Horns blare, tires screech - the city is awake even this early in the morning. Lights - green, red, yellow, white, blue - flicker, blink, and glare across the rain slicked streets. Cars rush by, racing to where they need to go. No one is wandering the street, absently thinking of what they want to do today, where they want to go. Everyone is moving with purpose, knowing just where they need to get to and getting there as efficiently as possible.
Sturdy business shoes clomp through the little puddles, high heels skirt the edges, and the rare galoshes ignore them completely. I look down at the puddle by my sneaker-clad feet, there is a leaf floating in it. Small and green, full of life, it floats in the little pool of water. Reminding me of the stream by my old house, where you could sit all day watching the leaves, branches, and flowers floating by. It was quiet there, not like the city with all the hustle and bustle, blinking and crashing, talking and yelling.
Quickly, before the next set of clomping shoes came by, I reached down and picked up the leaf. I put it in my pocket and headed up the street - looking up at the sky wondering if it was going to rain again.
No one was talking. United in solidarity, the three of them sat in complete silence. Largest to smallest down the line, they awaited their sentence. They were a sorry group to look at, splattered with mud.
The first looked bored, sporting a long scratch down the side of his face. It just beginning to redden, dotted slightly with blood. His red hair stood up in random spikes on his head, ends colored dark, like a bad dye job. His clothes were mussed, grass stains evident on both knees of his dark wash jeans. The laces of his untied boots were just grey clumps beside his feet, looking like dead worms.
The next suspect sat motionless, as if any move would trigger a reaction, looking carefully to either side waiting for the danger to pass. Mud slowly oozed down his forehead, dangerously close to his eye. He twitched, not sure if it was safe enough to wipe it away, or just suffer the tickling itch as it moved closer and closer. His red tshirt sported a ragged gape which exposed his thin chest and his thrumming heart, erasing the mask of quiet and calm. He was missing a shoe, the remaining sock was grey with the same mud from his forehead. It didn't matter much, it didn't match his other sock anyway.
The smallest of the three fidgeted, as if to worm her way into the background and escape notice. Her look showed indecision, stand brave or give way to tears in some hope for sympathy and lienency. The glasses perched on her nose were smeared with the mud as well, nearly blocking her vision entirely. Her hair, long and blond, had escaped the elastic holding it away from her face. One long section dripped onto her shoulder, making a dark spot on the only clean section of her once-blue shirt. Her hands were red and chapped, mud and dirt beneath her nails could be clearly seen even through the bright polish. Her bare feet left prints on the floor, each contour of her foot outlined neatly in grey against the white tile in front of her.
I took a deep breath. All eyes snapped to mine, wary and expectant. Sentencing time had come.
No one understood. I watched as the people climbed out of their cars. Women's heels clicked on the pavement, men stood patiently by. Everyone walked in pairs or small groups, one man waited on the edge of the grass. He joined the pair that reached him first, he didn't want to walk up the small hill alone. I stood motionless near the parked cars. It was quiet here, the murmuring of condolences was drowned out by the wind through the trees lining the small road. I wanted to laugh, what a sorry picture this made and what crazy jokes would he have made about this whole production. He would have made me laugh, if he had been here.
