Clip Clop Clip Clop, It was once on a fateful evening the old man would take a stroll. His feet moved rhythmically, only to a melody he had memorized. His feet bickered with the barren soil that bore no fruit. His rough steps fluctuate back and forth, getting louder and quieter. After a while, his footsteps mix with the sounds of crickets and small bugs no one could name. That old man was such a mystery. No one really knows him in this sleepy town; well, no one really knows anyone.
A shaggy middle-aged man steps out of his house. He opens the door and closes it behind him. His eyes have seen many things in life, and his posture has surely been stolen. He leaves the yellow abode and walks. He kept walking. His walking was boring, and there, certainly, was nothing interesting about it. He stood in front of a run-down shop, and he observed. The shop has seen better days; that was for sure. He went up to a loose nail on the corner of the shop; the bluish-green roof of the shop had turned an almost brownish color and reeked of rot. He went into the shop and picked up a screwdriver from the cashier's table and left. The store seemed sad, and so did he. The shelves looked dilapidated and too old for their own good. The hinges in the corners of doors were on the verge of collapse. Chipped paint lay across the ground. The oddest thing of all, however, was the beautiful aroma that emanated from within.
The nail fits right now, and the man seemed very satisfied. A minute or so later, a woman approached the store. Her hair was a beautiful, rich hazelnut, and her facial features could only be described by comparing her to Aphrodite. She wore a glamorous yellow dress, which carried with it orange frills around the edges. Her tan skin shone like a gem in the afternoon sun. She carried herself in a noble manner and strode every step she took with elegance. Around her collar, there seemed to lie a golden diamond. It was evident that it was something she wanted to hide. Now in front of the store, she hesitated for a moment. She suddenly decided to stop and looked at the store in a strange manner. The shabby place was so run down one could barely call it a building, but it had an enchanting aura around it. She felt compelled to enter. So she did. Her elegance contrasted starkly with the unsightly appearance of the store. She entered through what hardly could be recognized as a door. The inside reflected what was on the outside, or so that's what she thought.
The interior of the store looked to her as the most beautiful place she'd ever been. The place beat any castle she'd eaten in or any treasury she'd ever seen. It was so very clean and so wonderful. The rugs were pristine, and the shelves had been ordered neatly and cleaned to absolute perfection. "But how?" she thought. Why was the exterior of the shop so appalling, but the inside hosts such bloom? She couldn't wrap her head around it. The man walks out from the back and notices her standing dumbfounded next to the entrance. He hastily ran to the cashier's counter and waited for her next words. When his eyes met hers, then, and only then, had he recognized her infinite beauty. He could do naught but stare at her, for her beauty didn't belong in such a filthy store.
The woman asked him, "For what reason is the outside of your shop so bent out of shape, and why is the interior so beautiful...?" The man looked at her in mild confusion. "What do you mean, beautiful? Don't you see the state of this crappy shop? There's nothing beautiful about this. The shelves are dirty, the rugs are misplaced, and the lights barely work. And the exterior isn't even that bad; I mean, I just fixed it a couple of minutes ago, and it looks fine." The woman stared with a mildly frustrated face. "Fine? Have you SEEN the outside? It looks like a cyclone came and hurled all the important bits into a frenzy." The man was tired of talking to the woman, so he decided to check out what she was talking about and exited the store. "We'll see how 'bad' the outside looks." The man carefully scrutinizes every part of the store. "I genuinely have no clue what you're talking about; it looks fine to me."
After a little more scrutiny, he realizes something interesting in one of the corners of the store exterior. A little piece of wood that stuck out of the side. Strange. He'd never put something like that there. In the other corner, he spots a misplaced steel rod, and in one of the base columns of the store, he glimpses a mark. It was a diamond that was colored with gold. His head felt abnormally light, and his vision blurred. He stumbled back into the shop to ask for aid from that woman. He opened the doors and plummeted to the ground. The woman was nowhere in sight. Her presence had been completely erased from the ground on which he remembered she stood. In reality, there was no door either. There were no shelves, nor were there rugs. The cashier's counter was also gone. The building started to collapse; it shook from the roof and sent tremors to the floor. A large wooden beam fell to the ground directly before the man. In the place where a nail was supposed to be, there was nothing.
The store, with all of its rubble, fell upon the man. He ducked down and held his hands against his head, fearing this was his undoing. He trembled and cried in agony. Wood and stone tumbled on him relentlessly. He didn't want to die; no one did. He anguished helplessly. If there was a god, he prayed with his intentions. Time flowed by so agonizingly slowly. The seconds took hours, and hours took minutes for him to realize that there was nothing falling on him. He kept in his kneeling position, but he slowly lifted his head up to see what was going on. There was nothing around him. There was something, but there was nothing. The shop was completely gone. The ground floor on which it stood hadn't even left a mark on the soil. It was as if there was never a shop here. The man's vision had come to him too late.
Now he lies there, sobbing uncontrollably. For if he had never met that woman, he'd never have stopped. The woman was ethereal, so ethereal in fact, that it brought him back, back from that lonely place. He hated that place. He hadn't the freedom to leave, and he hadn't the freedom to go. That place would invite him with warm hands, but now his only wish is to leave. But he can't, simply because he won't.