It was a bright Tuesday morning and the man sat in a dark musty apartment. The smell was like dust and age, with a hint of negligence. He reflected on the futility of action, and also the futility of not acting - just another double bind. Why did everything lead to a dead end? Light came in on long shafts, through the tall windows with heavy velvet curtains partially drawn. Those shafts of light illuminated thousands of tiny dust motes - and their slow drifting gave contrast to the stillness of the room. The man sat on a broken down couch, quiet and still, he might have been made out of wood. Faint sounds came in that hinted at the existence of a world outside, the shrill cries of a gull, the rumbling of automotive engines, horns, sirens. All faint, all so far away. He barely noticed them.
He had gone out this morning because he had to. And truth be told he liked the early morning the best, the people weren't all there with their frightening excitement. There was no questions, just stillness enveloping him. Just the slow and steady placement of each foot, wrapped in a black leather shoe. There were houses and streets, the occasional light through a window, and there was silence and darkness. Life was beginning to emerge and that was enough for him, to just hear the birds announce a new day. He had never liked hustle and bustle, but these days he was more or less averse to it.
The bakery opened at 5am, and he had come in as he done on many mornings. When sitting at home in the dark seemed to be more absurd than going out into the lonely world. It was more that he didn't know why he did anything - he just did. Although more often than not he didn't do anything, he just sat there in that living room, a stone monument trying to capture some moment in time.
So he went out and he got the croissant, and he got the dark coffee that smelled like warmth. There was life in that greasy parcel of bread, it spoke of clever hands, fire and water. It was elemental and it breathed, he didn't know anything about baking but he enjoyed to watch their dedicated pacings as he sat at on a stool slowly chewing his croissant. The coffee was life too, and that same skill and passion had gone into it. An intricate set of procedures that made this black brown liquid that tastes like bitter dreams. Good and bad at the same time. He sipped it cautiously every few bites, and noticed the effects on his body. The body that he lived in seemed like a distant thought.
But this morning something was different, as if life could not forget even a statue of a man. A man with wrinkles and debt, and some things that he would rather forget. A man who the world in its busyness has forgotten. He felt this stirring and looked up from his stupor, and he noticed something. Next to the cash register was a newspaper stand, and the question arose. A quiet sensation, what if? Surely in that sea of words there might be something. Some clue to this existence and this loneliness. No man was meant to drift forever, that seemed to be too cruel and too pointless. So on this particular morning he crept up and took the newspaper off the top, "THE DAILY SCOOP" it said in large serif type along the top.
The man glanced at the barista who busied herself with the many small tasks that keep a place clean and organised. He began to lose himself imagining the kind of constantly moving magic that this woman used to keep the whole thing together. Blinking rapidly he roused himself, startled by her words "so you want to get a paper?", "uh yes please" he mumbled. "That will be a dollar fifty thanks", he scrambled in the pockets of his grey wool coat and produced a handful of chaos. Amongst that mob he pooled enough for her request and meekly handed it over.
Gobbling the rest of his croissant, and gulping the espresso, he set off with more speed that he had known in many years. This was new! Something was afoot, some game was happening, and he had a clue. He knew, he knew. This was far too private an affair for a bakery soon to be full of dreadful people. He scurried home with that newspaper tucked under his left arm. Black shoes hardly knowing what to do with such livliness in the feet that moved them.
Back at last, he shut the door and locked it. Recklessly clearing the coffee table he hunched down on that broken couch and began to dive into those efficient rows of sentences. Girl scouts, tragic news, properties for sale, the weather, what was all of this jibber jabber? He knew somewhere in here was a clue and without that clue he might literally die. Because this emptiness was not really a life, it was the absence of life.
The method was by no means linear and back to front, he pulled the pages apart and scanned haphazardly from section to section. In too much of a hurry to be methodical he had to rely on his madness to find it.
And there in the classifieds he found it, it could have been easily missed but something in his madness had honed in and grabbed a hold of those tiny ink shapes, somehow beyond paper and eye balls life was calling to him so strong, that he had to obey.
If You Have The Credits, We Have the Time Travel
Please present yourself to 129 wakefield St, today at 3.33pm. 10,000 credits non negotiable, this is not a hoax.
And there it was, as plain as the daylight that he had been trying to avoid. His chest felt heavy at facing the practicalities of life, but he knew there was no choice. So he opened those curtains fully and then went to the bathroom. God he looked awful, big bags under his eyes and face full of stubble. Yet something was different in the eyes that looked back at him in the mirror, there was some mysterious spark - there was a hope that he felt in his chest beneath the heaviness.
So he prepared himself, with scummy razor and a can of shaving cream which reluctantly squirted a few fingerfulls of stiff white merange. He brushed his teeth and spat, the black coffee melded with that whitish liquid to make a light brown colour. He stood under the shower head with scolding hot water pelting his shoudler blades. It felt good, this hadn't felt good for months, but today it felt good.
Clad in a dark blue suit, a white shirt and a thin tie made from a silky dark red, he looked himself over once more and combed his hair. This was good enough, he would be recognizable, he would know what to do.
So he walked out that door with his smart phone in his pocket. He didn't know anything about this new currency market, but as more and more services were turning to it he had eventually opened up an account. A gift from his younger brother had come through 9 months ago, 10,000 credits exactly. How could he have known?
How could anyone have known?
Today there was hope, and as he strode out into the unknown he knew that there was a chance to put things right. And that chance was all he had, so he had to throw his whole life at it. Better this madness than the slow degradation that had overtaken him.
2:17PM his Casio watch read, as he hurried along sweating slightly in the bright afternoon sun.
This is part of a short story competition run by 
https://steemit.com/twentyfourhourshortstory/@mctiller/writers-win-5-steem-and-now-with-more-prizes-twenty-four-hour-short-story-contest-for-may-15-a-man-reads-a-newspaper-ad-if-you
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