“night walk”

2025-07-30

the following is a work of flash fiction.

It was late at night and I was walking through downtown. Wandering around, the light glaring from modern street lamps lend a sheer glow to these office towers, shopping malls, and parking lots. By day, the office towers are recognizably 90s—vinyl cladding shaded in airline-cookie brown, glass tinted in emerald green, pleasing rounded polygonals—but by night, under this unforgiving light, white as a ghost, they are eerie, haunting, their anachronisms hidden under cover of night, their perfections looming over you, not so much a forest but a graveyard.

When I was a kid I thought that if I stood still enough I would disappear. I still remember Mrs. Frances sending me to detention once in sixth grade, all my other classmates were doing multiplication drills but I would never touch the worksheet she handed out, instead I’d just sit dead upright in my chair and clench my eyelids shut and try not to rotate, translate, elevate, or pitch even a millimetre because I was so convinced that if I did that for long enough I would just vanish.

And now, I like to walk downtown at night. I like to stand on a street corner and see a car whoosh past now and then, watch people come in and out of the last dive bar left in this part of town. I like to watch the lights and see red turn into green and back into red again, see the garish colors smear against vinyl and glass and concrete. But then I see flashes of blue, and snap out of it. Better get moving so the police don’t confuse my idleness with destitution.

I orient myself toward the crosswalk that has the green light. As I glide across I feel a slight breeze on me. I think I’m heading south.