Emma

Read as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qJTzUyPEnw plays in the background.

Emma scanned the items he picked out from the vegetable aisle

Emma wondered whether this man was having a barbecue or not

“We have some fresh burger buns in the bakery section if you’d like”

His thick beard was so messy it covered half of his face

“That would be $14.99 sir”

“Call me Dirt” he said

Twelve customers past Dirt, her shift was finally over

Emma loosened her green apron and headed towards the back to grab her stuff from her broken locker

She carried a brown worn out purse that contained nothing but old bills, rusty bobby pins and an empty bottle of pepper spray

Her boss orders her to secure her frizzy hair in a tight bun

She untied it to release the bad headache she suffered from all day

She applied some chap stick and tied her hair again

Her loose platinum blonde pony-tail gave contrast to the dark undone roots she had

but she had to catch the bus and it was already 8

Her hour-long ride back home felt like five minutes

Emma knew most of those she rode the bus with

There was Silvia the nail technician

Javier from the pool maintenance company

Miguel with the dirty white tank top

And Roberta who spent the whole ride talking out loud about her dead husband who was given different names

She repeated the same old stories to everyone

And when no one was listening

She recited the stories to herself

Emma did not care any less because the Radiohead she played on her iPod took her and her imagination on another bus ride

She pictured things she wished would happen

Scenarios of praise, appreciation

A true love’s kiss

And her roots all done in blonde.

177 Dalhousie Avenue, she stepped down the bus and walked to her house; the one her father closed off before he fell victim of his lung tumor

Emma and her dad were close, their daily ritual consisted of baking fresh buns to the tunes of Bon Jovi because “bakery buns lack the thrill of rock”

Her mother had always been nobody ever since she left when Emma was only 3 months old

Some said she ran off with her boyfriend who owns a castle in Granada

Others said they owned a farm away in British Columbia

For all Emma cared, she had pop her buns into the oven before she consumed her daily dose of Grey’s Anatomy

Emma was someone who was comfortable with the silence of her neighborhood, but got sick of hearing her own echo down the corridor

She was a hard worker

She had to work eight hours a day to afford the online courses she was taking

It was not long until a knock on the door interrupted her episode

“Who is it?” she yelled with a mouthful from her living room

The door was not familiar with any strangers

“Who is it?” Emma repeated

She opened the door and found a little box that had a picture of a clock stuck on the top

This clock pointed at the hour of 10

A little weirded out Emma took the box inside and tried finding something to open the box with

She found a screwdriver and used it to snap the top open

There it was, the darkest pair of sunglasses laid in grace

They were so dark that when Emma tried them on, she saw pitch black with slight traces of the objects around her

She decided to return them to the post office the next day hoping that the mailman got the parcel address mixed up

The next day was a weekend and the post office was closed. Emma went for a jog, took some shirts to the tailor, and visited Saint Joseph’s to get her blood test results.

That same night, as Emma was folding the laundry, she heard the door knock again.

She completely forgot the situation that occurred the night before, so she

opened the door and found the same box with the same note, and after opening it, she found the same pair of glasses.

They were soon thrown aside with the other pair from the night before.

The next day, she waited by the door and carefully listen to any footsteps approaching.

Once she heard the door knock, she directly opened the door but found the box only.

Filled with desperation, she decided to record her anonymous visitor’s gifting schedule.

After a good four weeks of close and focused observation, she realized that the source did not only drop the box off at a specific hour, but during Emma’s presence too.

By the time she realized so, she had already collected 28 pairs all stacked in a corner in her living room.

That’s when the creeps kicked in, her wild imagination took her back & forth, and Emma decided to sleep out for a good week hoping the stalker she imagined would get bored & find himself someone else to mess with.

Her stay at old Roberta’s was not any less chaotic than home.

Roberta suggested that the secret visitor was her husband Elton who was trying to connect and the only way he could do so was through a miserable medium.

She then mentioned that Harry loved his Ray-Ban, then pointed out: “But John never had any trouble with his eyes”.

After almost a week at crazy Roberta’s, Emma headed back home since Roberta ran out of names.

As soon as she arrived at her front porch, Emma sighed with relief because there were no boxes laying around at her doorstep.

As soon as she entered the house, seven wooden boxes were spotted on her coffee table.

She fired up in anger and tossed the boxes towards the wall until each burst open letting out the same pair of glasses. The sight of that dropped Emma to her knees in an emotional breakdown.

She grabbed the bottle of liquor her father hid under the sink then soon found herself intoxicated on her dark brown couch, playing a round of Jenga with all the stacked pile of dark glasses.

She looked around & laughed at the company of no one with a hum of “I'm lying on the moon

My dear, I'll be there soon”

She grabbed a pair and placed it on the top of her bent knee

It fell to the ground and snapped in two.

For some reason, Emma felt a weird emotional connection with the glasses that obliged her to panic and run around the house for some glue in order to stick the glasses back in one.

Emma stationed all the pairs on the ground hoping to form some kind of large code that could help her figure out their purpose

She opened all the notes the glasses came with

Nothing...

She then concluded that the whole situation was someone’s stupid attempt to play mind games with her.

She packed all the glasses back in their boxes and headed out to distribute them to those in need, keeping one pair for herself

She then sat in her father’s rocking chair on her front porch and admired the dusk

After three hours outside, she grabbed her glasses and waited until her alarm went off at 10:00 pm

The whole neighborhood fell into silence

Dogs barked all at once

The sun came out in its brightest shade

A cool breeze shifted the thin weed in her front yard

It felt like summer,

But it was October

The sprinklers went on

Bon Jovi played next door

And Everything progressed in slow motion

Dirt pushed his front gate open

The gate screeched really loud

He looked around in his leather jacket and reached out for his pocket

That’s when a magnetic force pushed Emma in bare feet onto the pavement

She followed the sparkling crystals on the road

She saw pitch black with traces of glitter

A gun fired

And Emma laid her head on the ground and admired the ground as it gleamed under the sunlight