My hard-worn shoes pressed softly against the cobbled city street, glistening with moonlight despite several days without rain. I paused, glancing up at the moon, filled with a sudden desire to see the silvery orb on its own terms, without the muddy translation of the water underfoot.
As soon as the brim of my hat had cleared my skyward eyes, the moon scuttled obediently behind a cloud. I grunted, in annoyance and appreciation, and continued on my way.
Shrugging my shoulders up against a sudden chill, I glanced sideways into a nearby office. Ignoring the commercial office fitouts Melbourne had apparently made mandatory in the previous decade, I looked further into the gloom. I’d once stalked an office like this, I ruminated, surprised at the fondness with which the memory tapped at my psyche.
Had it really been so long? I found myself whispering in the dark, shaking my head. Since I’d been a part of the furniture, running errands and tapping out important documents that nobody would ever read, information came to me to die – but without the dignity of being allowed to be forgotten.
And so I’d signed forms and collected mail, anything I could to keep my head above water. Even the other interns and clerical mice had scuttled past me, seeking a distance I’d never understood before I left. Even now, I didn’t fully understand how I’d drawn their ire.
What are you even doing here? a particularly loathsome brute had asked me one day, as I bent around my desk to retrieve a dulling pencil. The question had made me pause – what was I doing? What had my goals been, before I’d entered this world of pencils and bullies and modern office design ideas. Melbourne had felt so big when I’d arrived, and now it felt…
Claustrophobic.
The realisation released me, set me freer than I’d ever known I could be. I snapped the pencil in two, grin sharpening in its stead, and made for the door.
And until this moonless night, soaked in the afternoon’s rain… I’d never looked back.