eyes that I said that no, I wasn’t ‘occupied’. So he took me
to Costa and we had a coffee and some
snacks, his treat. When we sat down, he took his hat off, revealing a closely
cropped head of dusty blonde hair that was beginning to curl at the ends. It
made me feel comfortable, I think; if he had left his hat on, it would have
made me feel uneasy for some reason.
“So, what’s your name?”
He asked me several questions about myself like he
was genuinely interested, throwing out a compliment here and there about my
hobbies and occasionally what I was wearing. My cheeks flushed, but I blamed it
entirely on the soy latte.
When we left, he was still limping so he asked if
I could walk him home since it was only across the park. I agreed.
His limp was soon gone when we stepped inside and
his voice had dropped a little. I knew that I had to get out, but my legs were
frozen and I knew that he wouldn’t let me go, even if I asked nicely. I don’t
like recalling what happened in too much detail, but afterwards, his makeshift
limp had transferred itself to me for real and the bedsite wall had a few bloody
scratches on it.
Every day since, I curse myself in the mirror for
being too naive.
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