foggy

WDYS — Behind the Rain-speckled, Foggy Glass Window

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I am not a stalker, I swear to God I’m not. But when Maggie told me she couldn’t go out tonight to grab a bite to eat with me as we had planned, I asked her why not. She said she had some stuff she needed to take care of, and her vague answer made me suspicious.

I drove to her house and parked my car up the block and out of sight. Not so much to follow her when she left to “take care of stuff,” but just to make sure she was going to be okay. After all, it was rainy and a little foggy and I was naturally worried for her.

A few minutes after I got to her block a car pulled up and honked its horn in front of her house. The house door open and Maggie ran to the car and jumped into the passenger seat. It was too dark for me to get a good look at the driver, but I’d bet my bottom dollar it was some dude.

I followed them into town and I saw them park the car in the lot behind the diner. I saw him — definitely a dude — get out of the car, walk around and open the door for her. Shit, I never do that for her. They ran quickly into the diner to keep from getting soaked. I parked my car across the street from the diner and I saw them take a booth by the front window.

The rain-speckled glass on the outside and slightly fogged over on the inside made the two figures at the table look like ghosts caught between worlds. The neon lights from the street outside bled across the condensation in bruised hues of purple and green. From inside my car, I watched two silhouettes lean toward each other, their gestures sharp, their words lost to the pane.

They could have been lovers, plotting how Maggie could dump me and he could dump his girlfriend or maybe even his wife. But given from what could see through the rain and the mist, they could also have been enemies bargaining through clenched teeth, forcing civility in a public space. The guy leaned forward, hand curled like a fist beneath his chin, while Maggie reclined, her posture taut but measured. Their legs crossed and uncrossed, betrayed a restless current between them.

The windows in my car started to fog up from my breathing and the rain had settled into a fine mist, so I stepped out and onto the sidewalk next to the curb to try to get a better view.

I wondered if they knew how cinematic they looked from where I was watching. I was mesmered by the poetry of their blurred outlines framed in a window dripping with light and water, as though the world itself wanted to remember them in oil and canvas.

A taxi hissed by, spraying the curb. I shivered, though not from the cold. There was something in their stillness, the way neither seemed willing to leave, that tightened the air. Perhaps it was nothing — just two people sharing a meal on a wet night. Or perhaps, behind the fog, a choice was being made that would splinter their lives — or mine — in two.

I didn’t stay to see how it ended. I was actually feeling ashamed of myself for having followed her here. I headed home, showered to take the damp chill off my bones, and fell asleep thinking that some stories are better left unfinished, their secrets locked behind a diner’s rain-speckled, foggy window.

Written for Sadje’s What Do You See prompt. Photo credit: Egor Myznik @ Unsplash.

WDYS — The Ghost Wolf

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Most of us are raised in packs with our mother, father, and siblings. Being part of pack helps us hunt more effectively and to care for and protect one another.

But I am not like most of our breed. I had the misfortune of being born with all white fur, very different from the black and gray fur that the rest of my pack had. I was shunned from the start and ultimately, realizing that I would never be accepted, I left the pack, becoming what they call a lone wolf.

I migrated to the misty, often foggy forests within the Blue Ridge Mountains. As a lone wolf, I had to be especially stealthy to catch my prey and, with a price on my head, to stay out of the rifle sights of the bounty hunters who sought to kill me.

I became known as the “ghost wolf.” The name suited me and with my acquired skills as both a hunter and the hunted, I thrived.

It was a few years after I went solo that I met a she-wolf, Luna, whose fur was reddish brown, almost fox-like in color, while her face mask was white. She quickly became my mate and breeding partner. Before long she bore me enough pups that we had our own pack.

One of our pups, like me, was all white. I took a special interest in him, teaching him all of my skills. I wanted him to know that he was a cherished member of our pack and would never have to go out on his own. And long after I passed, he would continue my legacy of haunting the forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains as the “Ghost Wolf.”

Written for Sadje’s What Do You See. Image credit: Marek Szturc @ Unsplash