Autumn Remembrance

He shook his head, but he couldn’t get the memory out of his mind. It kept replaying – that bit near the end, with the policemen – faster and faster, until tears, unlike he had cried for years, sprung into his eyes. He wiped them away angrily with the cuff of his jacket and cleared his throat. He didn’t want to think about them anymore. He didn’t want to think about his parents. Nor the grandmother that had died soon after he got into college.

Casting the last, lingering memory away, he looked around him. He found that he had walked quite some way whilst he had been thinking – reminiscing – and that he was on the other side of town entirely. He had past unknowingly through all the residential streets and was stood at the edge of the commercial town centre. It wasn’t really in the centre of town, but people called it that anyway. Despite it being late, the moon out and the sunlight far behind them, people were still walking the streets, driving cars, talking, eating, generally enjoying themselves. Bryson started walking again; soon immersing himself among the crowds that bustled and heaved like shoals in an ocean. He didn’t notice the faces. He never noticed the faces anymore.
There was a woman wearing red, with black hair tied in a side ponytail, but if questioned, Bryson would never be able to describe her features. Here was another woman; beautiful dress on quite a good figure, chestnut coloured hair – no face. Nor that of the man that walked beside him or the teenagers that giggled as he passed.
No faces.
Apart, from Alice; he’d noticed her face. But it was her personality he had fallen in love with. And, it wasn’t cheesy Hollywood love either. It was genuine love, unlike anything he had ever experienced before. But…that was behind him now.

He lowered his head, allowing his hair to hide his face from the crowd, and hurried onwards. The change in his pockets rang out as his steps grew faster and his stride lengthened. He left the smiling, laughing people behind him and slipped into an alleyway. After a few minutes of walking, he came to another main road. This one had less people on it, but still enough to create a barricade of bodies. With his head still firmly down turned, following his steps with his eyes, he passed through them as quickly and silently as he could. Then, just like that, he was there.