There is a man with a gray pin-striped suit and without a job. He is sitting on the hood of his nice car, looking at other cars as they go places. He is not going anywhere. He knows that now.
All this time he had lived for the future. The future had been the firm ground he stood on, and the present was only the slight haze in the air. But now he understood that the future was a joke without a punch line and that whatever he had in the present was what he would have always. He did not have much in the present. He had a very nice car.
He called someone. It doesn't matter who. It was his lover. They called each other that. It was the name they preferred. It didn't matter to them what anyone else thought of the word.
"Where are you?" His lover said. "They said you didn't come in."
" yeah," he said.
"Are you okay? Are you hurt? When are you coming home?"
Was he hurt? He stopped to consider this. He didn't think so. He examined his body. He took off his suit and his silver watch, laid them in the dirt, and stood there with his phone, naked, looking at himself.
No, he wasn't hurt he thought.not physically.
He opened his mouth to answer, but looking up he saw something in the sky. It was a planet of awesome size, lit by no sun. And invisible titan, all thick black forests and jagged mountains and deep, turbulent oceans. It was all so far away that he couldn't be sure he was even seeing it, and yet it felt more real and present to him than the cars driving on the highway below him.
He hung up without answering, which was, in it's own way, and answer. He looked up. He couldn't see the planet anymore. He put his suit back on. He picked up his watch. It was covered in dirt. He got back in his car and drove.
YOU ARE READING
the man in the gray pin-striped suit
Paranormala collection of the man in the gray pin-striped suit in the book "welcome to night vale" by Joseph fink & Jeffrey cranor. i repeat, this and the character, the man in the pin-striped, are not mine. I am making this for me so it may take a while to u...
