Another piece i made for a very good friend @ritz1125

The lamp above you flickers once. You sigh and lean back against it's post. Behind you, the school sits empty, abandoned. The doors are locked and the windows are boarded up. The stoplights change, and the sign across the street starts blinking for you to start walking. You don't move.

The lights used to change their timing based on the time of year, the time of day. Long red lights at the start and end of the school day, so the kiddos would have plenty of time to walk across. Shorter, almost nonexistent, red lights the rest of the time, to keep the traffic flowing. Somewhere along the line, something must have fritzed in their programming. They act like school has just let out, no matter what happens. Always stopping traffic so the kids can cross, even in the middle of night, in the middle of summer.

The light blinks at you that it's time to cross the street, patiently signalling for children that haven't been here for years.

By now, all the cars around know not to drive through here. It's quicker by far to just go around, take another route, so the street is empty in front of you. You've been standing here for a good while now, soaking yourself to the bone, and not a single car has come by. It's just you, the lights, and the rain.

It's not like you mind the rain. It's warm for once, big, fat drops that don't immediately cut you to the core with their cold. If you were just a touch younger, or maybe just a touch less tired, you might even enjoy it. You might jump in the puddles, or stick out your tongue and try to catch the raindrops.

But you aren't, so you don't. You lean against the lamppost, watching the streetlights reflect off the wet pavement and the ripples in the puddles, until Jack finally walks up from behind you.

"Ready to go?" He asks.

You sigh. You straighten up and take one last look around. Red, yellow, green streaks stretch across the ground. The rain is starting to get heavier as the night cools down.

"Yeah," you say, "I'm ready."

@createforthra day 4: scene work

Other student: have you ever taken shots or been drunk

Me: shots, no, drunk, yeah a bit

I do this in my head - too many years of watching rom-coms. But never thought to be more deliberate about it. Will use and refine my scenes using this concept on the next edit/polish.