a young man named sidney sat on a rusty fire escape watching the world go by.
it went by slowly because it was three o’clock in the morning.
the city was quiet.
but it was not always so.
in the morning it would come roaring to life and sidney would be overwhelmed.
in a previous life sidney had been an orangutan.
in that life he had been waylaid and overcome by the jungle before punching his ticket..
one thing was different in this life in the city from his life in the jungle as an orangutan,
annabel abercrombie.
annabel abercrombie was gossamer and moonlight and the stars in the midnight sky before pollution.
she was a savage and pitiless butterfly who devoured the souls of men like cornflakes.
especially sidney, who was helpless in her green eyed grasp.
annabel did not acknowledge sidney’s existence, despite his insane devotion to her.
her heart was cold.
like the night.
the silence of the night was broken by a garbage truck coming up the street.
his reverie broken, sidney got up from his seat on the fire escape.
he climbed back through the window and into his room.
his lonely room.
he tripped as he put his second foot on the floor as he got through the window but managed not to fall down.
sidney fell down 36,8 percent of the time he went back through the window in this manner.
if he had improved this percentage, annabel abercrombie would not have cared.
because was just the way she was.
the way she would aways be, throughout eternity.
sidney fell asleep, and had a dream.
but not about annabel abercrombie.
whose cruel reach did not extend quite so far as that.
outside, the city slept, and the invisible stars looked down through billions of light and dark years.
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