STAINED BY THE AFTERNOON
by Neith Hale
Chapter One: Prisoner

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The smell of coffee forced her body to submit to relaxation. She loved the odor of the coffee beans, fresh and warm from those black machines that magically transformed their shapeless seeds into the inescapable madness brought about by the brown liquid. She adored the vertical stripes of the shop’s wallpaper, all in various hues of auburn. Tasty sweets in rainbow colors and bread displayed on the counter aroused her previously tamed hunger. She felt as if she was enjoying the function of a personal home as she sat on the mahogany-colored furniture, its reddish corners patterned with intricate designs.

That seat was her favorite. Beside her, a clear glass wall served as a convenient window to the variety of characters that passed by the sidewalk. She would watch them with interest and curiosity, wondering what each one’s individual businesses would be. Once or twice a child would offer a friendly wave and she would be filled with a lovely sensation of warmth. Consequently, she’d lift her white-gloved hands and wave back.

Inside the café, there were moving and bustling from both the costumers and the waiters. Sometimes there was laughter. Oftentimes she listened to the bubbling chatter made by different groups of people.

She loved it because inside, there was much life.

She removed her gloves, white and soft they were, and let the open air cool her hands. Staring at the worn-down theatre opposite the street, she placed her hands on the glass window that isolated her from the world. They went through, transparent and without substance. Fetid pollution suddenly became the main constituent of the air that suffocated her. Ebullient curiosity died down and she was reduced to the dullness of disinterest.

The moment she tried to escape it, she had broken a rule. Having violated the sacrosanct dogmas of the world in which she lived, she found her freedom once again limited by solid and unbreakable, yet conviniently invinsible walls that caged her. She was reduced once again to Queen on that wooden chair and chains constricted to force her to sit down. She was back once again into a prisoner of her throne, quite miserable in that solitary state.

Her only hope was a stranger's gift of sight.