This is the beginning of the Beige Apartment Saga.
Lovely Lucy
and her magic wand
and her magic wand
Lucy wakes up at 10 and she doesn't eat breakfast. She sticks her head in a cold shower and tries in vain to ignore the goosebumps on her skin. She washes her face and combs her hair, never bothering to look in the mirror, because the mirror is a waste of time. She buttons down her white collared shirt (3 sizes too big, but it will do) and puts on her faded black jeans - same as she did yesterday - same as the day before. An alarmclock rings at 10:45 and Lucy opens the apartment door. She walks into the empty, beige hallway (everyone's gone to work) and rides the elevator one lonely flight down... to the lobby with the half awake doorman. She opens the glass door herself (careful not to wake him completely), and at 10:47, Lucy is standing on a gray sidewalk; the sun hurting her doe eyes (a pale shade of green squinting upwards). She starts her ten minute walk - two blocks then a left with her long blonde hair whipping ungracefully in the wind. Barely 30 seconds to 11, Lucy finds herself at work (an old photo shop behind the library) and immediately, she enters the dark room, which she has unofficially claimed as her own.
She works one roll at a time, delicately trasnfering stranger after stranger's face onto glossy strips of paper - hanging every picture on a low wire with noseclips, like blurry, flat clouds above her head. For hours, Lucy's fingers make other people's art, until the clock on the wall reads 8pm. With barely a word, Lucy leaves, and outside, the sky is just as dark as the room with hanging pictures. The cold of the night stings her cheeks as she walks. A sharp right then two blocks and she's home. She enters the lobby with the half asleep doorman and her pale skin blends perfectly with the dull, cream walls. Nobody notices her go up the elevator. Nobody sees her walking through the hallway. She enters apartment 9 without a sound. Putting her sneakers in a corner, she turns on a dim, sputtering lamp.
Lucy lies flat on her bed. She stares at the peeling wood of her ceiling with dry, green eyes - neither awake nor asleep. The noise from the street below her is blocked from her ears. She hears nothing. Midnight comes and passes. Lucy doesn't move. She lies still on her plain matress, waiting patiently for the proper hour to come. And then... a sudden hush falls over everything, and beside her, a clockface smiles 2am. With the neighbors safely asleep, Lucy is alone. No one will see now. No one will know now. So like many times before, Lucy rinsed her silver wand in the kitchen sink and wiped it with a paper towel. She sat on the floor like she always does (with long blonde strands in her face), putting magic dust on the caved tip of her wand. In her head, she whispers her nightly spell, and gently... she lights a match to hold under the dust on her wand. Slowly, she took a breath - as deep and as slow as she could - and she felt herself floating away. She closed her eyes... and Lucy was gone.
She was lost in her own wonderland (more magical than alice's) - where the sun shines timidly with a lazy purple glare and leafless trees grow pale yellow branches, leaking neon dew. Time was slow and sounds were muffled in Wonderland, and the bright lights never hurt her shining green eyes. Nothing was pale in Wonderland. Nothing was dull. And Lucy, her hair wipping gracefully lik golden rivets in the air, she never walked. She floats and she floats... and with her eyes closed... she floats.
It is 10 in the morning. Head pounding, Lucy doesn't eat breakfast.
