Story time

**

A couple of years ago I went to an eerie ghost town, somewhere in the winterland of Death Valley in California. It was incredibly foggy when I was there, and the thick, gray fog obscured visibility more than a couple of meters ahead. Crunchy gravel beneath my feet, ramshackle buildings with deteriorating weatherboard cladding, and a few subtle but distinct indications that people had actually lived there set the mood to pensive, heavy, loaded. The sensation of lingering remnants of activity stopped short was multiplied by the way sound failed to travel through the fog, almost as though water in the air hampered the sounds we made, and rendered us alone, singular individuals, in an eerie space of memories, abandon and erronious directions. There was once life in this place - intense, hard, gritty life - and an awareness of yesteryear hung in the damp air. As I intruded this space of the past, tiny pieces of broken glass were pushed deeper into the ground under my feet. Alone in a solitary space, I heard muffled sounds from others, here too to seek the thrill of long past desertion and deterioration. Now and again the muffled cones of headlights appeared as phantasms, just beyond my capacity to see.

**

She walked down the street, wrapped in a haze of thoughts obscuring her to the surroundings. Or at least so she hoped. In fact her eyes, downcast and fleetingly seeking a way, attracted attention. They had a deep expression, intense, begging for acknowledgment, convoluted in a dark openness that hurt her as much as the next. The pale skin of her face accommodated this sharpness. She pulled the brim of her hat down to provide as much cover as possible to her face and breathed in the cold air piercing her lungs. Her presence was at once a meek shadow seeking to repel glances to achieve anonymity, and a strong expression of hope, challenging with dignity and perhaps even self-importance others on her way.

What had happened to the hopes she held? All her dreams? Around her people hurried from one place to the next, in a never ending series of places to go and things to do, whilst she seemed to have stopped in her tracks.

She felt the movement of all around her and floated in nothingness.

**