Short story: Going Home By Karl Whitney - - - - There was nowhere to go but home. He had stayed up half the night looking for answers, but all he found were other people’s problems – appearing to him in the half- light of the early morning as points marked out on the map of a journey he had already taken. He offered advice half-heartedly, with the best of intentions. The remnants of his waking hours were filled with dreams of escape: back to the life he had been living in a quiet corner of the universe, or into a life he did not yet know. He walked. Already he was feeling the tug of tiredness as it wrapped itself around his body, weighing down his limbs and eyelids with a heaviness that only sleep could counter. Before he saw the dawn, he felt it. He knew it would be waiting for him once he turned the street corner and headed towards the river. The main street was doused in a pale light that made it look alien, untouched. There was no one around save some lonely souls wandering the pathways, eyeing suspiciously their fellow travellers, preserving the city’s prejudice even at this early hour. The silence was only partially broken by the passing trucks collecting the rubbish from the previous day’s city. The river’s narcotic ebb lulled him towards the edge of the quay. He stared along the wall of the quay towards the bridge. The bridge, unused in his eyes to such desertion, now stood alone. No traffic passed. The swirling of an amber light, set atop a passing truck, danced with the weak sunlight, and made him feel drowsy. He hailed a taxi, and headed home. -------- Stories | Home | About This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.