Tick Tock

Night started to come down over the town. The lights of the carnival flickered like they were holding their breath and then started to go out one by one. Only the cotton candy stand still hummed with faint energy.

Eddie tied the cart with a tired sigh, sticky fingers from the sugar and sweat. The rose-colored material stuck to his fingertips like memories of his day. He pushed the cart along to the trailer court on the town's edge where he paid to stay in a tiny room over a garage. The room smelled of old oil and damp cardboard, but that was fine: it was cheap, and nobody asked questions.

His life amounted to not much. A few shirts in a bag, a laminated food vendor's permit, a small black-and-white photo of his daughter taped to the wall beside his bed. He had not seen her in four years. She was in Seattle now and living with her mother and stepfather, who probably had a real job and a real house. Eddie spun sugar into clouds all day for kids who barely looked at him. His dreams had melted off as cotton. quick, and gone.

Somewhere around town, Melvin pierced a paper cup with a stick. Another bit of trash to fill the bag. His feet were sore way deep in his bones. The type of pain no sitting could ever fix. He wore the same heavy boots day after day, and they wore thin at the heels.

He paused by the swings and gazed up at the stars. Not that he could see many of them but the empty sky still felt honest in a way people didn't.

Melvin worked in a factory. He'd had a pension plan, fellow employees who invited him for drinks in the evenings, and a routine to life. That was two decades ago. These days he was forced to work as a garbage collector in the city’s park, doing this part-time. The city administration said this was a “retirement supplement.” Melvin had said it was the only way he could remain alive.

He muttered to himself as he bent for another wrinkled napkin. No one ever took him seriously when he complained. He called the city twice last month about the broken bench on Maple. Still broken. Still ignored.

In the distance, a church bell rang nine.

Tick tock.

Time gets away regardless of whether you fill it or not. Regardless of whether you spin sugar into clouds or you chase garbage down in the night.

Tick tock.

And no matter how many people you walked past, smiled at, served, or shouted at, in the end, you were alone.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Painted People

She was not noticed by name but by presence.

She would appear each Friday, like clockwork, on the very same bench outside the seemingly ageless theater that had not shown a film in five years. Her costume shone under the streetlamp's light—hand-stitched broken glass-hued yellow, pink, brown sequins catching the light.

Nobody had any idea where she came from or where she disappeared to. She had silver tinsel wound through her hair like it was permanent, like she was born under party hats at New Year's Eve.

Kids would make stories. "She used to be a movie star," one would say. "Or a fortune teller," another guessed.

Truth was, she painted herself into that portrait every night. The makeup, the glitter, the careful posture—it was her armor. Not to impress. but to defend. In her tiny apartment above the liquor store, her mirrors were framed with sticky notes: You are not invisible. They still see you. You are still here.

She had led a life that was filled with rooms where people left too soon. The gown gave her the feeling that she hadn't disappeared as yet.

A block down, on the corner where the light fluttered between green and stuck, a boy stood waiting. Seventeen, maybe. Hard to tell. He was too old to be wide-eyed and too young to be hard.

In his hand, a red balloon. No party, no parade—just a balloon floating above cracked concrete and fumes of passing traffic. He sold them for five bucks a pop. Some days, there were no takers. Some days, a mom handed him a pity ten and hurried off.

He did not mind. One balloon meant a bed at the shelter. Two could mean having dinner.

He looked down since people did not make eye contact when you did not. They did not want to see the hunger, the cold in your posture, or the silence beneath your smile. He had stopped taking it personally. There were more people in the world than it knew how to cope with.

Tonight, not a single one of them had sold. He had wished that someone might slow down. He had wished that someone might have cared.

No one did.

The city still hummed like it always did-alive but distant.

Tick tock.

The painted lady stood alone, dress shining like a disco ball no one danced under. The boy gazed at his balloon drifting lazily in the air, red in the darkness.

Tick tock.

Even when you transformed yourself into glitter, or smiled behind a helium-drifting Dream-you still had to face it alone.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Painted Lady

He saw her again. Same bench, same dress, same streetlight shining down like it was hers alone.

The boy with the red balloon was at the end of the block. He had nothing to lose, so he went over.

The balloon floated beside him, barely tied.

She didn't look up when he sat down. But she spoke.

"Selling that, yeah?" she asked, voice a late-night DJ—warm, deep, and with a slight crack.

"Not exactly," he replied. "But yeah, I would."

She eventually looked at him. Her eyes were tired but pleasant. She regarded the balloon as if it were a question.

"What is it for?" she asked.

"Somewhere to sleep."

She agreed, then reached into a small bag made of gold beads and dreams. Pulled out a five. Gave it to him as if it wasn’t the last one she had. Maybe it was. Didn’t matter.

“I’ll hold it a while,” she said.

They sat in silence.

He stared at her sequins. “You painted all this?”

She smiled. “Every night.”

“Why?”

She looked up at the sky, where there were no stars to cut through the city fog.

"Because if you paint the Her," she whispered softly, "you don't have to go on living life alone."

She said it again, this time softer, as if to herself.

Paint a woman all dressed up in the finest sequin gown

Colour her your favourite colour of yellow, pink and brown

Paint a woman, grant her tufts of her own tinsel

And then you won't have to keep living life alone

He was lost for words. So he remained silent.

Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pen—he always carried one with him, in case he needed to write something down—and on the side of the balloon, he wrote: Keep going.

He handed it back to her. "You hold this. Might float you somewhere better."

She took it cautiously. As if it would pop under too much hope.

"Maybe I'll paint you next," she said.

Suddenly, the lamp flickered.

And for an instant, these two bizarre-looking individuals on a tired bench were tinsel and torn shoes, and glitter and hunger, feeling just like they were the only two real things in this world.

Tick tock.

Time went on moving. But for now, they weren’t alone.

THE END...