Stolen Wishes

I wrote this one for fun, as I haven't posted in a while. It was quick and spur of the moment, so don't judge too harshly!

~~~~~~~~~

She was there as she was every tuesday night, when she knew that the streets would be barren and lights turned off, the seldom car that drove by gave her not a glance. Only the occasional pigeon expressed the slightest bit of assiduity, and of course myself.

Everyday she wore the same as the last, the tattered sweatshirt and jeans smudged and torn by the days that had not been kind to her. She sat at a corner next to a bakery in the city, and spent her days and nights there, a tin can collecting her well being and a grocery cart holding what she still had of her life together. I had to walk past her everyday to go to work, watching her wilt away during the days, eyes shutting out the world to distance herself from the cruelty. When she did open them, she had the kind of look in her eye that made you belive that at one time, another life perhaps, there had once been hope, ambition even, but the dark halos around her eyes and deep lines that had formed around her mouth had snatched it away from them long ago.

I watched her as I did every Tuesday night. The flickering yellow light would allow her into view, her arms always hugging her sides, eyes aimed down to the ground and her battered shoes, regarding the dirt her boots stirred up as if it was a book of her past. She would approach the fountain, which was always turned off at night, then sit on the mighty stone circle for a while, staring into the water.

I barley slept. People had started to notice. My coworkers and those who claim friendship always ask if I’m ill, if I’ve been eating enough, eyeing my gaunt frame as a creature that they could only perceive as human, but knew was something else. I’d tell them I was okay.

And I was okay, but only becuase of her. I had no one else to spend the nights with, no one that would spend time with me in the unholy hours of the night, where even the faint city sounds would drop from exhaustion, when I would lie in bed pretending to myself to be watching the TV. She was there, only on Tuesday nights, but she was there. The loneliness almost ebbed when I watched her sit at the edge of the fountain. Her back was always towards me, but it was enough. It was enough to have another person to share the night with. Lonely, but not alone.

Then, just as she did every Tuesday night, she would reach into the water and pull out handfulls of coins. She would never look around to see if someone was watching, becuase I don’t think she cared. If someone stopper her, attacked her, even killed her, I don’t think she would have cared. Into her pockets and her bags. All she would do is scoop pennies out of the water, the water slipping through the metal and through her fingers, but never all of them. I would check the next day to see how many she had taken, and there were always plenty left.

When the task was over, she would pull out one of the stolen coins, hold it in her fingers, and throw it back in. She was making a wish, after stealing everyone else’s, and hoping it would come true.

I don’t know what she did with the stolen wishes. Perhaps she spent them on food. If she did, I never saw it. Perhaps she’s hiding it somewhere, in hopes to collect enough to buy something bigger, maybe a bike, or a new bag that wasn’t torn apart by the cruelty of the city or her negligence.

Or perhaps it was a lesson, that life isn’t fair, not everybody gets the chance they deserve. Perhaps she’s punishing people for hoping that their wishes would morph reality, becuase hers never did. Perhaps she’s angry at life, and blames fate for what happened to her.

I watched her just as I did every Tuesday night. I watched her take a closing look into the fountain, hug her arms again, and stare at the ground until the darkness outside of the lamplight swallowed her up and out of my view.

That was the last Tuesday I saw her.

The Wednesday that followed was the last day I saw her at all. I had gotten there just in time, before they had finished pulling the sheet over her body. She had been stabbed, her jacket taken, her grocery cart gone. Her eyes were still closed, I don’t think she even saw her attacker. There was a dark bloodstain on the pavement. It looked so out of place, so criminal, next to the quaint bakery where she stayed. I watched from across the street as the dark blue men loaded her form into the ambulance. A crowd had gathered. They hadn’t cared about her until after she was gone. I went to work as usual that day.

On my way back I looked at the crime scene. They had the little corner taped off with bright yellow barriers, but I could still see over, and there was no one watching me. Just outside of the tape there was a small pile of just about five pennies. I picked them up and put them in my pockets, feeling like I had just taken the murder weapon.

I waited until the next Tuesday. I had kept the coins in a little clay bowl my nephew had made me once. When it felt like the right time, I walked out to the fountain, that looked pitiful and useless with the water turned off, and looked into the waters just as she had every Tuesday night. I sat in the place she had sat every Tuesday night.

The coins were in my hand. I dropped them in one by one, not making a wish on any. I wanted these people to have their stolen wishes back. It felt like the right thing to do.

When I was done, I walked back to my apartment and layed in bed for a while. I actually got some sleep that night.